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Department of Biology People
 

Daniel H. Janzen, Ph. D.

Professor of Biology
Thomas G. and Louise E. DiMaura Term Chair
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1965
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301 Leidy Laboratories
Department of Biology
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA

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+1 215 898.5636

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+1 215 898.8780

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djanzen@sas.upenn.edu

links : research : publications

external links

Main research and species database site: http://janzen.sas.upenn.edu/

Course Home Page: http://condor.sas.upenn.edu/cf/caterpillar/files/lecture.html

 

ecology and biodiversity of ecosystems

Why do caterpillars eat the plants they eat? Why do parasitoids eat the caterpillars they eat? And why do they do it that way in a tropical dry forest in northwestern Costa Rica? I have long pursued these questions because I am curious about them and their answers. But the answers, and the research processes themselves, also have very broad application to how one may use the biodiversity of a tropical wildland without destroying it.

How can we insure that tropical wildlands, and all of their biodiversity, are still with us centuries from now? Through non-destructive use of lands explicitly allocated to this land use. But to use biodiversity without damage requires detailed natural history knowledge, tracking of demography, and ecosystem-level understanding. And to use requires a user.

So it is that we find that very basic research on the interactions of animals and plants in complex tropical forest quite serendipituously finds itself being key intellectual infrastructure and technological know-how for biodiversity prospecting, biological control of pests, biotechnology, ecotourism development, biocultural education, environmental monitoring, silviculture, agriculture and very much more.

So my research has evolved from a study of Victorian natural history of tropical animal-plant interactions to an exploration of the ecology of the interface between society and tropical wildland biodiversity. The administrative structure of institutions such as wildland administrations and Ministries of the Environment, the biodiversity development of conserved wildlands to where they can pay their own direct costs, and the integration of wildlands into society, all become major tools in the engineering of the tropical countryside. Costa Rica as a whole is the ecosystem.

My research is done where the organisms are, i.e., Costa Rica.

selected publications

Janzen, D. H. 2002. Tropical dry forest: Area de Conservación Guanacaste, northwestern Costa Rica. In Handbook of Ecological Restoration, Volume 2, Restoration in Practice, eds. Perrow, M. R., Davy, A. J., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 559-583.

Janzen, D. H. 2001. Good fences make good neighbors. PARKS 11(2):41-49.

Janzen, D. H. 2001. Lumpy integration of tropical wild biodiversity with its society. In A new century of biology, W. J. Kress and G. W. Barrett, eds., Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, pp. 133-148.

Schauff, M. E. and Janzen, D. H. 2001. Taxonomy and ecology of Costa Rican Euplectrus (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae), parasitoids of caterpillars (Lepidoptera). Journal of Hymenoptera Research 10(2):181-230.

Janzen, D. H. 2001. Saving fractured oases of biodiversity (book review). Quarterly Review of Biology 76:327-330.

Burns, J. M. and Janzen, D. H. 2001. Biodiversity of pyrrhopygine skipper butterflies (Hesperiidae) in the Area de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Journal of the Lepidopterist's Society 55:15-43.

Janzen, D. H. 2000. Wildlands as gardens. National Parks Magazine 74(11-12):50-51.

Janzen, D. H. 2000. How to grow a wildland: the gardenification of nature. In Nature and Human Society, eds. P. H. Raven and T. Williams, eds., National Academy Press, Washington, D. C. pp.521-529.

Janzen, D. H. 2000. Costa Rica's Area de Conservación Guanacaste: a long march to survival through non-damaging biodevelopment. Biodiversity 1(2):7-20.

Janzen, D. H. 1999. Gardenification of tropical conserved wildlands: Multitasking, multicropping, and multiusers. PNAS 96(11):5987-5994.

Janzen, D. H. 1999. La sobrevivencia de las areas silvestres de Costa Rica por medio de su jardinificación. Ciencias Ambientales No. 16:8-18.

Burns, J. M. and Janzen, D. H. 1999. Drephalys: division of this showy neotropical genus, plus a new species and the immatures and food plants of two species from Costa Rican dry forest (Hesperiidae: Pyrginae). Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society 53(3):77-89.

Janzen, D. H. 1998. Conservation analysis of the Santa Elena property, Peninsula Santa Elena, northwestern Costa Rica. Unpublished report to the Government of Costa Rica, 129 pp. + Appendices.

Janzen, D. H., M. J. Sharkey, and J. M. Burns 1998. Parasitization biology of a new species of Braconidae (Hymenoptera) feeding on larvae of Costa Rican dry forest skippers (Leidoptera: Hesperiidae: Pyrginae). Tropical Lepidoptera 9(suppl): 33-41.

Janzen, D. H. 1998. Gardenification of wildland nature and the human footprint. Science 279:1312-1313.

Janzen, D. H. 1997. Causes and consequences of biodiversity loss: liquidation of natural capital and biodiversity resource development in Costa Rica. In Biodiversity and Human Health, eds. F. Grifo and J.Rosenthal, Island Press, Washington, D. C. pp. 302-311.

Janzen, D. H. and R. Gámez 1997. Assessing information needs for sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity. In Biodiversity Information: Needs and Options, eds. D. L. Hawksworth, P. M. Kirk and S. Dextre Clarke, CAB International, Wallingford, Oxon, UK, pp. 21-29.

Janzen, D. H. and I. D. Gauld 1997. Patterns of use of large moth caterpillars (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae and Sphingidae) by ichneumonid parasitoids (Hymenoptera) in Costa Rican dry forest. In Forests and Insects, eds. A. D. Watt, N. E. Stork and M. D. Hunter, Chapman & Hall, London, pp. 251-271.

Miller, J. S., D. H. Janzen, and J. G. Franclemont 1997. New species of Euhapigioides, new genus,and Hapigiodes in Hapigiini, new tribe, from Costa Rica, with notes on their life history and immatures (Lepidoptera: Notodontidae). Tropical Lepidoptera 8(2):81-99.

Janzen, D. H. 1996. On the importance of systematic biology in biodiversity development. ASC Newsletter 24:17, 23-28.

Janzen, D. H. 1994. Wildland biodiversity management in the tropics: where are we now and where are we going? Vida Silvestre Neotropical 3, 3-15.

Reid, W. V., S. A. Laird, R. Gómez, A. Sittenfeld, D. H. Janzen, M. A. Gollin and G. Juma. 1993. Biodiversity Prospecting. World Resources Institute, Washington, D.C. 341 pp.

Janzen, D. H. 1993. Caterpillar seasonality in a Costa Rican dry forest. In: Caterpillars. Ecological and evolutionary constraints on foraging, N. E. Stamp and T. M. Casey, eds., Chapman and Hall, New York, pp. 448-477.

Janzen, D. H. 1988. Guanacaste National Park: tropical ecological and biocultural restoration. In Rehabilitating Damaged Ecosystems, vol. 11, pp. 143-192, J. Cairns, Jr., ed., CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida.

Janzen, D. H. ed. 1983. Costa Rican Natural History, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 816 pp.

Janzen, D. H. 1986. The future of tropical ecology. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 17, 305-24.

 


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last updated September 27, 2004