The Rariphotic
Smithsonian Researchers Name New Ocean Zone
March 20, 2018
New ocean zone is home to many new species of reef fish
New ocean zone is home to many new species of reef fish
To mark the beginning of an era in marine research in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, Smithsonian scientists launched numerous long-term marine ecosystem studies in Panama’s Coiba National Park.
Perhaps old species, like some older people, gradually lose their ability to deal with changes in their environment. Aaron O’Dea and colleagues show that when the Caribbean was cut off from the Pacific by the rise of the Panama land bridge, evolutionarily old species took longer to expand into new habitats than evolutionarily younger species did.
Scientists named new blood-red species of octocoral in honor of philanthropist Ray Dalio.
Join us to celebrate a few of the discoveries made in 2018.
Why did some bee species become social, while the majority have remained solitary? On Barro Colorado Island, a bee that adopts both strategies interchangeably, may unlock the evolutionary origins of sociality in insects
Fever may be less effective at repelling infections in cold-blooded creatures
A trip to Jicarón Island during the Coiba Bioblitz led to a published bird checklist.
Between 1944 and 1966, Dr. Alexander Wetmore, a legendary ornithologist and Sixth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, investigated the avifauna of the Isthmus of Panama. This became the basis of his four-volume ‘The Birds of the Republic of Panama’. In this webinar, STRI anthropologist Dr. Stanley Heckadon-Moreno takes us for a historical and photographic journey across Dr. Wetmore’s expeditions in Panama, with the support of Dr. Pamela Henson, director of Institutional History at the Smithsonian Institution Archives.
As the Earth’s surface transforms, entire ecosystems come and go. The anatomy of fossil plants growing in the Andean Altiplano region 10 million years ago calls current paleoclimate models into question, suggesting that the area was more humid than models predict.