New wasp species for Costa Rica. Scientists[1] have recently described three new species of ichneumonid wasps from Costa Rica. One of these species, Apechoneura fuentesi, was named in honor of Gilbert Fuentes in recognition of his long-standing contributions to tropical science through the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS). For many years, Fuentes has served as editor of BINABITROP, OTS’s bibliographic database that brings together published research on tropical biology, with a special emphasis on Costa Rica.
BINABITROP now includes more than 48,000 references to theses, dissertations, books, scientific journals, and conference proceedings, making it a uniquely valuable resource for students, researchers, and conservation practitioners. The rarity of A. fuentesi—a species known only from Costa Rica—reflects the exceptional biological richness documented through resources like BINABITROP. Natural history observations suggest that this wasp plays a specialized ecological role as a parasitoid of a weevil species associated exclusively with the legume genus Inga, highlighting the intricate connections that characterize tropical ecosystems. –Guest contribution by Oscar Rocha, Kent State University.
Mapping seasonal rhythms in terrestrial plant communities. Land surface phenology is a relatively new approach that consists of mapping annual rhythms of terrestrial plant communities. Documenting these annual rhythms for tropical plant communities has been challenging, until recent development of remote sensing techniques involving sequential satellite imagery has enabled mapping of phenological patterns on a global scale. Drew Terasaki Hart and coauthors[2] used remote sensing to map global phenological patterns and to investigate similarities and differences at continental and regional scales. Field work was conducted at all three of OTS research stations in Costa Rica. The research showed that phenological rhythms are convergent at a continental scale but heterogenous at smaller scales, depending on environmental variables related to topography, hydrology, and vegetation. The authors identified regions of phenological asynchrony in some tropical mountains as well as some Mediterranean climate regions. There was some support for the hypothesis that within the tropics, climate similarity does not equate to phenological synchrony. The authors created a land surface phenology map which they used to predict complex geographical discontinuities in flowering phenology, genetic divergence, and agricultural harvest seasonality across a range of taxa. One important implication is the potential use of remote sensing tools to understand how evolutionary divergence occurs within species that have a broad distribution within the same life zone, yet experience slightly different climate parameters, leading to asynchrony in timing of reproduction between populations. This idea implies the need for careful attention to phenological patterns as an element of biodiversity conservation. The authors note that the findings have important implications for agriculture as well, suggesting an explanation of subtle regional variation in timing of key events such as coffee harvest. This study was supported in part by an OTS graduate research fellowship.
No evidence found for quantitative honest signaling in the green and black poison frog. The green and black poison frog (Dendrobates auratus) occurs across many habitats throughout Costa Rica. With its bright coloration, this frog is usually thought to be evidence of aposematic or warning coloration, with the striking colors indicating high toxicity endowed by alkaloid defenses in body tissue. Katherine Porras-Brenes and coauthors[3] asked if the intensity of coloration and behavior are quantitatively honest signals in D. auratus among six populations from Costa Rica (including the population at La Selva). Pacific populations were less conspicuous in coloration, had greater quantities of alkaloids, and more frequently performed defensive behaviors when compared with Caribbean populations. The hypothesis of coloration being a quantitatively honest trait was not supported. The authors suggested that instead, frog behavioral and color phenotypes vary depending on local environmental conditions such as the importance of different types of predators. Thus, honest signaling is not a given in this species or presumably, in other brightly colored animals.
Finding their way home in the forest. Poison frogs (Dendrobatoidea) are able to return to their home territories when displaced and are known to use visual stimuli to orient in controlled conditions of laboratory experiments. In a series of field experiments, Granados-Martinez and colleagues investigated the mechanisms used to navigate by territory-holding male strawberry poison frogs (Oophaga pumilio) in the cluttered and dense environments of the forest understory.[4] Frogs used visual information from near ground level and were more successful at navigating in open areas than in closed forests. This study provides insight into how small animals are able to orient in a complex visual environment.
Fungi and forest restoration. Working near Las Cruces Research Station, Lackmann and colleagues[5] investigated the effectiveness of two forest restoration treatments at recovering old-growth forest fungal communities in this tropical premontane landscape. The researchers were also interested in the role of large insects in promoting fungal colonization. They experimentally introduced logs into three types of sites: plantations, natural forest restoration plots, and nearby reference forests. After three years, fungal community composition in logs from plantations resembled that of reference forests. When the researchers prevented access to the logs by excluding large arthropods such as beetles, the richness of fungi was reduced in both plantations and reference forests. The results of this experiment suggest fungi are restored through restoration plantations in less than 20 years when remnant forest patches are present nearby.
