Barro Colorado Island Research Articles

Wildlife speed cameras: measuring animal travel speed and day range using camera traps

AbstractTravel speed (average speed of travel while active) and day range (average speed over the daily activity cycle) are behavioural metrics that influence processes including energy use, foraging success, disease transmission and human‐wildlife interactions, and which can therefore be applied to a range of questions in ecology and conservation. These metrics are usually derived from telemetry or direct observations. Here, we describe and validate an entirely new alternative approach, using camera traps recording passing animals to measure movement paths at very fine scale. Dividing the length of a passage by its duration gives a speed observation, and average travel speed is estimated by fitting size‐biased probability distributions to a sample of speed observations. Day range is then estimated as the product of travel speed and activity level (proportion of time spent active), which can also be estimated from camera‐trap data. We field tested the procedure with data from a survey of terrestrial mammals on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. Travel speeds and day ranges estimated for 12 species scaled positively with body mass, and were higher in faunivores than in herbivores, patterns that are consistent with those obtained using independent estimates derived from tracked individuals. Comparisons of our day range estimates with independent telemetry‐based estimates for three species also showed very similar values in absolute terms. We conclude that these methods are accurate and ready to use for estimating travel speed and day range in wildlife. Key advantages of the methods are that they are non‐invasive, and that measurements are made at very high resolution in time and space, yielding estimates that are comparable across species and studies. Combined with emerging techniques in computer vision, we anticipate that these methods will help to expand the range of species for which we can estimate movement rate in the wild.

How do size distributions relate to concurrently measured demographic rates? Evidence from over 150 tree species in Panama

Abstract:In stable populations with constant demographic rates, size distributions reflect size-dependent patterns of growth and mortality. However, population growth can also affect size distributions, which may not be aligned with current growth and mortality. Using 25 y of demographic data from the 50-ha Barro Colorado Island plot, we examined how interspecific variation in diameter distributions of over 150 tropical trees relates to growth–diameter and mortality–diameter curves and to population growth rates. Diameter distributions were more skewed in species with faster increases/slower decreases in absolute growth and mortality with diameter and higher population growth rates. The strongest predictor of the diameter distribution shape was the exponent governing the scaling of growth with diameter (partial R2 = 0.20–0.34), which differed among growth forms, indicating a role of life history variation. However, interspecific variation in diameter distributions was also significantly related to population growth rates (partial R2 = 0.03–0.23), reinforcing that many populations are not at equilibrium. Consequently, although fitted size distribution parameters were positively related to theoretical predictions based on current size-dependent growth and mortality, there was considerable deviation. These analyses show that temporally variable demographic rates, probably related to cyclic climate variation, are important influences on forest structure.

Emergent Ecologies by Eben Kirksey (review)

