News Finding: The diversity of the experts working on the project is just a reflection of the diversity of the arthropods themselves," he says.
Paper Finding: Reassuringly, our wellresolved estimates of tropical arthropod species richness are of the same order of magnitude as prior estimates (table S3) , adding credence to recent estimates of tropical arthropod diversity (5, 21) .
News Context: This means that in the future, scientists can accurately study the diversity of a forest the size of Manhattan by only studying an area equivalent to a few city blocks. The diversity of the experts working on the project is just a reflection of the diversity of the arthropods themselves," he says. This large-scale interdisciplinary effort marks a first in the field of tropical entomology, says Basset.
Paper Context: Because this study targeted the full spectrum of arthropods, it offers a comprehensive test of previous estimates of species richness based only on selected guilds or taxa. Reassuringly, our wellresolved estimates of tropical arthropod species richness are of the same order of magnitude as prior estimates (table S3) , adding credence to recent estimates of tropical arthropod diversity (5, 21) . Although the scope for direct comparison is limited because of regional differences in sampling effort, lowland tropical forest in Panama seems to support 2.1 to 8.4 times as many arthropod species as observed in temperate forests (table S3) .