PRINCIPAL OBJECTIVES

• To document and compare aquatic species in headwaters of the four largest tributary basins of the Western Amazon—the Ucayali, Juruá, Purús and Madeira.
• To make preserved specimens, tissue samples, digital photos, and associated field data readily available to the taxonomic community.

TAXONOMIC SCOPE

• Species inventories of crustaceans, fishes, platyhelminths, mollusks, and sponges.
• Adventitious collections of other aquatic animals (e.g., annelids, leeches, insects)

SAMPLING: AQUATIC HABITATS OF LOWLAND AMAZONIA

• Terra firme (non-flooded) streams and small rivers
• River channels and flooded beeches
• Floodplain aquatic macrophytes (rooted and floating vegetation)
• Seasonally flooded forests
• Benthic sediments of oxbow lakes and side channels.

MAIN PRODUCTS

• Discovery of species new to science.
• Research and teaching collections deposited at Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Museo de Historia Natural (MUSM), Lima, and also the home institutions of the investigators.
• Specimens and data as published taxonomic reports and databases compiled in standardized formats appropriate for each taxonomic group.
• Internet and printed guides to the aquatic macrofauna of the Alto Purús
• Digital images and tissue samples of all morphospecies with associated museum catalogue numbers.
• Data for testing explicit alternative hypotheses on the origins and maintenance of species diversity in a complex megadiverse tropical aquatic ecosystem.
• Training students and technicians at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the systematics, ecology and conservation of species-rich, poorly known, and ecologically important lowland aquatic taxa.