Reviewed by: Emergent Ecologies by Eben Kirksey Nicolas Howe Eben Kirksey, Emergent Ecologies. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015. 312 pp. It is hard to feel good about animals these days. The news about them is just so relentlessly bad. on the one hand, we are said to be causing the sixth mass extinction, extinguishing thousands of species each year. On the other, we continue to refine the art of industrial killing, feeding our insatiable demand for flesh. As John Berger famously lamented, “Everywhere animals disappear” (1980:26)—except, that is, those animals (and plants) that specialize in calamity: the “invaders,” “weeds,” and “parasites.” In a world of constant disturbance, these unloved species are appearing everywhere. They are nature’s disaster capitalists, “pathogens of globalization” (Bright 1999). But does this mean we should despise them, as so many environmentalists say we should, or can we embrace their enterprising, entrepreneurial spirit? Can we learn to love the lowliest and unruliest of beings? In his provocative new book, Eben Kirksey says we must. The hero of this multi-sited, multi-species ethnography is the “ontological amphibian,” a figure Kirksey adapts from Peter Sloterdijk (2011, ten Bos 2009). This labile being moves from umwelt to umwelt, continually entangling itself in novel multi-species assemblages. It moves freely among worlds, much like the figure of the multi-species ethnographer himself. Ectatomma ants in Panama; rhesus macaques in Florida; cattails in Costa Rica; even the widely reviled chytrid fungus, blamed for annihilating actual amphibians worldwide: each reveals how “multispecies communities… have been formed and transformed by chance encounters, historical accidents, and parasitic invasions” (1). Each thus reveals the potential for a politics of environmental hope. Or so says Kirksey, who wears his hopefulness on his sleeve. As he announces at the outset, this is a book about “happy accidents,” “collective hopes,” “symbiosis,” and the “reciprocal embrace” of disparate [End Page 295] species surviving in precarious times (1, 3, 4). It is also a book about a specific though diverse group of humans, the “thinkers and tinkerers” who “garden in the ruins” left behind by globalization, cultivating what Isabelle Stengers calls “relations of reciprocal capture.” Insisting that we reject the apocalyptic thinking of mainstream environmentalism, Kirksey turns our attention to the “desires, affective attachments, and dreams” that motivate these “organic intellectuals who are sifting through the wreckage of catastrophic disasters, searching for hope within landscapes that have been blasted by capitalism and militarism” (6, 5 ,7). By studying how humans and their non-human companions make happy homes in these “blasted landscapes” (a key motif borrowed from Anna Tsing [2014]), Kirksey strives to reveal a political community promised by the very notion of multispecies ethnography: an emergent ecological ethnos, united by bonds of more-than-human solidarity. Kirksey is not the first environmental thinker to write in praise of weedy species, and his eco-cosmopolitan outlook is shared by many scholars and popular writers looking for an upside to the Anthropocene (e.g., Marris 2013, Pearce 2015). Nor is he the first to challenge what Paul Robbins and Sarah Moore (2013) call the “Edenic sciences”—fields such as conservation biology, which tend to see the creation of novel ecosystems in a tragic light.” Kirksey’s innovations are methodological and formal. He does not just engage in participant observation; he translates his fieldwork into collaborative artworks and parascientific experiments, enacting the happy, creative mutualism that he celebrates in his subjects. Performances proliferate, enrolling a multitude of actors into spatially diffuse and culturally heterogeneous networks. Frogs arrive in the mail; ethnoprimatologists watch feral macaques eat grapes from the hands of tourists. In many ways, the story reads like a picaresque, its heroes convivial rogues, living by their wits and subverting social norms in search of a happy home. In this way, Kirksey treats emergent multispecies communities as “model ecosystems,” which Heather Paxson and Stefan Helmreich describe as prescriptive “tokens of how organisms and human ecological relations with them could, should, or might be” (2014:168). Follow the parasite-picaro, Kirksey urges. Take heart in its promiscuous peregrinations. Kirksey’s story begins on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal, one of the world’s most famous tropical nature reserves...

Movement patterns of three arboreal primates in a Neotropical moist forest explained by LiDAR-estimated canopy structure

Abstract Context Many arboreal mammals in Neotropical forests are important seed dispersers that influence the spatial patterns of tree regeneration via their movement patterns, which in turn are determined by the canopy structure of the forest itself. However, the relationship between arboreal mammal movement and canopy structure is poorly understood, due in large part to the complexity of quantifying arboreal habitat structure. Objectives We relate detailed movement trajectories of three sympatric primate species to attributes of canopy structure derived from airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) in order to understand the role of structure in arboreal movement in the tropical moist forest of Barro Colorado Island, Panama. Methods We used high-resolution LiDAR to quantify three-dimensional attributes of the forest canopy of the entire island, high-resolution GPS tracking to map the movement patterns of the monkey species, and step selection functions to relate movement decisions to canopy attributes. Results We found that movement decisions were correlated with canopy height and distance to gaps, which indicate forest maturity and lateral connectivity, in all three species. In the two faster-moving species, step selection was also correlated with the thickness of the crown layer and the density of vegetation within the crown. Conclusions The correlations detected are fully in line with known differences in the locomotor adaptations and movement strategies of the study species, and directly reflect maximization of energetic efficiency and ability to escape from predators. Quantification of step selection in relation to structure thus provides insight into the ways in which arboreal animals use their environment.

