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Not Resilient

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Old Species Learn
New Tricks…Very Slowly

Perhaps old species, like some older people, gradually lose their ability to deal with changes in their environment. Aaron O’Dea and colleagues show that when the Caribbean was cut off from the Pacific by the rise of the Panama land bridge, evolutionarily old species took longer to expand into new habitats than evolutionarily younger species did.

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Caribbean

Paleontology and Paleobiology Biodiversity Evolutionary Ecology Geology Zoology Geography and Biogeography Life in Deep Time Naos NOT Resilient

smithsonian-cyan Aaron O'Dea

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Not
Resilient

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Q?Bus

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The Smithsonian takes
to the streets in Panama

Designed to share a hands-on-science experience, the new, brightly-painted van will make it possible for kids and adults to participate in the excitement of the discovery process in cities and towns across Panama.

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Panama

Entomology Hydrology Archaeology Microbial Ecology Biodiversity Physical Monitoring Paleontology and Paleobiology Ecosystem Services Animal Behavior Connections in nature: Plants, Animals, Microbes and Environments Life in Deep Time Punta Culebra Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

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Yves Basset

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Entomology Biodiversity

We urgently need to implement monitoring schemes to evaluate the effects of anthropogenic change on the spatio-temporal distribution of arthropods in the tropics. Or else we may grossly underestimate arthropod extinction risks in tropical rainforests.

Higher predation risk for insect prey at low latitudes and elevations, 2017

Contrasting the distribution of butterflies and termites in plantations and tropical

forests, 2017

Yves Basset Lab

ForestGEO Arthropod monitoring

Insect Conservation and Diversity

Media coverage - Science, 2012

Toward a world that values insects – Science 2019

My colleagues and I are interested to understand the main factors that affect the maintenance of local arthropod biodiversity in tropical rainforests. Our research program has several components. We have studied insect-plant interactions, the host-specificity of insect herbivores and interaction networks in tropical rainforests. However, we are now increasingly focusing on the threats to tropical insects induced by global climate change. To this end, we have build a small network of sites recruiting from the Smithsonian ForestGEO network (notably in Panama, Thailand and Papua New Guinea), where we monitor in the long-term various insect taxa, from butterflies to termites. We apply new analytical and molecular methods to forecast how climate change may alter functional groups represented by insect taxa with diverse life-histories.

Are arthropod species/assemblages functionally replaced among rainforest locations?

We are broadly interested in estimating the relative influence of biogeography, rainfall seasonality, productivity and local woody plant richness on the diversity and composition of arthropod assemblages in tropical rainforests. To achieve this, comparison of arthropod community variables among ForestGEO sites located in different biogeographic regions is essential. We are also interested to evaluate what is the relative importance of plant phylogeny and functional traits in shaping the abundance and diversity of herbivore and detritivore communities. Further, predicting and mitigating the loss of biodiversity remains essential. We seek to identify species traits that may increase the likelihood of species extinction for a wide variety of arthropod groups.

How consistent is the structure of interaction networks based on insects across rainforests?

Trophic interactions have been described as the glue that holds together ecological communities and several authors have called for the conservation of interactions (rather than individual species) as a goal for conservationists. Networks of feeding interactions among insect herbivores, their hosts and natural enemies such as parasitoids, describe the structure of these assemblages and may be critically linked to their dynamics and stability. We are interested to understand how is variability in food web structure (“connectivity” and other measures of insect interaction structure and relative insect abundance, including host-specificity) affected by the phylogenetic structure of plant communities (formed from different regional species pools), rainfall and productivity.

How can we efficiently monitor insect populations in the long-term with new molecular techniques?

In the tropics, where both insect diversity and taxonomic impediment are high, we routinely use DNA barcoding and Barcode Index Numbers to identify or distinguish focal species. We are currently exploring how we can develop protocols to apply metabarcoding to derive annual population indices relevant to a large fraction of local arthropod assemblages, and not to just a few focal groups. This represents a formidable challenge as we have shown that small areas of tropical rainforests can easily support 25,000 arthropod species or more.

M.Sc., University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 1985

Ph.D., Griffith University, Australia, 1990

Bonadies, E., Lamarre, G.P.A., Souto-Vilarós, D., Pardikes, N.A., Ramírez Silva, J.A., Perez, F., Bobadilla, R., Lopez, Y. & Basset, Y. 2024. Population trends of insect pollinators in a species-rich tropical rainforest: stable trends but contrasting patterns across taxa. Biology Letters, in press.