Instructional design for authentic learning. OTS is a participant in the NSF-funded OCELOTS Network (Online Content for Experiential Learning of Tropical Systems),which brings together tropical biology researchers, active learning pedagogy specialists, software developers, and media specialists, with the vision of creating an open-access, online resource library of learning modules in tropical ecology. The modules are grounded in peer-reviewed tropical biology research. OCELOTS network scientists (many of whom are long-term OTS researchers), introduced a new concept—FIREs– to the instructional design community[6]. FIREs, or Free Interactive Research-based Experiences remove many barriers to engaged learning in the undergraduate curriculum. The authors proposed that FIREs complement existing authentic learning frameworks and suggested that they represent a type of instructional design that could usefully be adopted by educators.
Environmental uncertainty complicates behavioral decision-making. At Las Cruces Research Station, Farji and coauthors[7] examined how environmental uncertainty leading to incomplete information might complicate behavioral decision-making for animals. Larvae of the antlion Myrmeleon crudelis are sit-and-wait predators that construct conical pit traps in bare soil. The authors hypothesized that the size of soil particles present below the soil surface would impact the efficiency of prey capture. In a series of experiments, the investigators showed that although ant lions alter trap design based on substrate surface characteristics, they do not respond to different soil characteristics encountered during building by altering the trap design. Animals were observed to relocate traps to a new area when the rate of prey capture was reduced in areas with suboptimal soil characteristics. The authors concluded that incomplete information led to reduced quality of decision making in the short term, but that in the longer term the animals did respond in ways that might improve predation success. This study was supported in part by OTS graduate research fellowships and OTS scholarships and was conducted during the January 2025 OTS graduate course Ecología Tropical y Conservación.
Variation in howler monkey vocalizations. A team led by Amy Schreier investigated mantled howler monkey (Alloutta palliata) roaring behavior between the wet and dry seasons at La Selva Research Station and compared howler behavior at La Selva with that in a nearby small forest fragment (La Suerte Biological Research Station, LSBRS).[8] The authors tested whether roaring behavior varied as a function of food availability and thus might be classified as ecological resource defense. At La Selva, monkeys roared more frequently during the wet season than the dry season. In addition, monkeys roared more times per minute and for longer duration at La Selva than at La Suerte, a finding that corresponded to measurements of forest structure. However, monkeys at La Suerte roared more frequently on an hourly basis, reflecting the high population density at La Suerte. The authors suggested that many factors may influence howling behavior, including population structure, forest structure, and food availability.
Leaf flammability with respect to leaf size. One result of climate change for some locations in the tropics is increased length of dry seasons leading to concern for increased fires spread through flammable vegetation. An understudied aspect of vegetation flammability is the influence of leaf shape and size. At Palo Verde Biological Station, Rodríguez-García and Powers[9] isolated these variables to evaluate the flammability of Sapranthus palanga (Annonaceae) leaves. Rectangular and triangular shapes showed high flammability that did not vary with size, while circular shapes had minimal flammability that varied with size. These findings indicate that leaf shape and size impact flammability for this species. This study was conducted during the OTS field course during the January 2024 OTS graduate course Ecología Tropical y Conservación.
A decade of data on bird collisions with windows in Costa Rica. A new paper[10] reports a rich data set on bird collisions with windows over eleven years, with data collected by the authors and the ornithology community as well as volunteers and community science participants. The authors assembled 1506 bird collision reports from locations throughout the country. Collison victims are representative of avian diversity in Costa Rica, including 296 species from 47 families and 17 orders. A single species, Swainson’s thrush (Catharus ustulatus) accounted for 10% of all the observations. Thrushes, hummingbirds, and warblers were the most common families represented in the dataset. 80% of all collisions involved resident species, such as the Clay-colored thrush (Turdus grayi). Resident species collided more frequently with windows in non-urban regions than in urban San Jose. Forty-four species with some level of endemism and eight endangered species were involved in window collisions. This study provides a baseline to help shape management guidelines and to measure their effectiveness.
Leafhopper diversity. Arias-Paco and Godoy[11] published a systematic review of the 29 Costa RIcan species of the diverse leafhopper genus Scaphytopius. This genus includes species that are potential vectors of phytoplasmas in tropical agriculture systems, including coffee and citrus crops, yet it has not been widely studied in Costa Rica. The new publication includes taxonomic descriptions of sixteen new species and nine species that are new records for Costa RIca. Specimens examined for this study include five holotypes from species first collected from La Selva Research Station.
