The move enhances coordination efforts for the 46-plot research network, which partners with more than 75 institutions in 21 countries. [...more]
The National Park Service and the Smithsonian Institution have announced a new partnership to share responsibility for selected National Park Service natural history collections, making them more readily available to researchers through the Smithsonian. [...more]
The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center has created NEMESIS--National Estuarine and Marine Exotic Species Information System--an online public database that provides key information about the non-native marine species throughout the United States. [...more]
Older forests with just the right fungi may be secret to saving these vulnerable plants. [...more]
People living along the coast of Peru were eating popcorn 2,000 years earlier than previously reported and before ceramic pottery was used there, according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [...more]
Lodgepole pine drawn in 1898 by U.S. National Herbarium illustrator Frederick Andrew Walpole. [...more]
When you’re caught under the mistletoe, the tradition is to kiss the person next to you. But this holiday season you may want to wow them first with some cool mistletoe facts from Smithsonian botanist Sylvia Orli. [...more]
Scientists from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center have found that fledgling catbirds living in the suburbs are extremely vulnerable. Almost 80 percent are killed by predators before they reach adulthood. Nearly half of the deaths are connected to domestic cats. The team studied catbird nests in 3 suburban neighborhoods in Maryland: Spring Park, Opal Daniels Park, and Bethesda. Learn more about this 2011 study by clicking here. (Catbird photo by Gerhard Hofmann)
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