Tsang, T.P.N., De Santis, A.A.A., Armas-Quiñonez, G., Ascher, J.S., Ávila-Gómez, E.S., Báldi, A., Ballare, K.M., Balzan, M.V., Banaszak-Cibicka, W., Bänsch, S., Basset, Y., …, & Bonebrake, T.C. 2024. Land use change consistently reduces α but not β and γ diversity of bees. Global Change Biology, in press.

Leponce, M., Basset, Y., Aristizábal-Botero, Á., Baïben, N., Barbut, J., Buyck, B., Butterill, P., Calders, K., Cárdenas, G., Carrias, J.-F., Catchpole, D., D’hont, B., Delabie, J., Drescher, J., Ertz, D., Heughebaert, A., Hofstetter, V., Leroy, C., Melki, F., Michaux, J., Neita-Moreno, J.C., Poirier, E., Rougerie, R., Rouhan, G., Rufray, V., Scheu, S., Schmidl, J., Vanderpoorten, A., Villemant, C., Youdjou, N. & Pascal, O. 2024. Unveiling the above-ground eukaryotic diversity supported by individual large old trees: the “Life on Trees” integrative protocol. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 7, 1425492.

Jain, A., Cunha, F., Bunsen, M.J., Cañas, J.S., Pasi, L., Pinoy, N., Helsing, F., Russo, J., Botham, M., Sabourin, M., Fréchette, J., Anctil, A., Lopez, Y., Navarro, E., Perez Pimentel, F., Zamora, A.C., Ramirez Silva, J.A., Gagnon, J., August, T., Bjerge, K., Gomez Segura, A., Bélisle, M., Basset, Y., McFarland, K.P., Roy, D., Høye, T.T., Larrivée, M., Rolnick, D. 2024. Insect identification in the wild: The AMI dataset. Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer Vision, Milano, 2024, in press.

Souto-Vilarós, D., Basset, Y., Blažek, P., Laird-Hopkins, B., Segar, S.T., Navarro-Valencia, E., Cecilia Zamora, A., Campusano, Y., Čtvrtečka, R., Savage, A.F., Perez, F., Lopez, Y., Bobadilla, R., Ramírez Silva, J.A. & Lamarre, G.P.A. 2024. Illuminating arthropod diversity in a tropical forest: Assessing biodiversity by automatic light trapping and DNA metabarcoding. Environmental DNA, DOI: 10.1002/edn3.540

Segar, S.T., Re Jorge, L., Nicholls, L., Basset, Y., Rota, J., Kaman, O., Sisol, M., Gewa, B., Dahl, C., Butterill, P., Mezzomo, P., Miller, S.E., Weiblen, G., Salminen, J.-P., Novotny, V. & Volf, M. 2024. Species swarms and their caterpillar colonisers: phylogeny and polyphenols determine host plant specificity in New Guinean Lepidoptera. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 11, 1308608.

August, T., Basset, Y., Boislard, T., Gomez-Segura, A., Høye, T. T., … & Roy, D. B. 2023. Automated monitoring of biodiversity in the tropics: A pilot study at Barro Colorado Island (1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7598393

Ashe-Jepson, E., Arizala Cobo, S., Basset, Y., Bladon, A.J., Kleckova, I., Laird-Hopkins, B.C., Mcfarlane, A., Sam, K., Savage, A.F., Zamora, A.C., Turner, E.C. & Lamarre, G.P.A. 2023. Tropical butterflies use thermal buffering and thermal tolerance as alternative strategies to cope with temperature increase. Journal of Animal Ecology, doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13970.

Laird-Hopkins, B. C, Ashe-Jepson, E., Basset, Y., Cobo, S. A., Eberhardt, L., Freiberga, I., Hellon, J., Hitchcock, G.W., Kleckova, I., Linke, D., Lamarre, G.P.A., McFarlane, A., Savage, A.F., Turner, E.C., Zamora, A.C., Sam, K. & Bladon, A. J. 2023. Thermoregulatory ability and mechanism do not differ consistently between neotropical and temperate butterflies. Global Change Biology, 29, 4180-4192.

Basset, Y., Butterill, P.T., Donoso, D.A., Lamarre, G.P.A., Souto-Vilaros, D., Perez, F., Bobadilla, R., Lopez, Y., Ramírez Silva, J.A. & Barrios, H. 2023. Abundance, occurrence and time series: long-term monitoring of social insects in a tropical rainforest. Ecological Indicators, 150, 110243.