Application of optimal data-based binning method to spatial analysis of ecological datasets

Investigation of highly structured datasets to unveil statistical regularities is of major importance in complex system research. The first step is to choose the scale at which to observe the process, the most informative scale being the one that includes the important features while disregarding noisy details in the data. In the investigation of spatial patterns, the optimal scale defines the optimal bin size of the histogram in which to visualize the empirical density of the pattern. In this paper we investigate a method proposed recently by K.H. Knuth to find the optimal bin size of an histogram as a tool for statistical analysis of spatial point processes. We test it through numerical simulations on various spatial processes which are of interest in ecology. We show that Knuth optimal bin size rule reducing noisy fluctuations performs better than standard kernel methods to infer the intensity of the underlying process. Moreover it can be used to highlight relevant spatial characteristics of the underlying distribution such as space anisotropy and clusterization. We apply these findings to analyse cluster-like structures in plants’ arrangement of Barro Colorado Island rainforest.

Genetic, spatial, and social relationships among adults in a group of howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata) from Barro Colorado Island, Panama.

Kinship plays an important role in the social behavior of many primate species, including patterns of intra-group affiliation and cooperation. Within social groups, kinship is strongly affected by dispersal patterns, with the degree of relatedness among group-mates expected to decrease as the tendency to disperse increases. In primate species characterized by bisexual dispersal, relatedness among adult group-mates is predicted to be low, with social interactions shaped largely by factors other than kinship. To date, however, few studies have examined the role of kinship in social interactions in bisexually dispersing species. Accordingly, we collected genetic, spatial and behavioral data on all adult members (three males, six females) in a group of free-ranging mantled howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata)--a bisexually dispersing species of atelid primate--from Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama. Analyses of microsatellite variation revealed that relatedness was greater among adult males in this group (mean pairwise relatedness = 0.32 for males versus 0.09 for females). Relatedness among individuals, however, was not associated with either spatial proximity or frequency of social interactions. Instead, sex was a better predictor of both of these aspects of social behavior. While relatedness among adults had no discernible effect on the intra-group social interactions documented in this study, we postulate that kinship may facilitate affiliative and cooperative behaviors among male group-mates when interacting competitively with neighboring howler groups over access to food or potential mates.

Adverse Effects of Ball-Chain Radio-Collars on Female Mantled Howlers (Alouatta palliata) in Panama

The placement of radio- and GPS-collars on primates has advanced the fields of primate behavior and ecology and yielded considerable conservation gains. However, to ensure that the placement of tracking collars remains a humane practice, the reporting of both positive and negative outcomes is required. Here, we evaluate the impacts of radio-collars on the reproduction, behavior, and health of female mantled howlers (Alouatta palliata) on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. In June 2005, as part of a behavioral study, we fitted 16 female howlers with ball-chain radio-collars weighing 1.2% of the mean adult female weight. We monitored these 16 collared females and 64 noncollared females across an annual cycle, and recaptured the collared females in July 2006 for collar removal. The mortality rate for collared females across the study year was 6.3% (N=1), while the net loss of noncollared females from study groups was 15.6% (N=10). All collared females reproduced. The behaviors of collared and noncollared females were not significantly different. However, on recapture to remove all remaining collars (N = 13), 38% of recaptured collared females presented with damage to the dermal layer on the back of the neck and 31% presented with more severe damage extending into the subcutaneous tissue and muscle. Given this physical damage, which was not apparent through binoculars, we cannot recommend using ball-chain radio-collars on female mantled howlers without careful welfare monitoring.

Local speciation can be incorporated into neutral theory of biodiversity

In this report, I incorporate local speciation into neutral theory of biodiversity to predict species abundance distribution patterns. By fitting the local-speciation model to the abundance data of tree species in Barro Colorado Island of Panama, the results showed that the new model performed better than the original neutral model without local speciation. Moreover, the estimated local speciation rate (v′=0.0107) was found to be ten-fold larger than the estimated background speciation rate v=0.0011, indicating that local speciation should not be ignored in neutral theory. Given that species across different local habitats and landscapes may present heterogeneous speciation rates, it is valuable to incorporate local speciation into neutral theory to study spatiotemporal patterns of ecological assemblages.

