An Orchid Beetle Discovered
New beetles highlightorchid connection
June 13, 2014
In a remote Bolivian forest, a Smithsonian researcher discovers the first beetle species that live on orchids.
In a remote Bolivian forest, a Smithsonian researcher discovers the first beetle species that live on orchids.
After a half century of pioneering research on evolutionary developmental biology and induction into the National Academy of Sciences, a long-time Smithsonian scientist retires.
Some beetles have a rather inventive, if unsavory, way of fending off predators.
My colleagues and I are interested to understand the main factors that affect the maintenance of local arthropod biodiversity in tropical rainforests. Our research program has several components. We have studied insect-plant interactions, the host-specificity of...
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.
Mosquitoes in the genus Aedes, which can carry dangerous viruses causing yellow fever, chikungunya and Zika, invaded the crossroads of the Americas multiple times, by land and by sea.
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.
Designed to share a hands-on-science experience, the new, brightly-painted van will make it possible for kids and adults to participate in the excitement of the discovery process in cities and towns across Panama.