Harvey, J.A., Tougeron, K., Gols, R., …, Basset, Y., … & Chown, S.L. 2022. Scientists’ warning on climate change and insects. Ecological Monographs, in press.

Basset, Y., Blažek, P., Souto-Vilarós, D., Vargas, G., Ramírez Silva, J.A., Barrios, H., Perez, F., Bobadilla, R., Lopez, Y., Ctvrtecka, R., Šípek, P., Solís, A., Segar, S.T. & Lamarre, G.P.A. 2022. Towards a functional classification of poorly known tropical insects: The case of rhinoceros beetles (Coleoptera, Dynastinae) in Panama. Insect Conservation and Diversity, in press.

Basset, Y., Hajibabaei, M., Wright, M.T.G., Castillo, A.M., Donoso, D.A., Segar, S.T., Souto‑Vilarós, D. Soliman, D.Y., Roslin, T., Smith, M.A., Lamarre, G.P.A., De León, L.F., Decaëns, T., Palacios‑Vargas, J.G., Castaño‑Meneses, G., Scheffrahn, R.H., Rivera, M., Perez, F., Bobadilla, R., Lopez, Y., Ramirez Silva, J.A., Montejo Cruz, M., Arango Galván, A. & Barrios, H. (2022). Comparison of traditional and DNA metabarcoding samples for monitoring tropical soil arthropods (Formicidae, Collembola and Isoptera). Scientific Reports, 12, 10762. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-14915-2

Donoso, D.A., Basset, Y., Shik, J.Z., Forrister, D.L., Uquillas, A., Salazar Méndez , Y., Arizala, S., Polanco, P., Beckett, S., Dominguez G., D. & Barrios, H. 2022. Male ant reproductive investment in a seasonal wet tropical forest: consequences of future climate change. PLOs One, 17, e0266222.

Lamarre, G.P.A., Pardikes, N.A., Segar, S., Hackforth, C.N., Laguerre, M., Vincent, B., Lopez, Y., Perez, F., Bobadilla, R., Ramírez Silva, J.A., Basset, Y. 2022. More winners than losers over 12 years of monitoring tiger moths (Erebidae: Arctiinae) on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. Biology Letters, 18, 20210519.

Roubik, D.W., Basset, Y., Lopez, Y., Bobadilla, R., Perez, F. & Ramírez Silva, J.A. 2021. Long-term (1979-2019) dynamics of protected orchid bees in Panama. Conservation Science and Practice, 3, e543.

Basset, Y., Miller, S.E., Gripenberg, S., Ctvrtecka, R., Dahl, C., Leather, S.R. & Didham, R.K. 2019. An entomocentric view of the Janzen-Connell hypothesis. Insect Conservation and Diversity, 12, 1-8.

Basset, Y., Dahl, C., Ctvrtecka, R., Gripenberg, S., Lewis, O.T., Segar, S.T., Klimes, P., Barrios, H., Brown, J.W., Bunyavejchewin, S., Butcher, B.A., Cognato, A.I., Davies, S.J., Kaman, O., Knizek, M., Miller, S.E., Morse, G.E., Novotny, V., Pongpattananurak, N., Pramual, P., Quicke, D.L.J., Robbins, R.K., Sakchoowong, W., Schutze, M., Vesterinen, E.J., Wang, W.-z., Wang, Y.-y., Weiblen, G. & Wright, S.J. 2018. A cross-continental comparison of assemblages of seed- and fruit-feeding insects in tropical rainforests: faunal composition and rates of attack. Journal of Biogeography, 45, 1395-1407.

Didham, R.K., Leather, S.R. Basset, Y. 2017. Don’t be a zero-sum reviewer. Insect Conservation and Diversity, 10, 1-4.

Lucas, M., Forero, D. & Basset, Y. 2016. Diversity and recent population trends of assassin bugs (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. Insect Conservation and Diversity, 9, 546-558.

