The pandemic surprised Panamanian botanist Zarluis Mijango Ramos while he was collecting data in the Fortuna hydrological reserve as part of his master's thesis in plant biology at the University of Illinois. With the shutdown of national reserves and the closing of STRI in March, he only managed to collect half of the information he needed.

"I am looking at how monodominant forests affect the diversity and abundance of the other species that occur in it."

These are forests where a single species accounts for more than 60% of the number of trees. To fill this gap, he is using additional data from another scientist.

And while he's aching to be around plants again, Zarluis is applying to doctoral programs and hoping to eventually return to Panama, to continue doing research in tropical forests.

Photo credit: Keri Alexandra Greig.

When the pandemic started, Charlotte was in the middle of gathering data in Boná island about seabird exposure to organic contaminants in their diets. She first became fascinated by the diversity of tropical birds in 2018, as a STRI intern. This led her to return as a master’s student in the STRI-MCGill Neotropical Environment program, to collect data on the island and analyze it alongside chemists from the Technological University of Panama.

"I really love those birds, and one of the biggest threats they face is contaminant exposure."

However, she had to take off in one of the last flights out of Panama when the pandemic started. She also had to adapt her thesis, when she realized that returning to Bona island was not possible in the short-term. She continues to explore connections around exposure to contaminants in seabirds, but with data from other parts of the world.

Photo credit: Charlotte Steeves

Claire planned to spend her summer in Panama, studying the effects of climate change on lizard gut bacteria. As a biochemistry student, she had learned about how gut microbes can modulate emotions, metabolism and the immune system, and began wondering about how they would interact with environmental change.

“If the microbiome changes it can affect host fitness and survival, and because lizards can’t regulate their own body temperature it’s particularly important.”

She had invested the previous summer in Panama, as the microbiologist on a lizard-climate change project led by Tupper fellow Michael Logan. But 2019 was a very dry year, and the lizard microbiome results looked unusual. In 2020, Claire expected to gather more samples and compare them to 2019. However, she never made it to Panama. Her funding was put on hold for a year, so she hopes to return in 2021.

Photo credit: David Curlis

Betzi planned to spend the last year of her doctorate at McGill in Montreal, writing her thesis on the impact of tourism and boat traffic on the bottlenose dolphins of the Bocas del Toro archipelago in Panama. She also had an upcoming internship in Alaska, where she would analyze the stress hormones levels in some dolphin samples. With the pandemic, however, she was unable to travel to Montreal or send her samples to Alaska.

Without these analyses, comparing the stress levels among dolphins that are exposed to heavy boat traffic with those that aren’t, she’ll have to adapt her dissertation. Her plan B would be to return to Bocas del Toro to obtain additional information regarding the effect of boat noise on dolphin behavior. Here is the silver lining:

"The quarantine has given us a unique opportunity to record with a reduced number of boats circulating in the archipelago."

Photo credit: Chelina Batista

Estefany Caroline had spent two summers in Panama studying Neotropical frogs. She was curious about their temperature tolerance, particularly in embryos.

"I wanted to know if the frog embryos could escape from their eggs when heated. Being able to determine the temperature limits that can lead species to change their behavior under climate change scenarios is very important."

A preliminary experiment in the lab showed that they could escape. In 2020, as a first-year doctoral student, she expected to repeat the experiment under natural conditions. However, the pandemic changed her plans and she spent those months writing a chapter for her thesis. She hopes to return to Panama next year.

"During this time, we all had to stop for a bit to recap. I had completely different plans for this year, but sometimes we have to flow with what comes up along the way."

Photo credit: Karen Warkentin

Benjamin’s research in Panama has been disrupted by extraordinary circumstances for two consecutive years. Last year, the United States government shutdown prevented him from travelling. This year, it was cut short because of the pandemic.

He wants to understand how predators affect marine invertebrate communities across the reef, mangrove and seagrass habitats in the Panamanian Caribbean, and whether this effect varies among younger and older communities.

He had to leave Panama before he was able to observe any predation, but he gathered some useful data.

"I was able to start making a species list of the organisms I found at the site. It will help inform me the next time that I try this."

Benjamin has some funding to return in January, when he would have to re-start the experiment. If he can’t return, he would have to find a plan B for the last chapter of his dissertation.

Photo credit: Carmen Schloeder

Monica was in the last stretch of her three-year Tupper postdoctoral fellowship at STRI when the pandemic started. As a paleobotanist, she explores how climate change affected tropical forests during a global warming event 56 million years ago.

Her most recent experiment involved subjecting plants to the high temperature and carbon dioxide levels from that period, using plant families that have existed in the tropics since then.

Right before STRI closed its doors, she collected her samples quickly and froze them for later. She is home in Colombia now, hoping to return to the laboratory soon. In her analyses, she’ll explore whether there are any observable anatomical changes between the current and ancient environmental conditions, and if they can be detected in fossils.

"I intend to continue studying ancient living plants in parallel with fossils, because there is no way to understand the fossil if we do not understand the living."

Photo credit: Sebastián Gómez