ABSTRACT
The roughly 27,000 protected areas in the world today are home to much of the world’s biodiversity and are likely to become increasingly important as repositories of this dwindling resource. Protected areas also often offer infrastructure and access to biodiversity that are of value to research and to collectors of materials for academic or commercial purposes. Research in high biodiversity countries has received increased attention and funding in the last decade, and there has been a rise in calls in international fora for national biodiversity inventories, taxonomic initiatives and other research activities geared to better understanding and organizing information on biodiversity. The role of research as an economic, as well as scientific, activity within protected areas is likely to increase in the coming years.
