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Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Dr. Ruth Bennett holding Summer Tanager

Drink Coffee, Eat Chocolate, Save Birds!

A new initiative will make it easier for regional coffee and chocolate industries in Latin America to join the global movement to produce sustainable food.

boat in Panama's Montijo Bay

First global assessment of the sustainability of coral reef fisheries

An innovative mathematical analysis of global coral reef fisheries offers hope for sustainable management of multispecies and artisanal fishing, especially in the global South

Tree Frog

Barro Colorado Island, One Hundred Years of Science and Discoveries

Five Panamanian scientists share a glance at the experience of working in the tropical biologist’s dream, Barro Colorado Island

Four key actions

The Key to Ocean Conservation May Lie with the Tropical Majority

Researchers from the global tropics offer a different perspective on marine conservation, by shifting the focus to the people in the tropical regions

Map of Panama MPAs

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

This initiative, backed by data from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, aims to mitigate climate change, protect the country’s deep-sea marine-mountain environments, and safeguard wildlife from human intervention

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Have Antillean Manatees Crossed the Panama Canal into the Pacific?

Over half a century ago, a group of manatees from Panama's Caribbean region of Bocas del Toro was flown into the Panama Canal to control the abundance of aquatic plants in its water reservoir and prevent the proliferation of disease-transmitting mosquitoes. Where are they now?

Bat lands on a speaker to collect a baitfish reward

Does This Ring a Bell? Wild Bats Can Remember Sounds for Years

Researcher May Dixon discovered that frog-eating bats could recognize ringtones indicating a food reward up to four years later

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A Yellow Submarine Explores the Depths of the Panamanian Pacific

Six scientists from Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia and Ecuador spent two weeks exploring the recently expanded Cordillera de Coiba marine protected area, an unknown region to science. This is what they saw.

Ricardo Moreno on the field

Can Humans and Jaguars Coexist? A Wildlife Biologist Uses Technology and Education to Reduce Conflict

From tracking large felines across the continent to helping rural communities protect biodiversity, Panamanian biologist Ricardo Moreno turned his childhood dream into a mission

Escudo de Veraguas Island

An Indigenous Language Book Presents the Unique Biodiversity of a Panamanian Island

Botanist Alicia Ibañez hopes the book, which presents new data on the tiny island’s endemic flora and fauna in both Spanish and Ngäbere, will increase awareness of the importance of preserving its biodiversity

Acanthoctenus manauara female.

A Young Biologist Shares Her Love for Eight-Legged Creatures

Self-professed spider-fan and arachnid systematist Stephany Arizala would like more people to study this megadiverse group, so that we can do a better job of protecting them

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Smelly Ocelot Habitats May Scare Off Agoutis

These rodents seem less likely to snack in areas where ferocious felines have peed

Many terrestrial birds disappeared in Barro Colorado Island, in the Panama Canal, despite their abundance in adjacent mainland forests, because they could not cross Gatun Lake to maintain populations on the island. (Ghislain Rompre)

Biodiversity Loss Despite a Century of Protection

The Barro Colorado bird community has lost about a quarter of its species over time

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

In September, 2017, divers observed a massive 'dead zone' rising to envelop Caribbean coral reefs in Bocas del Toro, Panama. Smithsonian post-docs formed a team to understand why reef animals were fleeing, and the role of humans in the history of hypoxia.

The cloud forests in the Fortuna Hydrological Reserve are home to almost as many species as the entire United States.

Exploring the cloudiest forest in Central America

The Fortuna Hydrological Reserve hosts one third of Panama’s tree species, a variety of fungi waiting to be discovered and a great potential to offset global warming

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

Smithsonian marine biologists and colleagues at Temple University tested predictions about biological invasions, first in Panama and then in an experiment of unprecedented geographic scale.

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 Agua Salud Project's new bilingual videos share the results of tropical reforestation experiments at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

Clavelina puertosecensis, a species of tunicate, taken by Shih Wei, a student of the Tunicates course at the Bocas del Toro Research Station, in Panama. Experts teach courses and create instructional videos on how to collect, preserve and observe marine invertebrate groups. (Credit: STRI)

Like A Cooking Show With Worms: Smithsonian Videos Teach Tropical Taxonomy of Diverse Marine Creatures

A program at the Smithsonian’s Bocas del Toro Research Station, in Panama, allows marine invertebrate experts to pass down their very specific knowledge to aspiring taxonomists.

Bryophytes in the tropics are threatened due to lack of information and research. (Jorge Alemán, STRI)

Tiny Plants in a Big Changing World

Bryophytes are an important part of our environment, but in the tropics, there's still much to learn about them.

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

The Genetics of Shrinking

To find out if hunting and harvesting act as evolutionary forces that "shrink" animals, researchers isolated DNA from tropical shells for the first time

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