Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute community ecologist Sunshine Van Bael primarily examines the relationship between leaf cutter ants–the world’s first farmers–and the fungi that they cultivate.

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Office of Public Affairs videographers Johnny Gibbons and Brian Ireley recently headed down to the Punta Culebra Nature Center on the edge of Panama City […]

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Subjects watched demonstrators for varying amounts of time. When given the pipe, each of the subjects in both groups opened the door on their first attempt using the method they had seen demonstrated.

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A recent experiment by scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama has revealed just how rising atmospheric carbon dioxide will deliver a one-two […]

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The tiger reserves of Asia could support more than 10,000 wild tigers – three times the current number – if they are managed as large-scale […]

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In a new paper, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astronomer Hagai Perets studies the role of binary planetesimals--clumps that orbit each other and jointly mature via three basic processes.

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Bats living in the dense urban area of Panama City, the scientists learned, represent just a small fraction of the roughly 25 species of high-flying insectivorous bats found in Panama’s rainforests.

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The male’s fluke design helps it overcome the drag caused by their long tusks, the scientists determined. The female’s fluke design gives them increased speed for diving while foraging.

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A. sediba was discovered in 2008 in the Malapa Cave at the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site located outside Johannesburg.

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The awarded film features STRI marine biologist Héctor M. Guzman diving with a group of five whale sharks while traveling in the Tropical Eastern Pacific. In the video, Guzmán tags a radiotransmitter to one of the sharks in order to follow its voyages.

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Astronomers are piecing together the reasons for these huge energy outputs, while sorting out why our own galaxy is so modest. The two primary suspects are bursts of star formation that produce many hot young stars, and processes associated with accretion of material onto a supermassive black hole at a galaxy's nucleus.

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They found that the molars of fruit-eating species had sharp outer edges that likely allow them to pierce tough fruit skin and pulp... By contrast, the molars of insect-eating species were less complex, possibly because of their smoother shearing surfaces.

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Recent work has added dozens of new measurements to star-forming regions in the Milky Way. These measurements have changed the map of the Milky Way, indicating our galaxy has four spiral arms, not two, as previously thought.

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Smithsonian WILD! a new Web site from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute designed to showcase the use of motion-triggered 'camera traps' by Smithsonian researchers, has been launched at the Web address siwild.si.edu.

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Evidence for a diversified sea-based economy among North American inhabitants dating from 12,200 to 11,400 years ago is emerging from three sites on California's Channel Islands.

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For more than three decades JoGayle Howard dedicated her life and work to reproducing endangered species.

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Smithsonian scientists report fledgling catbirds in suburban habitats are at their most vulnerable stage of life, with almost 80 percent killed by predators before they reach adulthood. Almost half of the deaths were connected to domestic cats.

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In recent research on Santa Rosa Island off the coast of Southern California, isotope readings of carbon and nitrogen found in the bones of Chumash Indians and domestic dogs excavated from archaeological sites show that both humans and dogs have nearly identical signatures of stable isotopes.

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Meet Sahelanthropus tchadensis. This newly unveiled bust by artist John Gurche is now on view in the the Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

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The discovery of a pattern of X-ray “stripes” in the remains of an exploded star may provide the first direct evidence that a cosmic event […]

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On the heels of spring’s arrival, a wattled crane (Bugeranus carunculatus) chick hatched at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo March 20, the third of its kind […]

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“Our results support the idea that environmental conditions on tropical non-breeding areas can influence the departure time for spring migration,” said Colin Studds, a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute's Migratory Bird Center and lead author of the study.

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Looking at more than 200 skulls dating to 20th and 16th century Spain, as well as approximately 50 skulls from 20th century Portugal, the researchers found that craniofacial differences between contemporary men and women are less pronounced than they were in the 16th century.

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If intelligent and more advanced civilizations exist on other planets then its a good bet that some of these civilizations turned to asteroid mining long ago. If so, the hallmarks of their mining activities, such as unusual dirty halos of cast-off dust and debris around large asteroids, might be detectable from earth.

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The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has been selected by the National Science Foundation as the recipient of a 12-meter (39-foot) radio antenna designed for submillimeter-wavelength astronomy. The ALMA Vertex Prototype Antenna was one of three antennas built as prototypes for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, a 66-dish radio observatory currently being constructed in Chile.

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Discovery, the longest-serving orbiter in the space shuttle fleet, will be accepted into the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum collection. The space shuttle has been the icon for American spaceflight for a generation, and Discovery has flown every type of mission during its 27-year career.