Do abundance distributions and species aggregation correctly predict macroecological biodiversity patterns in tropical forests?

AimIt has been recently suggested that different ‘unified theories of biodiversity and biogeography’ can be characterized by three common ‘minimal sufficient rules’: (1) species abundance distributions follow a hollow curve, (2) species show intraspecific aggregation, and (3) species are independently placed with respect to other species. Here, we translate these qualitative rules into a quantitative framework and assess if these minimal rules are indeed sufficient to predict multiple macroecological biodiversity patterns simultaneously.LocationTropical forest plots in Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama, and in Sinharaja, Sri Lanka.MethodsWe assess the predictive power of the three rules using dynamic and spatial simulation models in combination with census data from the two forest plots. We use two different versions of the model: (1) a neutral model and (2) an extended model that allowed for species differences in dispersal distances. In a first step we derive model parameterizations that correctly represent the three minimal rules (i.e. the model quantitatively matches the observed species abundance distribution and the distribution of intraspecific aggregation). In a second step we applied the parameterized models to predict four additional spatial biodiversity patterns.ResultsSpecies‐specific dispersal was needed to quantitatively fulfil the three minimal rules. The model with species‐specific dispersal correctly predicted the species–area relationship, but failed to predict the distance decay, the relationship between species abundances and aggregations, and the distribution of a spatial co‐occurrence index of all abundant species pairs. These results were consistent over the two forest plots.Main conclusionsThe three ‘minimal sufficient’ rules only provide an incomplete approximation of the stochastic spatial geometry of biodiversity in tropical forests. The assumption of independent interspecific placements is most likely violated in many forests due to shared or distinct habitat preferences. Furthermore, our results highlight missing knowledge about the relationship between species abundances and their aggregation.

Recharacterisation of three Parasitodiplogaster species based on morphological and molecular profiles

Three previously describedParasitodiplogasterspp.,P. nymphanema,P. obtusinemaandP. trigonemawere re-isolated from their type locality, Barro Colorado Island Research Station, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in Panama. The re-isolated materials were morphologically observed to compare with the original descriptions and molecularly characterised by DNA sequences of the near-full-length small subunit and D2-D3 expansion segments of the large subunit of the ribosomal RNA genes. Although the male tail characters,i.e., arrangement of genital papillae and spicule and gubernaculum morphologies, were close to the original descriptions, a compressed stoma with two (right subventral and dorsal) teeth was observed for the first time and confirmed in the newly re-isolated materials. The molecular phylogenetic analysis revealed that the three re-isolated species are close toP. laevigata,P. citrinemaandP. popenema, forming theP. laevigatagroup in the genus, and this group was separated into three subgroups,P. citrinema +P. popenema(subgroup 1),P. nymphanema +P. obtusinema(subgroup 2) andP. laevigata +P. trigonemaand three undescribed species (subgroup 3). TheP. laevigatagroup is characterised by a relatively compressed stoma with two (right subventral and dorsal) teeth, arrangement of genital papillae (three or four precloacal and four postcloacal pairs), but distinguishable from each other by stomatal morphology,i.e., the shortest and most compressed being in subgroup 3, widest in subgroup 1, and intermediate in subgroup 2. Furthermore, a large and long spicule and gubernaculum were observed in subgroup 2 as its hypothesised apomorphy.

Ark and Archive: Making a Place for Long-Term Research on Barro Colorado Island, Panama

Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama, may be the most studied tropical forest in the world. A 1,560-hectare island created by the flooding of the Panama Canal, BCI became a nature reserve and biological research station in 1923. Contemporaries saw the island as an "ark" preserving a sample of primeval tropical nature for scientific study. BCI was not simply "set aside," however. The project of making it a place for science significantly reshaped the island through the twentieth century. This essay demonstrates that BCI was constructed specifically to allow long-term observation of tropical organisms--their complex behaviors, life histories, population dynamics, and changing species composition. An evolving system of monitoring and information technology transformed the island into a living scientific "archive," in which the landscape became both an object and a repository of scientific knowledge. As a research site, BCI enabled a long-term, place-based form of collective empiricism, focused on the study of the ecology of a single tropical island. This essay articulates tropical ecology as a "science of the archive" in order to examine the origins of practices of environmental surveillance that have become central to debates about global change and conservation.

