Picture this: What to do at a party when you try to carry on a conversation, but the music is too loud? A Panamanian doctoral student is trying to figure out how dolphins communicate underwater during heavy boat traffic in the Bocas del Toro Archipelago.
At the Smithsonian’s Bocas del Toro Research Station, in Panama, marine biologist Rachel Collin runs an educational program that recruits international experts to teach and create videos about how to collect, preserve and observe marine invertebrates, passing down their very specific knowledge to aspiring taxonomists.
As oceans warm and become more acidic and oxygen-poor, Smithsonian researchers asked how marine life on a Caribbean coral reef copes with changing conditions.
It always pays to think outside of the box. Rachel Collin decided to look further afield to find the adult form that matched a larvae from a plankton sample in Panama and was surprised by the result.
The novel ribbon worm was found as part of STRI’s Training in Tropical Taxonomy program and represents the first species of its genus from the Caribbean
Only about 1% of marine plastic debris is recovered at the ocean’s surface, meaning the other 99% likely either sinks or is consumed by marine organisms
