Panama’s Plentiful Plants
An invitation from Mireya Correa
Agosto 23, 2013
The director of Panama’s herbaria invite visiting researchers to use these valuable resources of Panama’s astounding plant biodiversity.
The director of Panama’s herbaria invite visiting researchers to use these valuable resources of Panama’s astounding plant biodiversity.
It is much faster to learn to recognize a new prey item from a neighboring species, than to learn by trial and error.
What slows or stops a disease epidemic if the pathogen is still present? It appears that wild frogs are becoming increasingly resistant to the chytrid fungal disease that has decimated amphibian populations around the world.
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.
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.
STRI is hosting Dr. Anna Mežaka, originally from Latvia and currently employed at the University of Marburg (UMR), Germany, who is doing a project called “Life on a leaf: species interactions and community dynamics in epiphyll communities” funded by a Marie Skłodowska - Curie Global Fellowship from the European Union.
From tiny banana seeds to giant coconuts, it’s tough for seeds to survive in tropical soils where they are under attack by fungi, bacteria, insects and animals. By understanding how seeds defend themselves, tropical biologists contribute to reforestation, crop management and sustainable agriculture in the tropics.
Not only does it take energy to make weapons, it may take even more energy to maintain them. Because leaf-footed bugs drop their legs, it is possible to measure how much energy they allocate to maintaining this appendage that males use to fight other males.
For these four women, the Smithsonian Institute’s internship program represented an opportunity to explore their research questions in the field
The back and forth relationship between insects and their food plants may drive tropical biodiversity evolution according to work on Barro Colorado Island’s 50 hectare plot.