Positive density-dependent reproduction regulated by local kinship and size in an understorey tropical tree.

Global pollinator declines and continued habitat fragmentation highlight the critical need to understand reproduction and gene flow across plant populations. Plant size, conspecific density and local kinship (i.e. neighbourhood genetic relatedness) have been proposed as important mechanisms influencing the reproductive success of flowering plants, but have rarely been simultaneously investigated. We conducted this study on a continuous population of the understorey tree Miconia affinis in the Forest Dynamics Plot on Barro Colorado Island in central Panama. We used spatial, reproductive and population genetic data to investigate the effects of tree size, conspecific neighbourhood density and local kinship on maternal and paternal reproductive success. We used a Bayesian framework to simultaneously model the effects of our explanatory variables on the mean and variance of maternal viable seed set and siring success. Our results reveal that large trees had lower proportions of viable seeds in their fruits but sired more seeds. We documented differential effects of neighbourhood density and local kinship on both maternal and paternal reproductive components. Trees in more dense neighbourhoods produced on average more viable seeds, although this positive density effect was influenced by variance-inflation with increasing local kinship. Neighbourhood density did not have significant effects on siring success. This study is one of the first to reveal an interaction among tree size, conspecific density and local kinship as critical factors differentially influencing maternal and paternal reproductive success. We show that both maternal and paternal reproductive success should be evaluated to determine the population-level and individual traits most essential for plant reproduction. In addition to conserving large trees, we suggest the inclusion of small trees and the conservation of dense patches with low kinship as potential strategies for strengthening the reproductive status of tropical trees.

Mantled howler monkey spatial foraging decisions reflect spatial and temporal knowledge of resource distributions.

An animal's ability to find and relocate food items is directly related to its survival and reproductive success. This study evaluates how mantled howler monkeys make spatial foraging decisions in the wild. Specifically, discrete choice models and agent-based simulations are used to test whether mantled howler monkeys on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, integrate spatial information in order to maximize new leaf flush and fruit gain while minimizing distance traveled. Several heuristic models of decision making are also tested as possible alternative strategies (movement to core home range areas instead of individual trees, travel along a sensory gradient, movement along arboreal pathway networks without a predetermined destination, straight-line travel in a randomly chosen direction, and random walks). Results indicate that although leaves are the single most abundant item in the mantled howler monkey diet, long-distance travel bouts target the areas with the highest concentrations of mature fruits. Observed travel patterns yielded larger estimated quantities of fruit in shorter distances traveled than all alternative foraging strategies. Thus, this study both provides novel information regarding how primates select travel paths and suggests that a highly folivorous primate integrates knowledge of spatiotemporal resource distributions in highly efficient foraging strategies.

Spatial patterns of sapling mortality in a moist tropical forest: consistency with total density‐dependent effects

Density‐dependent mortality (DDM) is major driver of species coexistence in tropical forests. We assessed the occurrence and strength of this mechanism among saplings (i.e. trees with a diameter of 1–4 cm) in the moist tropical forest of Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama, over six inter‐census periods (26 years), by using spatial point pattern analysis. We considered conspecific density‐dependent mortality, but also total DDM (i.e. the effects of conspecific and heterospecific neighbours all together) upon saplings of all species (i.e. at the community level), and on saplings of light‐demanding and shade‐tolerant ones, separately (i.e. at the light‐guild level). We also analysed the effects of conspecific DDM at the community and light‐guild levels. Conspecific density‐dependent mortality affected a lower proportion of species than was to be expected. Its strength was not significantly related with species abundance, and it had relatively weak effects at the community and light guild levels. Conversely, we detected a significant spatial signature of total DDM among all saplings, and among saplings of the light‐demanding and shade‐tolerant species, but its strength showed pronounced temporal variation. Total DDM among light‐demanding saplings was stronger than among shade‐tolerant ones and its effects were particularly marked 10–15 years after the occurrence of unusually severe droughts associated with El Niño events. Our study indicates that conspecific DDM is relatively unimportant among saplings in comparison with total DDM at community and light‐guild levels. This finding contrasts strongly with the results for seedlings, where conspecific DDM was constituted the dominant process. The pronounced temporal variations observed in the occurrence and strength of total DDM among saplings indicate that time‐varying events associated with climatic disturbances such as canopy openings or episodes of high recruit emergence might be important drivers of this process. They also emphasize the importance of considering time frames longer than one decade to study density‐dependent effects among saplings in tropical forests.

