Was the isolation of island living to blame for draining the nene gene pool to a puddle, or was it the 20th century population decline? How did they survive and recover when many other species of Hawaiian birds disappeared? Research reported in today’s Science suggests that a boom in the human population between 900 and 350 years ago may concurrently have affected the population size of the nene, and consequently diminished the species’ genetic variation.

A team of researchers led by William F. Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute found that the effect of habitat fragmentation on the structure, composition and function of rainforests is far-reaching and widely felt. It increases local extinction rates for many plant and animal species; drastically alters species richness and abundance; and disrupts ecological processes, as well as creating opportunities for non-native species invasions, altering forest carbon storage and increasing vulnerability to fire.

Cryptic stowaways in fouling communities or ballast water of seagoing ships may look exactly like local marine animals. But a comparison of brittlestars reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society suggests that human-aided dispersal gradually blurs important genetic distinctions between once-isolated groups.

The long-held belief that more than ten percent of tropical insect species feed on a specific plant host is revised by a team reporting their findings from six years of research in Papua New Guinea in the April 25, 2002 edition of the journal Nature. Previous estimates of global biodiversity may be as much as ten times too high because closely related plants tend to share insect herbivores.

A new book features results from one of the longest ongoing studies of forest fragmentation in the Amazon, the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments project, a joint effort of Brazil's National Institute for Research in Amazonia and the U.S. Smithsonian Institution.

Amazonia represents the quintessence of biodiversity – the richest ecosystem on earth. Yet a study by Smithsonian scientists, published this week in the journal Science, shows that differences in species composition of tropical forests are greater over distance in Panama than in Amazonia. The finding also challenges recent models proposed to explain forest species composition. Researchers compared data from tropical forests in Panama, Ecuador and Peru, observing similarities of species composition in the western Amazon.

Representatives from the World Wildlife Fund-US, the Mesoamerican and Caribbean Herbarium Network, the Panamanian National Authority for the Environment,the Mesoamerican Biological Corredor and the National Museum of Costa Rica gathered at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Insititute in Panama City, Panama, to present a new summary of gaps in our knowledge of Central American flora: "Identificación de vacíos de información botánica en Centroamérica."

U.S. and Brazilian scientists led by William Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute find that deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon have accelerated over the last decade. Analyzing deforestation estimates based on satellite images of the Amazon since 1978, the team reports that – contrary to Brazilian government claims that threats to Amazonian forests have fallen in recent years because of improved environmental laws and public attitudes – rates of deforestation have risen sharply since 1995.

In the January 8 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), The Cucurbit Network and the University of Puerto Rico establish mitochondrial DNA analysis as a powerful tool for understanding relationships among flowering plants. A comparison of mtDNA from cultivated squash, pumpkins, gourds and their wild ancestors strongly supports hypotheses based on archeological and ethnobotanical evidence for six independent domestication events in the New World.

The Smithsonian Institution will bring together ecologists, cocoa production experts, cocoa industry representatives and other experts interested in the economics of and the variety of life around small family cocoa farms for a "Sustainable Cocoa Workshop." The meeting will be held March 29 through April 2 at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.