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A remarkable 5,000-year-old deposit of bones representing an entire herd of Persian gazelles recently discovered in northeastern Syria is firm evidence, scientists say, of an ancient hunting practice largely responsible for the near extinction of gazelles in this region today.

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The expanded and remodeled Mathias Laboratory, named in honor of U.S. Senator Charles "Mac" Mathias Jr. (1922-2010) (R-Md.) will have a low environmental impact on all fronts, from where it gets its power to where it gets its materials.

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The new research reveals that from the period between 1100-1600 small agricultural settlements up and down the Delaware River Valley caused a 50-percent increase in sediment runoff into the Delaware River.

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The predictability and scale of seasonal changes in a habitat help determine the distance migratory species move and whether the animals always travel together to the same place or independently to different locations.

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A study published in the journal Global Change Biology finds that while fertilizer has been the dominant source of nitrogen pollution in Caribbean coastal ecosystems for the past 50 years, such pollution is on the decline, thanks in part to the introduction of more advanced, environmentally responsible agricultural practices during the last decade.

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Scientists at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo detected a secondary rise in urinary progesterone levels in the Zoo’s female giant panda Mei Xiang (may-SHONG). This hormone rise indicates that it should be 40 to 50 days before Mei Xiang either gives birth to a cub or comes to the end of a pseudopregnancy, or false pregnancy, which is common in giant pandas.

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The most widely used methods for calculating species extinction rates are "fundamentally flawed" and overestimate extinction rates by as much as 160 percent, life scientists report May 19 in the journal Nature.

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Researchers at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and partnering organizations will build a frozen repository of Great Barrier Reef coral sperm and embryonic cells. Genetic banks composed of frozen biomaterials hold strong promise for basic and applied research and conservation of species and genetic variation.

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By compiling and comparing long-term data from stranding records and visual sighting records, both taken from nearly every ocean basin in the world, Pyenson verified that stranding records “faithfully reflect the number of species and the relative abundance” found in live surveys.

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Collecting trips for Charles Doolittle Walcott (1850-1927), paleontologist and fourth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, were often a family affair. This 1910 photograph shows their […]

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Today, Wednesday, May 25, astronomers unveiled the most complete 3-D map of the local universe (out to a distance of 380 million light-years) ever created. Taking more than 10 years to complete, the 2MASS Redshift Survey (2MRS) also is notable for extending closer to the Galactic plane than previous surveys – a region that’s generally obscured by dust.

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This new research, which involved both surface and aerial surveys, has revealed an enormous aggregation of whale sharks—the largest ever reported—with up to 420 individuals off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.

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Five billion years from now, our Milky Way galaxy will collide with the Andromeda galaxy. This will mark a moment of both destruction and creation. The galaxies will lose their separate identities as they merge into one. At the same time, cosmic clouds of gas and dust will smash together, triggering the birth of new stars.

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The National Zoo’s great cat program recently expanded with the arrival of two-and-a-half-year-old female Sumatran tiger, Damai, who is now out of quarantine and spending time outside in her exhibit where visitors can see her.

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A local supernova factory has recently started production, according to a wealth of new data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory on the Carina Nebula.

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The National Zoo has received a breeding pair of Asian small-clawed otters at Asia Trail for the first time. Mac, a three-year-old male from the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, Wash., and Smidge, a five-year-old female from the Columbus Zoo in Ohio, arrived in April and are now in their exhibit.

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Any adventurer, hiker or backyard naturalist with a camera can help scientists survey and hopefully save the world’s amphibians thanks to a new social networking site that links “citizen scientists” with researchers tracking the decline of amphibians around the globe.

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One of the most challenging aspects of this research is simply studying these insects as they are falling, says Yanoviak, a tropical arthropod ecologist at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Small body size, rapid descent, and the long distances that they can fall, make accurate data taking a challenge.

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A description and photos of the green-headed tanager (Tangara seledon), a bird native to east-central South America, can be found in the Species of the […]

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Smithsonian scientists have confirmed that chytridiomycosis, a rapidly spreading amphibian disease, has reached a site near Panama’s Darien region. This was the last area in the entire mountainous neotropics to be free of the disease. This is troubling news for the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project, a consortium of nine U.S. and Panamanian institutions that aims to rescue 20 species of frogs in imminent danger of extinction.

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Astronomers have probed into the distant universe and discovered that galaxies display one of two distinct behaviors: they are either awake or asleep, actively forming stars or are not forming any new stars at all.

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Some--birds called wire-tailed manakins, residents of tropical forests in the Americas--are cooperators as well as competitors. They cooperate, forming alliances for a common cause.

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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.

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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 […]

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