Amongst Greentique Hotels’ proudest relationships is its on-going support of butterfly research conducted by INBio, the National Biodiversity Institute. INBio operates an active field research laboratory on the Villa Blanca hotel grounds, just 1500 feet from the hotel lobby.
Part of what makes this research so extraordinary is that it is conducted so close to a human population and operating hotel facility, making Villa Blanca the only hotel in Costa Rica where such a program exists. The work done by INBio at Villa Blanca is part of an international database shared with scientists and researchers around the world. The variety and collection of species for research represent an inventory, in the surrounding Los Angeles Cloud Forest Biological Reserve, similar to Monteverde’s cloud forest, yet far more accessible for scientists and tourist visiting from the capital of San Jose.
Special tours take you into the cloud forest and through the INBio station to see the research being done with butterflies and moths toward better understanding their relationships with plants, other insects and humans that comprise this incredibly complex and diverse ecosystem.