Smithsonian Institution

Global origins of tuna and billfish fisheries reveal the transition from coastal access to oceanic exploitation

Ocean ecosystems have played a crucial role in people’s lives around the world for millennia. However, questions persist about when, why, and how people first began removing biomass from offshore habitats and established fisheries in distant, oceanic environments. We explore the...

Coral community dynamics across anthropogenic and natural stressors in Portobelo National Park, Colon, Panama

Understanding how coral communities respond to overlapping local stressors is essential for identifying potentially resilient reef sites within marine protected areas. In Portobelo National Park, Caribbean Panama, coral assemblages occur under combinations of human and natural pr...

Anti-predation behavior resolves sexual conflict over mating rate and duration in a protandric-simultaneous hermaphrodite

The reproductive interests of males and females rarely coincide, and thus, sexual conflict should be widespread in sexual species and favor the evolution of traits that bias the outcome of mating interactions towards the participant’s own interests. Sexual conflict theory has ach...

A fast radio burst at redshift 2, three billion years after the Big Bang

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-duration radio transients from extragalactic sources. Their frequency and polarization properties are affected by plasma and magnetic fields along the line of sight to Earth. We report radio observations of FRB 20240304B and near-infrared...

Ecological fitting in a deceptive trap flower: Aristolochia gibertii recruits native drosophilid flies outside South America

Deceptive pollination, in which plants lure pollinators without offering rewards, represents a sophisticated evolutionary strategy. The trap-flowers of Aristolochia provide an excellent system to study the coordinated evolution of floral morphology, chemistry, and phenology. Howe...

Microsynteny Analysis Clarifies the Early Diversification of Cypriniform Fishes

While genomic data are powerfully informative for phylogenetic inference, traditional sequence-based analyses can be confounded by issues like homoplasy and incomplete lineage sorting, leaving deep nodes unresolved. Synteny, the conservation of gene order along a chromosome, pres...

Storage timescales and the crystal growth history recorded in the layered reservoir of the Unit 3 Kulanaokuaiki Tephra Member of the Uēkahuna Ash from Kīlauea volcano

Abstract The Kulanaokuaiki Tephra Unit 3 (900 C.E.) was a subplinian basaltic scoria eruption, the largest known to have occurred at Kīlauea’s summit. The initiation mechanism and cause(s) of this highly hazardous eruption remain poorly understood, particularly as this style of a...

Integrative taxonomy reveals multiple Mediterranean invasions by Indo-Pacific Dorvillea (Annelida, Dorvilleidae)

Abstract Biological invasions are a major driver of global biodiversity loss, with the Mediterranean Sea among the most heavily invaded marine regions. However, identification and monitoring of Non-Indigenous Species (NIS) are hindered by taxonomic uncertainty and cryptic diversi...

Quaternary Arctic planktonic foraminifera: morphological differentiation and taxonomic reassessment of subpolar spinose taxa

Abstract. Planktonic foraminifera in the modern Arctic Ocean are dominated by the non-spinose polar species Neogloboquadrina pachyderma. Acmes of two spinose, presumed subpolar taxa in Quaternary central Arctic sediment cores are therefore anomalous, implying significantly differ...

Operation Melilli, forensic humanitarian medico legal activities on the largest known Mediterranean disaster: the shipwreck of April 18th, 2015

On April 18th, 2015, a boat carrying about 1,000 migrants sank in the Strait of Sicily, prompting one of the most complex recovery missions ever conducted in the Mediterranean. Operation Melilli was the first time a European Government authorized the recovery of a sunken migrant...

Management of the volcanological data: an overview

Volcanological data are inherently diverse and heterogeneous. They originate from a broad spectrum of sources, including field observations, sample analyses, ground-based, airborne and satellite remote sensing instruments, permanent monitoring networks, and temporary field campai...

Reticulated adaptive radiation and phylogenomic diversity loss in the Hawaiian honeycreepers

The Hawaiian honeycreepers, one of the world’s most iconic adaptive radiations, are facing a human-mediated extinction crisis. More than 60 Hawaiian honeycreepers (Fringillidae: Carduelinae: Drepanidini) evolved from a single rosefinch-like ancestor that colonized the Hawaiian Is...