On Aug. 10, 1846, U.S. President James K. Polk signed the legislation that established the Smithsonian Institution as a trust administered by a Board of Regents and a Secretary of the Smithsonian. Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian (1846-1878), strove to develop the Smithsonian into the nation’s first major research institute for science. [...] [...more]
In a new paper appearing this week in Science, a group of biologists have shown that females themselves can also limit the evolution of increased elaboration. [...more]
Several research teams that include Smithsonian scientists in Panama, have discovered that Heliconius butterflies mimic each other's red wing patterns through changes in the same gene. [...more]
A new study has revealed information about the way tungara frogs in the tropical rain forest hear, sort, and process sounds which is very similar to the way humans do. The knowledge could be applicable to communication disorders associated with hearing loss and attention deficits or difficulties. [...more]
Nutmeg-loving toucans wearing GPS transmitters recently helped a team of scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama address an age-old problem in plant ecology: accurately estimating seed dispersal. [...more]
A scientist from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute uses a pick to dislodge the fossil skull of an extinct toothed whale from sediments on the Panamanian Coast near the town of Piña. Researchers from STRI and the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History encased the skull in a plaster cast to protect it before removal. The [...] [...more]
Bird species in rainforest fragments in Brazil that were isolated by deforestation first disappeared and then reappeared during the next quarter-century. [...more]
A new genetic study by a team of Cuban and American researchers confirms that American crocodiles are hybridizing with wild populations of critically endangered Cuban crocodiles, which may cause a population decline of this species found only in the Cuban Archipelago. [...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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