Tropical nematode diversity. Despite being among the most abundant animals on Earth, there remains much for scientists to learn about nematodes, especially about their ecology and systematics. A recent study suggested a new method for studying cryptic species complexes in soil nematodes. Using material collected both at La Selva and Las Cruces, the authors showed that two different nematode species complexes showed variation in body shape but not in overall size. [12] Untangling the systematic relationships of ring nematodes is an important tool for understanding their impacts in both natural and agricultural ecosystems.
Oilbird at La Selva. A new observation from La Selva added a species to the existing bird species list, which now stands at 482 species (representing 52% of Costa Rica’s avifauna). Biamonte and Sandoval[13] reported that a single primary feather was found and deposited in the Museum of Zoology, CIBET, University of Costa Rica. Oilbirds are an accidental and irregular migrant in Costa Rica and had had been reported previously from the Sarapiqui region as accidental, post-breeding migrants, but were not known to occur at La Selva.
Water anoles and stream characteristics. The water anole, Anolis aquaticus, is a semiaquatic lizard occurring along streams in lowland tropical sites, as well as at higher elevations with greater thermal variability (such as those occurring in the streams at Las Cruces). Small ectothermic animal species that are distributed over a range of habitat conditions may become locally adapted. Eifler and colleagues asked whether water anoles at Las Cruces (~1100 m) showed differences in body size, thermal ecology, habitat use, and behavior compared to anoles occurring at sea level.[14] The anoles varied both with site and sex: low-elevation males had the highest body temperatures and high-elevation males had greatest body size. Differences in behavior also occurred, with individuals from the higher-elevation site being less active and using different kinds of perches compared to their low-elevational counterparts. This study documented that small differences in habitat structure and thermal environment may result in measurable differences in ecology and behavior.
Capturing unusual predation attempts by snakes at La Selva. Two recent opportunistic field observations highlight the need for additional study of behavioral ecology and trophic interactions of tropical snakes. Although the autotomized tail of a common humble anole (Anolis humilis) was consumed by a brown vine snake (Oxybelis koehleri), the lizard escaped the predation attempt[15]. On another occasion, two individual snakes (a western parrot snake, Leptophis occidentalis, and a cat-eyed snake, Leptodeira sp. aff. ornata), briefly attempted to consume the same tree frog (Smilisca sordida). After less than one minute, the cat-eyed snake released the frog.[16]
Tree genetic diversity. Scientists from CIBCM at University of Costa Rica reported [17] on genetic diversity of two important trees (Minquartia guianensis and Hyeronima alchorneoides) found at La Selva. The results indicated high levels of genetic variance within patches and a lack of differentiation between patches, such as has been shown for other tropical tree species.
New or revised species descriptions and systematic treatments of several arthropods known from La Selva have been published including a millipede[18], orchid weevils[19], and melastome weevils[20] . The weevil studies made use of specimens collected during the Arthropods of La Selva project (ALAS),1991-2005.
[1] Zuñiga, R., & Hanson, P. (2025). Three new species of Labeninae (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) from Costa Rica. Zootaxa, 5728(3), 579–587. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5728.3.8
[2] Terasaki Hart, D. E., Bùi, T.-N., Di Maggio, L., & Wang, I. J. (2025). Global phenology maps reveal the drivers and effects of seasonal asynchrony. Nature, 645(8079), 133–140. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09410-3
[3] Porras-Brenes, K., Church, G., & Saporito, R. A. (2025). No evidence of quantitative honest signaling in aposematic traits of the green and black dendrobatid frog Dendrobates auratus in Costa Rica. Current Zoology, 71(5), 660–673. https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zoae081
[4] Granados-Martínez, S., Stynoski, J. L., Sasa-Marin, M., Wystrach, A., & Soley, F. G. (2025). Poison frogs rely on vision for homing in natural environments. Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences, 292(2060), 20252310. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.2310
