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Online Access to the Plants of the World Is Available

By Guest PostJanuary 12, 2011Nature, Scienceafrican plants, biodiversity, digital scanner, ecologist, eldredge bermingham, Europe, flowers, global plants initiative, green tendrils, helene muller landau, herbaria, herbarium sheets, jstor, jungle, latin american, mireya correa, North America, online database, plants, pollen grains, university of panama

*The Global Plants Initiative Meets at the Smithsonian in Panama Jan. 11-13*

For centuries, jungle explorers from Europe and North America have created art of the plants they discover—pressing bright flowers and green tendrils onto herbarium sheets for prestigious museums and plant collections. But scientists in the most biodiverse countries lack easy access to this basic information needed to identify plants. The Global Plants Initiative, meeting Jan. 11-13 at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, catapults biodiversity research to a new level, sharing plant collections in a massive online database of high-resolution scans. (more…)

Tropical Forest Diversity Increased During Ancient Global Warming Event

By Guest PostNovember 18, 20101 commentEnvironment, Nature, Scienceangiosperm pollen, atmospheric carbon dioxide, carlos jaramillo, century, Colombia, eldredge bermingham, global warming, joe wright, outcrops, paleocene-eocene thermal maximum, panama, rainforests, scanning electron microscopy image, taxa, temperature increase, tropical areas, Venezuela

The steamiest places on the planet are getting warmer. Conservative estimates suggest that tropical areas can expect temperature increases of 3 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. Does global warming spell doom for rainforests? Maybe not. Carlos Jaramillo, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and colleagues report in the journal Science that nearly 60 million years ago rainforests prospered at temperatures that were 3-5 degrees higher and at atmospheric carbon dioxide levels 2.5 times today’s levels.

About the image: This is a scanning electron microscopy image of characteristic angiosperm pollen taxa from the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Image credit: Francy Carvajal, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (more…)

Smithsonian and Arizona State University Launch Virtual Classroom

By Guest PostSeptember 1, 20101 commentNature, Sciencearizona state university, asu – stri collaboration, eldredge bermingham, jüerge gadau, north american university, ofer shapiro, panama, robert e page jr, smithsonian scientists, smithsonian tropical research institute, tropical biology, vidyo, vidyo technology

This fall, Smithsonian scientists in Panama and Arizona State University life-sciences students and researchers will talk by means of Vidyo—video-conferencing technology that transports virtual learning into the field.

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Frog Killer Caught in the Act: Measuring Life’s Data Loss in Panama by Barcoding

By Guest PostJuly 20, 2010Nature1980, amphibian, andes in colombia, andrew crawford, barcoding, batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, central america, cerro piña, chytridiomycosis, costa rica, cryptic, DNA, el cope, eldredge bermingham, fungal disease, fungal pathogen, golden frogs, hemiphractus fasciatus, karen lips, library of alexandria, panama, panamanian marsupial frog, pristimantis adnus, smithsonian tropical research institute

The first before-and-after view of an amphibian die-off has just been published by scientists working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

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Tag Archives: eldredge bermingham

Online Access to the Plants of the World Is Available

Tropical Forest Diversity Increased During Ancient Global Warming Event

Smithsonian and Arizona State University Launch Virtual Classroom

Frog Killer Caught in the Act: Measuring Life’s Data Loss in Panama by Barcoding