Smithsonian Voices

From the Smithsonian Museums

Elisabeth King

As Communications Manager at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, Elisabeth King bridges the gap between research scientists and diverse audiences. She writes about science, creates exhibitions and video scripts in English and Spanish, making STRI research available to all audiences from school kids to ambassadors.

Baby biodiversity in the ocean

'Python of the Sea' Study Highlights How Marine Biodiversity Can Be Dramatically Underestimated

Most ocean life remains to be discovered. Because fish and many other animals that live in the ocean often have larvae or other, microscopic life stages that drift freely in ocean water, counting species by genetic barcoding of plankton samples adds to counts of species recorded as adults and is a highly efficient way to understand what lives in the ocean and how biodiversity changes as we modify the ocean environment

El Coral beach fish trap in Saboga Island, Panama

See a New Interactive Map of Indigenous Fishing Practices Around the Pacific Rim

From the surface, the havoc caused on a coral reef by a layer of low-oxygen water was barely evident.

Watch What Happens When A Coral Reef Can't Get Enough Oxygen

From Refuge Cove in Alaska to San Francisco Bay to Baja California and at the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal, a team from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Temple University deployed panels to find out what limits marine invertebrate invasions. Here, Laura Jurgens and Carmen Schloeder, celebrate a successful deployment in Mexico (Laura Jurgens)

Invasion Dynamics

In her lab at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Annette Aiello usually rears caterpillars to find out which butterflies they become as adults, but in this case, she focused her attention on cicadas emerging from a houseplant on her porch in Arraijan, Panama. (J. Aleman/STRI)

A Smithsonian Researcher Caged and Reared Cicadas From Nymphs to Adulthood

Happy Earth Day 2021! Hillary Hughes, Panamanian actress, visits the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's Agua Salud Project during the filming of videos in Spanish and English to share hope for the success of tropical forest reforestation informed by the largest experiment of its kind in the tropics. (video still)

Watch These Two Videos and You Will Feel More Hopeful About the Future of Tropical Forests

The purple-flowered crown of Dipteryx oleifera, one of the biggest trees on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, towers above the forest. Big trees may be most exposed to the effects of climate change: more frequent and severe drought, and the high winds and lightning of monster storms. (Evan Gora)

How Will the Biggest Tropical Trees Respond to Climate Change?

Foster mother, BD, feeds her adopted vampire bat pup in a captive bat colony at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Gamboa, Panama (surveillance camera image from Gerry Carter lab)

Baby Vampire Bat Adopted by Mom's Best Friend

Fighting conch with lime as prepared in Bocas del Toro, Panama. (Felix Rodriguez, STRI)

The Genetics of Shrinking

When STRI staff scientist Annette Aiello first arrived in Panama to study butterflies in 1976, she lived and worked at the Smithsonian research station on Barro Colorado Island. Credit: STRI Archives.

Females in Flatland

Lucia Torrez and Grace Davis identify fruit that monkeys on Barro Colorado Island in Panama have been eating. Do primate leaders know where the best fruiting trees are to be found? Credit: Sean Mattson, STRI

Here's the Scoop on Monkey Leadership

Because her research group knows a bird's age based on its song, a tropical soap opera unfolds as ornithology graduate student Laura Gómez records interactions between antshrikes in Panama.

How to Tell a Bird's Age By Its Song

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Milton Garcia’s Bird’s-Eye-View

Sanchocho

Chicken Soup with Yams: where Old and New Worlds Meet

Latest

Bigger Is Better: Panama Expands MPA to Protect More Than 54 Percent of Its Oceans

Have Antillean Manatees Crossed the Panama Canal into the Pacific?

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