Basset, Y., Cizek, L., Cuénoud, P., Didham, R.K., Novotny, V., Ødegaard, F., Roslin, T., Tishechkin, A.K., Schmidl, J., Winchester, N.N., Roubik, D.W., Aberlenc, H.-P., Bail, J., Barrios, H., Bridle, J.R., Castaño-Meneses, G., Corbara, B., Curletti, G., da Rocha, W.D., De Bakker, D., Delabie, J.H.C., Dejean, A., Fagan, L.L., Floren, A., Kitching, R.L., Medianero, E., de Oliveira; E.G., Orivel, J., Pollet, M., Rapp, M., Ribeiro, S.P., Roisin, Y., Schmidt, J.B., Sørensen, L., Lewinsohn, T.M., Leponce, M. 2015. Arthropod distribution in a tropical rainforest: tackling a four dimensional puzzle. PLoS ONE 10(12): e0144110. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0144110

Basset, Y., Barrios, H., Segar, S., Srygley, R.B., Aiello, A., Warren, A.D., Delgado, F., Coronado, J., Lezcano, J., Arizala, S., Rivera, M., Perez, F., Bobadilla, R., Lopez, Y. & Ramirez, J.A. 2015. The butterflies of Barro Colorado Island, Panama: local extinction since the 1930s. PLoS ONE, 10, e0136623. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0136623

Fayle, T.M., Turner, E.C., Basset, Y., Ewers, R.M., Reynolds, G. & Novotny, V. 2015. Whole-ecosystem experimental manipulations of tropical forests. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 30, 334-346.

Basset, Y., Eastwood, R., Sam, L., Lohman, D.J., Novotny, V., Treuer, T., Miller, S.E., Weiblen, G.D., Pierce, N.E., Bunyavejchewin, S., Sakchoowong, W., Kongnoo, P. & Osorio-Arenas, M.A. 2013. Cross-continental comparisons of butterfly assemblages in rainforests: implications for biological monitoring. Insect Conservation and Diversity, 6, 223-233.

Basset, Y., Cizek, L., Cuénoud, P., Didham, R.K., Guilhaumon, F., Missa, O., Novotny, V., Ødegaard, F., Roslin, T., Schmidl, J., Tishechkin, A.K., Winchester, N.N., Roubik,D.W., Aberlenc, H.-P., Bail, J., Barrios, H., Bridle, J.R., Castaño-Meneses, G., Corbara, B., Curletti, G., Duarte da Rocha, W., De Bakker,D., Delabie, J.H.C., Dejean, A., Fagan, L.L., Floren, A., Kitching, R.L., Medianero, E., Miller, S.E., de Oliveira, E.G., Orivel, J., Pollet, M., Rapp, M., Ribeiro, S.P., Roisin, Y., Schmidt, J.B., Sørensen, L., & Leponce, M. 2012. Arthropod diversity in a tropical forest. Science, 338, 1481-1484.

Basset, Y., Missa, O., Alonso A., Miller, S.E., Curletti, G., De Meyer, M., Eardley, C., Lewis, O.T., Mansell, M.W., Novotny, V. & Wagner, T. 2008. Changes in arthropod assemblages along a wide gradient of disturbance in Gabon. Conservation Biology, 22, 1552-1563.

Basset, Y., Novotny, V., Miller, S.E. & Kitching, R.L. (eds) 2003. Arthropods of Tropical Forests. Spatio-temporal Dynamics and Resource Use in the Canopy. Cambridge University Press, xvi + 474 pp.

Novotny, V., Basset, Y., Miller, S.E., Weiblen, G.D., Bremer, B., Cizek, L. & Drozd, P. 2002. Low host specificity of herbivorous insects in a tropical forest. Nature 416, 841-844.

Basset, Y., Miller, S.E., Gripenberg, S., Ctvrtecka, R., Dahl, C., Leather, S.R. & Didham, R.K. 2019. An entomocentric view of the Janzen-Connell hypothesis. Insect Conservation and Diversity, 12, 1-8.

Basset, Y., Dahl, C., Ctvrtecka, R., Gripenberg, S., Lewis, O.T., Segar, S.T., Klimes, P., Barrios, H., Brown, J.W., Bunyavejchewin, S., Butcher, B.A., Cognato, A.I., Davies, S.J., Kaman, O., Knizek, M., Miller, S.E., Morse, G.E., Novotny, V., Pongpattananurak, N., Pramual, P., Quicke, D.L.J., Robbins, R.K., Sakchoowong, W., Schutze, M., Vesterinen, E.J., Wang, W.-z., Wang, Y.-y., Weiblen, G. & Wright, S.J. 2018. A cross-continental comparison of assemblages of seed- and fruit-feeding insects in tropical rainforests: faunal composition and rates of attack. Journal of Biogeography, 45, 1395-1407.

bassety [at] si.edu

+507 212.8233

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Yves Basset

Name

Yves

Last name

Basset

Position

Staff Scientist

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Tracking humpback whales

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Scientists tag humpback
whales in Southeast Pacific

Satellite tracking technology reveals the massive ranges of breeding areas of humpback whales in the Pacific Ocean.