Predicting spatial variations of tree species richness in tropical forests from high-resolution remote sensing.

There is an increasing interest in identifying theories, empirical data sets, and remote-sensing metrics that can quantify tropical forest alpha diversity at a landscape scale. Quantifying patterns of tree species richness in the field is time consuming, especially in regions with over 100 tree species/ha. We examine species richness in a 50-ha plot in Barro Colorado Island in Panama and test if biophysical measurements of canopy reflectance from high-resolution satellite imagery and detailed vertical forest structure and topography from light detection and ranging (lidar) are associated with species richness across four tree size classes (>1, 1-10, >10, and >20 cm dbh) and three spatial scales (1, 0.25, and 0.04 ha). We use the 2010 tree inventory, including 204,757 individuals belonging to 301 species of freestanding woody plants or 166 ± 1.5 species/ha (mean ± SE), to compare with remote-sensing data. All remote-sensing metrics became less correlated with species richness as spatial resolution decreased from 1.0 ha to 0.04 ha and tree size increased from 1 cm to 20 cm dbh. When all stems with dbh > 1 cm in 1-ha plots were compared to remote-sensing metrics, standard deviation in canopy reflectance explained 13% of the variance in species richness. The standard deviations of canopy height and the topographic wetness index (TWI) derived from lidar were the best metrics to explain the spatial variance in species richness (15% and 24%, respectively). Using multiple regression models, we made predictions of species richness across Barro Colorado Island (BCI) at the 1-ha spatial scale for different tree size classes. We predicted variation in tree species richness among all plants (adjusted r² = 0.35) and trees with dbh > 10 cm (adjusted r² = 0.25). However, the best model results were for understory trees and shrubs (dbh 1-10 cm) (adjusted r² = 0.52) that comprise the majority of species richness in tropical forests. Our results indicate that high-resolution remote sensing can predict a large percentage of variance in species richness and potentially provide a framework to map and predict alpha diversity among trees in diverse tropical forests.

Teasing apart crypsis and aposematism - evidence that disruptive coloration reduces predation on a noxious toad

Both cryptic and aposematic colour patterns can reduce predation risk to prey. These distinct strategies may not be mutually exclusive, because the impact of prey coloration depends on a predator's sensory system and cognition and on the environmental background. Determining whether prey signals are cryptic or aposematic is a prerequisite for understanding the ecological and evolutionary implications of predator–prey interactions. This study investigates whether coloration and pattern in an exceptionally polymorphic toad, Rhinella alata, from Barro Colorado Island, Panama reduces predation via background matching, disruptive coloration, and/or aposematic signaling. When clay model replicas of R. alata were placed on leaf litter, the model's dorsal pattern – but not its colour – affected attack rates by birds. When models were placed on white paper, patterned and un-patterned replicas had similar attack rates by birds. These results indicate that dorsal patterns in R. alata are functionally cryptic and emphasize the potential effectiveness of disruptive coloration in a vertebrate taxon.

Applying data mining techniques for spatial distribution analysis of plant species co-occurrences

The continuous growth of biodiversity databases has led to a search for techniques that can assist researchers. This paper presents a method for the analysis of occurrences of pairs and groups of species that aims to identify patterns in co-occurrences through the application of association rules of data mining. We propose, implement and evaluate a tool to help ecologists formulate and validate hypotheses regarding co-occurrence between two or more species. To validate our approach, we analyzed the occurrence of species with a dataset from the 50-ha Forest Dynamics Project on Barro Colorado Island (BCI). Three case studies were developed based on this tropical forest to evaluate patterns of positive and negative correlation. Our tool can be used to point co-occurrence in a multi-scale form and for multi-species, simultaneously, accelerating the identification process for the Spatial Point Pattern Analysis. This paper demonstrates that data mining, which has been used successfully in applications such as business and consumer profile analysis, can be a useful resource in ecology.

