Counting Bugs in Panama

There are more species of insects than pretty much anything else in the world. And scientists know there are millions they haven't even identified yet. Now, in a tropical rainforest in Panama, a multinational team of scientists has just completed the first ever insect census.

 Smithsonian's Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C.

That canopy was as much as 13 stories above the forest floor. So Basset and his multinational team of researchers and volunteers had to get creative. They got help from professional tree climbers. They used a helium balloon to soar above the foliage. They had a helicopter lower a giant inflatable sampling platform onto the tree tops. And they also had construction crane right in the middle of the forest.

It took Basset and his team two years to collect the specimens and send them out to labs all over the  world for identification. The Smithsonian's Scott Miller says it took more than 100 scientists another eight years to process them all. Miller says to identify the species, researchers relied in part on DNA analysis, and in part on the arthropods' physical characteristics.

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