Story location

Las Perlas Archipielago, Panama

Marine Biology Conservation Biology Animal Behavior Connections in nature: Plants, Animals, Microbes and Environments Naos 8-image1

smithsonian-cyan Hector M. Guzman

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More Fish Mean Healthier Reefs

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Coral reefs grow faster and healthier when parrotfish are abundant

A new study points directly links healthy coral reefs to healthy populations of these brightly colored fishes.

Story location

Bocas del Toro, Panama

Conservation Biology Biodiversity Marine Biology Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet Bocas del Toro Coral reefs grow faster and healthier when parrotfish are abundant

Coral reefs grow faster and healthier when parrotfish are abundant

smithsonian-cyan Aaron O'Dea

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More fish
mean
healthier reefs

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Bocas del Toro

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William Wcislo

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Behavior Ecology

Animal behavior is central to biology because behavior is the interface between mechanistic and ecological studies — what Marston Bates called “skin-in” and “skin-out” biology — and is the means by which animals shape their environments.

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI)

Caste-biased gene expression in a facultatively eusocial bee suggests a role for genetic accommodation in the evolution of eusociality, 2017

Consequences of evolutionary transitions in changing photic environments: Transitions in photic environments, 2017

Evolution, Behavior and Neurobiology Lab

My lab uses natural history observations, combined with experimental field and laboratory studies, to better understand the evolution of animal behavior in changing environments. Our research focuses primarily on weakly social bees and fungus-growing ants to understand how environmental, developmental, neurobiological and genetic factors shape the expression or loss of social behavior and drive the evolution of more — or less — complex societies.

What are the causes and consequences of behavioral evolution in changing environments?

My colleagues and I use natural history observations combined with experimental field and laboratory studies to better understand the evolution of animal behavior in changing environments. We focus primarily on weakly social sweat bees (Halictidae) and fungus-growing ants (Attini) to understand how environmental, developmental, and genetic factors shape the expression or loss of social behavior, and drive the evolution of more (or less) complex societies. Much of this work involves nocturnal bees, which we use to understand how and why animals invade a new, extreme, ecological niche, and what are the behavioral and neurobiological consequences of doing so?

How and why do brains of insects and other invertebrates evolve to larger or smaller sizes, relative to body size, and what is the significance of these scaling patterns on brain size?

Origins of Species and Societies

1991 Ph.D. (Entomology) with Honors, University of Kansas

1982 B.S. (Biology), University of Michigan

Karen M. Kapheim KM, Jones BM, Pan H, Li C, Harpur BA, Kent CF, Zayed A, Ioannidis P, Waterhouse RM, Kingwell CJ, Stolle E, Avalos A, Zhang Z, McMillan WO, Wcislo WT. 2020 Developmental plasticity shapes social traits and selection in a facultatively eusocial bee. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA

Smith AR, Kapheim KM, Kingwell CJ &Wcislo WT. 2019. A split sex ratio in solitary and social nests of a facultatively social bee. Biology Letters 15: 20180740. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0740

Stone T, Webb B, Adden A, Weddig NB, Honkanen A, Templin R, Wcislo W, Scimeca L, Warrant E, Heinze S. 2017. An anatomically constrained model for path integration in the bee brain. Current Biology 27:3065-3089

Tierney SM, Friedrich M, Humphreys WF, Jones TM, Warrant EJ Wcislo WT. 2017. Consequences of evolutionary transitions in changing photic environments. Austral Entomology doi:10.1111/aen.12264

Wcislo WT and Fewell JH. 2017. Sociality in bees. In Rubenstein DR and Abbot P (eds), pp. 50-83. Comparative Social Evolution. Cambridge University Press.

Nygaard S, Hu H, Li C, Schiøtt M, Chen Z, Yang Z, Xie Q, Ma C, Deng Y, Dikow RB, Rabeling C, Nash DR, Wcislo WT, Brady SG, Schultz TR ZhangG, Boomsma JJ. 2016. Reciprocal genomic evolution in the ant-fungus agricultural symbiosis.Nature Communications 7:12233 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12233

wcislow [at] si.edu

+507 212.8128