The discovery of a new fossil turtle species in Colombia's Cerrejón coal mine by researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and the Florida Museum of Natural History helps to explain the origin of one of the most biodiverse groups of turtles in South America.

Lions, tigers and bears top the ecological pyramid -- the diagram of the food chain that every school child knows. A new study examines complex interactions in the middle of the pyramid, where birds, bats and lizards consume insects. These predators indirectly benefit plants, Smithsonian scientists report.

Who's in charge? Who's got food? The brain region responsible for learning and memory is bigger in social bee queens who may have to address these questions than in solitary queens, report scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute who study the tropical sweat bee species, Megalopta genalis, in Panama. Their study is the first comparison of the brain sizes of social and nonsocial individuals of the same species.

Rapid increases in tree growth in the US, slower tree growth in the tropics, new ideas about biodiversity, new methods for monitoring forest carbon stocks: Researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Earthwatch met in Panama from Mar. 1-5 to present mid-term research results from the HSBC Climate Partnership.

Danish researchers who have studied ants at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama since 1992 discovered that in both ant and bee species in which queens have multiple mates, a male's seminal fluid favors the survival of its own sperm over the other males' sperm. However, once sperm has been stored, leafcutter ant queens neutralize male-male sperm competition with glandular secretions in their sperm-storage organ.

Failure to detect disease vectors may result in increased disease risk. The first systematic study in the Amazon of surveillance techniques for the bugs that transmit Chagas disease takes into account the fact that sticky traps and manual searches often miss bugs living in palm trees.

A new, online identification guide to the Marine Plants of Pacific Panama includes reports of new macroalgae for Panama and the Eastern Pacific.

Plants and people alike face critical choices as they reproduce: to make a few big, well-provisioned seeds -- or babies -- or many small, poorly-provisioned ones. Different species make strikingly different choices, resulting in a great diversity of life forms: Darwin's "endless forms most beautiful.

Figs and the wasps that pollinate them present one of biologists' favorite examples of a beneficial relationship between two different species. In exchange for the pollination service provided by the wasp, the fig fruit provides room and board for the wasp's developing young. However, wasps do not always pollinate the fig. Fig trees "punish" these "cheaters" by dropping unpollinated fruit, killing the wasp's offspring inside, report researchers working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.