About 66 million years ago, a radical change on the Earth filled tropical forests with flowers. A new catalog of fossil pollen grains may hold an explanation.
After more than 50 years at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, director emeritus Ira Rubinoff has announced his retirement. He will travel to Vienna with his wife, Anabella, who was recently designated Panama’s ambassador to Austria.
A whale shark named Anne swam all the way across the Pacific from Coiba National Park in Panama to the Marianas Trench.
To mark the beginning of an era in marine research in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, Smithsonian scientists launched numerous long-term marine ecosystem studies in Panama’s Coiba National Park.
A new paper in Science shows that big female fish are disproportionately important to maintaining populations. The research suggests that protection of large, reproductive females is essential to sustaining viable fish stocks.
Smithsonian scientists who documented massive mortality of corals and reef organisms meticulously studied one of the apparent causes: oxygen deficiency. A Smithsonian paleobiologist asks if the recent fossil record shows signs of similar hypoxia events.
Rapid increases in ocean acidity puts crustose coralline algae in a growth predicament, research by a Smithsonian marine scientist shows.
With multiple projects in both the Pacific and the Caribbean, the Collin Lab pieces together the complex life histories of marine invertebrates.
Isla Boná in the Gulf of Panama is an understudied breeding ground for thousands of tropical seabirds. Marine biologist Héctor Guzmán’s newest research program will contribute to understanding their ecology and the conservation of the island for birds and birders alike.
Coral reef fish often see a very different seascape that humans do. Using the evolutionary laboratory created by the Isthmus of Panama, Michele Pierotti is learning exactly how they view their underwater world.
