On the move!
Q?Bus begins its journey around Panama
May 08, 2025
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.
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.
Have you ever wondered how city life affects animals like frogs? A new study reveals that urban Túngara frog tadpoles develop faster —but end up being smaller — than tadpoles from forests, probably resulting in smaller adults. This might be an adaptation to warmer urban puddles with fewer predators or to constantly changing environmental conditions in the city.
When he’s not racing his bike cross-country, Milton Garcia is in demand for his expertise flying drones. In the last month, he monitored mangrove deforestation on Panama’s Pacific coast, mapped a new research station in Coiba National Park and tracked blooming trees on Barro Colorado Island, the first plot in an international network of forest monitoring sites.
Research projects in our lab combine approaches from behavioral ecology, functional morphology, ethology and evolution of behavior. Our work focuses mostly on the ultimate and proximate causes of behavior in an ecological and social context, with an emphasis on how ecological or social...