Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

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

STRI butterfly researcher, Annette Aiello’s remarkable calendar (1976-present) is an accurate catalog of natural history events in Panama.

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

What makes a great leader? Grace Davis and Lucia Torrez lead a team working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute to understand leadership in capuchin and spider monkeys.

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

On Pipeline Road in Panama’s Soberania National Park, birdwatchers on high-end tours rack up two hundred bird species in a day and move on. But Corey Tarwater and Patrick Kelley have made it their life’s work to understand the daily melodramas of black-crowned antshrikes, first as students and now as faculty at the University of Wyoming. Meanwhile, their own family has grown to include not only 2 children, but a whole tribe of intellectual offspring.

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