New archaeological evidence points to an independent origin of agriculture in coastal Ecuador 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Suddenly, the remains of larger squash plants appear in the record. The Las Vegas site, described by Dolores Piperno of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and Karen Stothert, University of Texas at Austin in the February 14th issue of Science, may predate plant domestication sites in the Mesoamerican highlands.

Late last year, Frédéric Achard and colleagues published a controversial article in which they contended that earlier estimates of worldwide tropical deforestation and atmospheric carbon emissions were too high. In the February 14 issue of Science, Philip Fearnside from the National Institute for Amazonian Research in Brazil, and William Laurance from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama argue that the Achard study contains serious flaws rendering its conclusions about greenhouse gases unreliable.

Tropical forest canopies, leafy landscapes scorched by uv radiation and washed by torrential rains, house some of the most diverse but least understood creatures on our planet. And canopy biologists, pioneers of a very young science, are just beginning to describe this complex interface of plant and animal life. A major contribution to this field, Arthropods of Tropical Forests, a 490-page summary of state-of-the-art tropical entomology research, has just been released by Cambridge University Press.

Fungus-growing ants practice agriculture and have been doing so for the past 50 million years according to research published in the Jan. 17 issue of Science. These ants not only grow fungus gardens underground for food but also have adapted to handling parasitic "weeds" that infect their crops.

The Phycological Society of America (PSA), a scientific society that promotes the study of algae, will present its 2002 Prescott Prize to Diane Littler, Research Associate, and Mark Littler, Senior Scientist, of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's Department of Systematic Biology, for their book Caribbean Reef Plants: An Identification Guide to the Reef Plants of the Caribbean, Bahamas, Florida and Gulf of Mexico.

One of the world's largest and highest-quality set of observations on live tropical insects and their host plants has led researchers to reinterpret the structure of tropical insect communities. The team of scientists who collaborated on this analysis includes Scott Miller of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, Yves Basset of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Vojtech Novotny of the Czech Academy of Sciences and George Weiblen of the University of Minnesota.

The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) proudly presents A Magic Web: The Tropical Forest of Barro Colorado, published by Oxford University Press. Palms walk, transparent wings flash, teeth gnash and wasps oviposit when STRI staff ecologist, Egbert Leigh, and photographer, Christian Ziegler, team up artfully to celebrate one of the most intensively studied tropical forests on the planet, Panama's Barro Colorado Island.

Global climate change predictions and greenhouse gas models desperately need to be tested in the Amazon, home of 45% of the world's tropical forest. The Amazon Forest Inventory Network (RAINFOR), representing nearly fifty researchers from five Amazonian countries, Europe and the U.S., is a new effort to monitor biomass and dynamics of forests across the entire Amazon basin.

The Association for Tropical Biology honored Dr.Ira Rubinoff for "exceptional service in the fields of tropical biology and conservation" at its 2002 Annual Meeting in Panama (July 29-August 2). "Six billion people inhabit the earth", Rubinoff remarked as he accepted honorary ATB membership: "we are struggling both scientifically and politically to determine how enormous developments associated with this magnitude of human activity are changing the planet and the biological systems that keep us alive."

For more than a century humans have been changing the composition of the world's atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels, agriculture, and other activities. The resulting climate changes may already be having far-reaching impacts on tropical forests. A symposium at the 2002 meetings of the Association for Tropical Biology, hosted by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), Panama, examined the evidence for these changes and their implications for the future.