The Butterflies of Barro Colorado Island, Panama: Local Extinction since the 1930s.

Few data are available about the regional or local extinction of tropical butterfly species. When confirmed, local extinction was often due to the loss of host-plant species. We used published lists and recent monitoring programs to evaluate changes in butterfly composition on Barro Colorado Island (BCI, Panama) between an old (1923–1943) and a recent (1993–2013) period. Although 601 butterfly species have been recorded from BCI during the 1923–2013 period, we estimate that 390 species are currently breeding on the island, including 34 cryptic species, currently only known by their DNA Barcode Index Number. Twenty-three butterfly species that were considered abundant during the old period could not be collected during the recent period, despite a much higher sampling effort in recent times. We consider these species locally extinct from BCI and they conservatively represent 6% of the estimated local pool of resident species. Extinct species represent distant phylogenetic branches and several families. The butterfly traits most likely to influence the probability of extinction were host growth form, wing size and host specificity, independently of the phylogenetic relationships among butterfly species. On BCI, most likely candidates for extinction were small hesperiids feeding on herbs (35% of extinct species). However, contrary to our working hypothesis, extinction of these species on BCI cannot be attributed to loss of host plants. In most cases these host plants remain extant, but they probably subsist at lower or more fragmented densities. Coupled with low dispersal power, this reduced availability of host plants has probably caused the local extinction of some butterfly species. Many more bird than butterfly species have been lost from BCI recently, confirming that small preserves may be far more effective at conserving invertebrates than vertebrates and, therefore, should not necessarily be neglected from a conservation viewpoint.

Identification of Novel Gammaherpesviruses in Ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) and Bobcats (Lynx rufus) in Panama and Colorado, USA.

Gammaherpesviruses (GHVs) have been identified in many species and are often associated with disease. Recently, we characterized three novel felid GHVs in domestic cats (Felis catus), bobcats (Lynx rufus), and pumas (Puma concolor). We investigated whether free-ranging ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) and bobcats are infected with additional GHVs. We screened DNA samples from ocelots on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, and bobcats in western Colorado, US, by using a degenerate nested PCR that targets the GHV glycoprotein B gene. We identified a novel GHV glycoprotein B sequence in two ocelots and a second novel sequence in a bobcat, which is distinct from the previously characterized bobcat GHV (Lynx rufus GHV 1). Utilizing additional degenerate and virus-specific PCRs, we extended these sequences to include 3.4 kilobases of the GHV glycoprotein B and DNA polymerase genes. These sequences identify the first GHV detected in ocelots and the second GHV in bobcats. These viruses were provisionally named L. pardalis GHV 1 and Lynx rufus GHV 2, respectively. The viruses are most closely related to recently identified GHVs of the Percavirus genus found in domestic cats (F. catus GHV 1) and bobcats (L. rufus GHV 1), suggesting that a cluster of felid GHVs exists within the Percavirus genus.

Geospatial observations on tropical forest surface soil chemistry

At plot scales (<1 km2) used to study tropical forest plant communities the causes of spatial heterogeneity of soils are disputed. We collected, georeferenced, and chemically analyzed a large spatial sample of soil cores (n = 625 sites, 6.25 cm diameter × 10 cm depth cores) on an approximately 28 m regular grid from the Barro Colorado Island (BCI) 50‐ha (0.5 km2) forest dynamics plot (FDP), Republic of Panama (9.15° N, 79.8° W). Here we present these data for general use. We also present differential GPS measurements of the plot corners for the BCI 50‐ha FDP, which aid in geospatial research in one of the most studied tropical forests. Further, we present a free open source command line software program written in Python that allows point data referenced to the plot coordinate system to be converted to a projected coordinate reference system for geospatial research. Together, the data sets allow for testing the drivers of soil heterogeneity in a tropical tree community using a wide variety of geospatial data sources.