In a laboratory at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md., scientist João Canning Clode and colleagues tested the cold-water tolerances of a number of invasive green porcelain crabs. [...more]
Studies at two remote Smithsonian Institution Global Earth Observatory sites in Panama and Thailand show the first evidence of long-term effects of nitrogen pollution in tropical trees. [...more]
Meet the Smithsonian's Matthew Carrano, curator of Dinosauria at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Matthew studies all things dinosaur, but focuses on the evolutionary history of predatory (meat eating) dinosaurs. [...more]
A new study on the dodo’s island home of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, paints a picture of this unusual bird as an intrepid survivor on par with the giant tortoise for its resiliency. [...more]
History and geology, not current ecology, are likely what has made tropical forests so variable from site to site. [...more]
A new study shows that as climate change enhances tree growth in tropical forests, the resulting increase in litterfall could stimulate soil micro-organisms leading to a release of stored soil carbon. [...more]
Ecologists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center measure the growth rate of sedge grass in a brackish Chesapeake Bay marsh. Fed a diet rich in CO2 and nitrogen, conditions that mimic the rise of atmospheric CO2 and pollution from farming and wastewater, the sedge has been grown and monitored in test chambers by Smithsonian scientist [...] [...more]
Now, a new study of hellbenders by scientists at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute will place these amphibians at the center of the conservation of Appalachian salamanders. [...more]
This fossil represents a new genus and species of extinct aneuretopsychid, Jeholopsyche liaoningensis, recently described in a paper in the journal ZooKeys by Conrad Labandeira of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and Dong Ren and ChungKun Shih of the College of Life Sciences, Capital Normal University, Beijing. The aneuretopsychidae are a family of long-proboscid insects that lived in Asia from the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous. The paper documents the first formal record of fossil Aneuretopsychidae in China. The new fossils reveal previously unknown and detailed structure of the mouthparts, antennae, head, thorax, legs and abdomen of this distinctive insect lineage.
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