Meet Rachel Collin, a staff scientist and director of the Bocas Research Station at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Rachel studies the evolution of marine gastropods (snails) and oversees multiple disciplines of marine biology at the Collin Lab in Bocas del Toro. [...more]
Adding wings to a robotic bug helped it run faster and better, but was it enough to achieve takeoff? [...more]
History and geology, not current ecology, are likely what has made tropical forests so variable from site to site. [...more]
Depending on where the fish disperse from, the use of ‘stepping stones', flotsam or simply being an adult can help in the journey to find a new home. [...more]
University of Florida and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute scientists describe a new 20-foot extinct species of crocodile discovered in the same Colombian coal mine with Titanoboa, the world’s largest snake. [...more]
Just as people use airplanes to fly overseas, marine snails may use birds to fly over land,” said Mark Torchin, staff scientist at the Smithsonian. [...more]
Meg studies intergroup competition in white‐faced capuchin monkeys by tracking them through radio telemetry collars and observing their behaviors. [...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]
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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