Exploring the unwanted
The positive side of fouling communities
September 26, 2019
Encrusting organisms may be disliked by most people, but they’re helping explore marine conservation and biodiversity concerns
Encrusting organisms may be disliked by most people, but they’re helping explore marine conservation and biodiversity concerns
Different socio-economic conditions and lack of clean water may change the dynamics of COVID-19 transmission in Latin America and the Caribbean.
A study in Science by 225 researchers working with data from 590 forest sites around the world concludes that tropical forests release much more carbon into the atmosphere at high temperatures.
Join Jose Loaiza, STRI Research Associate and Senior Scientist at Panama’s INDICASAT-AIP, for the latest information about the role of disease transmission by mosquitos in Panama.
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.
Male Fringe-Lipped bats smear a sticky, odorous substance on their forearms. When this was discovered, researchers guessed that it might play a role in mating. Post-doctoral fellow Mariana Muñoz-Romo has confirmed that the presence and size of the forearm "crust" is, indeed correlated with other reproductive traits.
Helene Muller-Landau, staff scientist, was invited to write an authoritative review about carbon storage in forests. Her team combed through existing studies and came up with some novel conclusions of their own.
Lightning is common in the tropics, but its ecological effects in tropical forests are poorly understood. Steve Yanoviak, STRI research associate and professor at the University of Louisville, will summarize the basic physics of lightning, how we study lightning in Panama and the importance of lightning as an agent of tropical tree mortality.
Scientists think that climate change may have greater impact the largest trees in tropical forests, and the death of these giants has a major impact on the forest, but because these monumental trees are few and far between, almost nothing is known about what causes them to die.
An entrepreneur who dreamed of becoming an oceanographer teams up with STRI researchers and young Latin American biologists to find out if some coral reefs are more resilient than others. His yacht will be the center of operations as they deploy high tech sensor arrays at sites around the tropical eastern Pacific.