To Fray Andrés Langer, a strong man, determined and forceful in his convictions, whose impressive efforts to understand biodiversity and conservation were undertaken in combination with his religious convictions, often against a resistant population who did not understand and appreciate nature. Through his positive, daily insistence on conservation and the importance of each organism—whether insect, vertebrate, or plant—he preached the value of our biodiversity. He let no organism go to waste that lost its life, either naturally or by impact with a car or windshield, by studying it and extracting all information possible. Each sample collected by Brother Andrés is deposited for further study in the collections of the Noel Kempff Museum.
To Paolo Bettella, whose everlasting enthusiasm toward the development of scientific collections and biological research impressed all who knew him, and who, through his passion, developed the entomological, botanical, and vertebrate collections at the Noel Kempff Museum and made them available for short- and long-term study. The first samples of the Noel Kempff Museum were collected by Paolo from trips to very remote locations and under extreme danger from disease and accidents. He left us with a great legacy of courage, spirit, and optimism to continue the development of the scientific collections and understand the role and importance of each specimen present in the scientific collections.