Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad

This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: missing information on transition with Natural History Museum during and after 2015. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (June 2020)

The Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio) is the national institute for biodiversity and conservation in Costa Rica. Created at the end of the 1980s, and despite having national status, it is a privately run institution that works closely with various government agencies, universities, business sector and other public and private entities inside and outside of the country.^[1] The goals of the institute are to complete an inventory of the natural heritage of Costa Rica, promote conservation and identify chemical compounds and genetic material present in living organisms that could be used by industries such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics or others.

The institute has a collection of over three million insects representing tens of thousands of species all recorded in Atta, a computer database that contains all of the data such as exact location (including GPS coordinates), date of collection, name of the collector and method of collection.

Due to impending insolvency, in March 2015, the INBio's biodiversity collection and database will be taken over by the state^[2] (and returned to the Natural History Museum, from which much of it was taken when INBio was founded), and its theme park converted to government operation.^[3] INBio will move forward as a "think tank" type institute with money raised from transfer of most of its assets to the government.