The odds of being attacked and castrated by a variety of parasitic flatworms increases for marine horn snails the further they’re found from the tropics. A Smithsonian-led research team discovered this exception to an otherwise globally-observed pattern—usually biodiversity is greatest in the tropics and decreases toward the poles. The study, published in Ecology, makes a case for using host-parasite relationships as a tool to understand why there are typically more species—and more interactions between species—in the tropics than anywhere else in the world.

Ceratobasidium and Tulasnella fungi helped quicken symbiotic sprouting of Colombian vanilla species Vanilla rivasii and V. calyculata, in comparison to in vitro traditional methods which use asymbiotic culture media (without fungi) and which are also more expensive.

The kiddie pool Lauren Sumner-Rooney unfolds on the dock at the Bocas Del Toro Research Station isn’t for relaxing at sundown after a long day of fieldwork. Under the midday sun, she places brittle stars on the pool’s blue plastic bottom and floats a shadow-casting disc on the water’s surface. Her experiment tests the nocturnal creatures’ poorly understood vision system. Can they “see” the disc and move into its protective shadow?

In the attempt to choose a mate, it's no surprise that females will select the more "attractive" of two males, but now a new study reveals that female túngara frogs are susceptible to the "decoy" effect, where the introduction of a third, inferior mate results in the female choosing the less attractive of the first two options.