Biota-MS: Montando o quebra-cabeça da biodiversidade de Mato Grosso do Sul

This article is the presentation of Biota-MS, supplement of Iheringia, Série Zoologia, consisting of 56 articles concerning biodiversity of Mato Grosso do Sul state, Brazil, elaborated by 174 researchers from 41 Brazilian and international institutions. A total of 5,195 species of animals are listed, including endangered species and some endemic to Mato Grosso do Sul and surroundings, or in Brazil only cited for MS. We present the actions that gave rise to the “Program on Science, Technology & Innovation Biodiversity of Mato Grosso do Sul (Biota-MS)”, introduced in 2009, discuss the importance of biodiversity and its intrinsic value and the derived products and services, presenting it as a strategic issue for regional development, and cite the efforts that the program has developed to achieve the objectives. Despite obstacles to the preparation of this edition, such as the lack of specialists in different taxa and the difficulty in quantifying species diversity of Mato Grosso do Sul from material collected before 1977, when Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul States had not been split, the obtained results are one of the most updated and systematized work of organizing biological data in Brazil.