How have tropical oceans endured periods of environmental change over centuries and millennia? Did the reef environment shift after the arrival of humans in the isthmus of Panama thousands of years ago? These are some of the questions that scientists in the O’Dea lab at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute are hoping to answer by coring the ocean floor with six-meter-long aluminum pipes and then analyzing the contents extracted. In this episode we join the O’Dea lab in a coring expedition around Isla Iguana, a volcanic island in the Panamanian Pacific, and then back in the lab to explore some of their preliminary findings. For more information: stri.si.edu/biodiversa

Laura Marangoni is a Brazilian coral physiologist studying whether certain coral communities in the Panamanian Pacific have become resistant to climate change. We will join her in an expedition to Coiba National Park to collect corals and back in the laboratory as she explores the ins and outs of their immune system. Her research is part of the ROHR reef resilience project, an ambitious set of experiments in the Tropical Eastern Pacific aiming to uncover how coral reefs cope with environmental change, information that could potentially aid threatened corals around the world. For more information: stri.si.edu/biodiversa

Parecen mosaicos de baño, pero estas plaquitas cuadradas son una herramienta poderosa para estudiar las dinámicas entorno a los organismos más pequeños del arrecife: las algas, invertebrados marinos y peces chicos. Junto a un equipo de investigación del Smithsonian compuesto por Andrew Sellers, Carmen Schloeder, Mark Torchin y Natasha Hinojosa, viajaremos al Pacífico panameño para entender cómo las condiciones cambiantes del océano afectan a estos diminutos seres y su potencial impacto en todo el ecosistema marino. Para mayor información: stri.si.edu/biodiversa