President’s Prize
For the Love of Forests
July 25, 2019
Kristina Anderson-Teixeira receives the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for her work on the effects of climate change on the worlds’ forests.
Kristina Anderson-Teixeira receives the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for her work on the effects of climate change on the worlds’ forests.
Through a participatory forest-carbon monitoring project, scientists and indigenous technicians found that, even in disturbed areas, Darien forests maintained the same tree species richness and a disproportionately high capacity to sequester carbon
As Panama City celebrates it’s 500th birthday, STRI’s Steven Paton explores the biodiversity of Panama Viejo, an important historical and archaeological site
Unrelated butterflies may have the same wing patterns. These patterns warn off predators and help suitors find the right mate. But if wing patterns in each species evolved the same way, knocking out an important gene should have the same effect in both. Carolina Concha and her team discovered that knocking out the WntA gene results in different effects in co-mimics, so the two species evolved the same pattern via different pathways.
After years of catching jaguars only in camera-trap images, Ricardo Moreno, STRI research associate and National Geographic Emerging Explorer, and a team of 20 biologists and community members were able to catch a jaguar and fit it with a transmitter that will help researchers conserve these majestic cats in the wild.
The discerning eye of staff scientist, Annette Aiello, observed the fearless behavior of an iridescent insect resembling a bird dropping containing embedded, blue seeds.
Fossil corals show what reefs were like before human impact and reveal a modern “bright spot” reef with apparent long-term resilience to deterioration caused by humans.
Researchers learned from some unusual sweat bee species on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, how the sophisticated division of labor in highly complex insect societies can arise from humble beginnings.
STRI staff scientist and evolutionary biologist Bill Wcislo discusses the foibles of social bees and farming ants and the evolution of their behavior in changing environments. In a time of crisis, what can we learn from these insects about their highly efficient public health care systems?
Manatees are endangered aquatic mammals. To help protect them, researchers Héctor Guzmán from STRI, Fernando Merchán, Héctor Poveda and Javier Sánchez-Galán from the Technological University of Panama (UTP), and Guillaume Ferré from ENSEIRB-MATMECA, developed a monitoring system based on hydrophones, which detects in real-time the underwater calls these animals make to communicate with each other.