[5] Lackmann, J. A., Fernandez Barrancos, E. P., Zahawi, R. A., & Aldrich-Wolfe, L. (2025). Restoration plantations accelerate recovery of fungal communities of coarse woody debris in southern Costa Rica. Global Ecology and Conservation, 58, e03487. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2025.e03487
[6] McCulloch, L. A., Cavazos, B., Ganong, C., Goller, C., Kjelvik, M., Mehrotra, P., Hardin, R., & Russell, A. (2025). Bridging the gap: Increasing accessibility to authentic learning in undergraduate education. Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education, e00218-25. https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.00218-25
[7] Farji-Brener, A. G., Víquez, J., Vicuña-Zevallos, W., Villaschi, M., Romero-Ceciliano, M., Navas-Muñoz, D., & Escalante, I. (2025). Using incomplete environmental information compromises the design and efficiency of extended phenotypes. Animal Behaviour, 228, 123310. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123310
[8] Schreier, A. L., Kaser, F. V. E., Miller, R. L., Ennis, M., Johnson, C. E., Russell, D. G., & Bolt, L. M. (2025). Variation in mantled howler monkey (Alouatta palliata) roaring behavior across ecologically diverse sites and seasons. Folia Primatologica, 96(3–4), 175–192. https://doi.org/10.1163/14219980-bja10066
[9] Rodríguez‐García, E., & Powers, J. S. (2025). Leaf Size and Shape Interact to Control Flammability: An Experiment With Artificial Leaves Cut From the Large‐Leaved Species Sapranthus palanga. Biotropica, 57(5), e70094. https://doi.org/10.1111/btp.70094
[10] Menacho-Odio, R. M., Arévalo, J. E., Spínola, M., & Klem, D. (2025). Bird-window collisions in Costa Rica: Taxonomic characterization, migratory status, geographic distribution and conservation. Animal Biodiversity and Conservation, e0205. https://doi.org/10.32800/abc.2025.48.0205
[11] Arias-Paco, A., & Godoy, C. (2025). A review of the leafhopper genus Scaphytopius (Cicadellidae: Deltocephalinae) from Costa Rica with descriptions of sixteen new species. Zootaxa, 5696(3), 301–333. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5696.3.1
[12] Peraza-Padilla, W., Artavia-Carmona, R., Aráuz-Badilla, J., Liébanas, G., Cantalapiedra-Navarrete, C., Salazar-García, R., García-Velazquez, A., Palomares-Rius, J. E., Castillo, P., & Archidona-Yuste, A. (2025). New insights into the phylogeny and morphometry of ring nematodes of the subfamily Discocriconemellinae (Nematoda: Criconematidae): Xenocriconemella and Discocriconemella. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 205(2), zlaf111. https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlaf111
[13] Biamonte, E., & Sandoval, L. (2025). El Guacharo Steatornis caripensis (Steatornithidae), nueva ave para la Estación Biológica La Selva, Costa Rica. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.18098514
[14] Eifler, D. A., Dittmer, D. E., Dick, L., Rowe, B., Johnson, J. J., Stanley, D. R., & Eifler, M. A. (2025). Differences in Habitat Use, Thermal Ecology, and Behavior of the Semiaquatic Lizard Anolis aquaticus at High- and Low-Elevation Sites. Diversity, 17(10), 673. https://doi.org/10.3390/d17100673
[15] Mora, J. M., & Amaro, M. K. (2025). Predation by the Brown Vine Snake, Oxybelis koehleri, on the Autotomized Tail of an Escaping Common Anole, Anolis humilis. Revista Latinoamericana de Herpetología, 8(3), e1344-45. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/bio_fac/490/
[16] Mora, J. M., Fonseca, E. A. C., López, L. I., Quirós, A. J. S., & Alvarado, E. V. (2025). A Kleptoparasitic Interaction, or Simultaneous Double Predation, on a Smilisca Tree Frog by Two Neotropical Snakes. Caribbean Journal of Science, 55(2). https://doi.org/10.18475/cjos.v55i2.a26
[17] Villalobos-Barrantes, Heidy, Albertazzi, Federico J., and Macaya, Gabriel. Preliminary genetic diversity data of two neotropical trees in the old-growth forest of Costa Rica. Ciencia y Tecnología, 39: 35-44, 2025. ISSN: 2215-5708. Preliminary genetic diversity data of two neotropical trees in the old-growth forest of Costa Rica
[18]Golovatch, S. I., Enghoff, H., & Efeykin, B. D. (2025). Chondrodesmus riparius Carl, 1914, a millipede species new to the fauna of Costa Rica, originally described from Colombia, and introduced to and presently widespread across Europe (Diplopoda, Polydesmida, Chelodesmidae). Zootaxa, 5692(1), 161–174. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5692.1.8
[19] Prena, J. (2024). Consolidation of Aniops Casey, Psiona Casey, Preglyptobaris Bondar and Prospoliata Hustache with Chryasus Champion (Coleoptera, Curculionidae, Baridinae) and descriptions of new species. Zootaxa, 5492(1), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5492.1.1
[20] Prena, J. (2025). Neotropical orchid-weevils of the genus Stethobaroides Champion (Coleoptera, Curculionidae, Baridinae). Zootaxa, 5723(2), 227–244. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5723.2.4