Bee Diversity
The Natural History of Bees
April 30, 2025
Did you know that there are more than 20,500 species of bees, each with its own natural history?
Did you know that there are more than 20,500 species of bees, each with its own natural history?
The brightly colored, science-packed van is bringing the Smithsonian experience to students around the country. First stop: the province of Herrera in western Panama.
Butterflies of Pipeline Road is a concise and colorful field guide that brings together 120 of the most commonly observed butterflies from one of the most biodiverse trails in Panama: Pipeline Road.
Observations of Coiba’s tool-using immature capuchin monkeys show them carrying abducted infant howler monkeys. What is the reason for this behavior?
From deep time to real time
in western Caribbean ecosystems
Based on clues ranging from microscopic pollen samples to massive petrified trees and larger-than-life-sized turtle and crocodile fossils, my lab pieces together millions of years of evidence to reconstruct the deep-time history of tropical ecosystems. I help to build international networks of...
As Director Emeritus of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, a unit of the Smithsonian Institution headquartered in Panama City, Panama, I retired in June, 2020 from the job of managing more than 400 employees, an annual budget of $35 million, and the institute’s research facilities ...
I am broadly interested in the genetics of adaptation and speciation. How do new species form? How does adaptive variation arise and spread? How is morphological variation created through development and modified by natural selection? Is evolution predictable?
The focus of my lab’s...
Exploring the tropical peoples
and ecosystems of the past
Scientists first discovered the shiny sea critter in 2009. Genetic testing suggested it crossed the canal on more than one occasion.