The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, the only bureau of the Smithsonian Institution based outside of the United States, is dedicated to understanding biological diversity. What began in 1923 as a small field station on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal Zone has developed into one of the world's leading research institutions. STRI’s facilities provide a unique opportunity for long-term ecological studies in the tropics, and are used extensively by some 600 visiting scientists from academic and research institutions in the United States and around the world every year. The work of resident scientists has allowed STRI to better understand tropical habitats and has trained hundreds of tropical biologists.
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A tiny shark tooth, part of a mantis shrimp and other microscopic marine organisms reveal that as the Andes rose, the Eastern Amazon sank twice, each time for less than a million years. Water from the Caribbean flooded the ...
Earth Sciences
May 3, 2017
10
1575
On an expedition to the Central Andean Plateau, researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and colleagues were astounded to find a huge fossil-tree buried in the cold, grassy plain. The plant fossil ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 28, 2020
68
858
Pac-Man, the open-mouthed face of the most successful arcade game ever, is much more well-known than any of the one-celled organisms called protists, at least among people over 30. But the first study to characterize protists ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 25, 2020
1
188
Long ago, one great ocean flowed between North and South America. When the narrow Isthmus of Panama joined the continents about 3 million years ago, it also separated the Atlantic from the Pacific Ocean. If this took place ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 17, 2016
0
672
While examining a skull from an ancient burial ground in a pre-Columbian village in Panama, Nicole Smith-Guzmán, bioarchaeologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), was surprised to discover an example ...
Archaeology
Dec 21, 2018
0
309
Female vampire bats form strong social bonds with their mothers and daughters as they groom and share regurgitated meals of blood. They also form friendships with less closely related bats. Gerry Carter, post-doctoral fellow ...
Plants & Animals
May 23, 2017
0
1863
In the arms race between predators and prey, each evolves more and more sophisticated ways of catching or escaping from the other. Rachel Page, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Ximena Bernal, ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 25, 2019
0
259
One afternoon, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in Panama, a bored teenager with a slingshot and a clay ball accidentally shot entry and exit holes in a Cecropia tree trunk. These are "ant-plant" trees, which ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 3, 2022
1
2194
A group of South American ants has farmed fungi since shortly after the dinosaurs died out, according to an international research team including Smithsonian scientists. The genes of the ant farmers and their fungal crops ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 20, 2016
0
815
A unique housing arrangement between a specific group of tree species and a carbo-loading bacteria may determine how well tropical forests can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to a Princeton University-based ...
Environment
Sep 15, 2013
0
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