Distinctly sculptured opaline phytoliths in soil and plant remains tell archaeologists which plants were present thousands of years ago. However, the production and purpose of these tiny glassy structures common in plant tissues is poorly understood. Dolores Piperno at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama and colleagues predict that a single genetic locus controls both lignin and phytolith production in squash (Cucurbita spp.), making phytoliths even better evidence of plant domestication events.

For the first time, scientists have ascribed a date – 1434 A.D., plus or minus 11 years – to the parchment of the controversial Vinland Map, possibly the first map of the North American continent. They used carbon-dating techniques to analyze the parchment on which the map is drawn. Their findings, published in the August edition of Radiocarbon, place the parchment of the map 60 years ahead of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the West Indies, and provide compelling evidence that the map is authentic.

Of the estimated 100,000 ships entering U.S. ports from foreign waters each year, only 30 percent reported ballast water management practices during the first two years that the U.S. Coast Guard mandated them to under the National Invasive Species Act of 1996. The finding prompted the Secretary of Transportation to recommend that future noncompliance carry a penalty. The recommendations stemmed from the report of the National Ballast Information Clearinghouse, operated by Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

Threats to Amazonian forests are no news, but a team led by William F. Laurance of the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute pinpoints specific causes of forest destruction in hopes of stemming the tide. Human population density, distance to the nearest highway and dry season severity best predict the extent of deforestation, the group reports in a Journal of Biogeography article released today.

Debunking the widely held belief that the self-pollinating shrub that produces the Arabica coffee bean has no use for insects, David W. Roubik of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute has demonstrated that pollination – particularly by non-native African honeybees – dramatically boosts the yield from coffee plants. The research emphasizes the importance of shade-grown coffee – not only to improve the flavor of the beverage, but also to maintain the habitat for naturalized honeybees and other pollinators.

Was the isolation of island living to blame for draining the nene gene pool to a puddle, or was it the 20th century population decline? How did they survive and recover when many other species of Hawaiian birds disappeared? Research reported in today’s Science suggests that a boom in the human population between 900 and 350 years ago may concurrently have affected the population size of the nene, and consequently diminished the species’ genetic variation.

A team of researchers led by William F. Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute found that the effect of habitat fragmentation on the structure, composition and function of rainforests is far-reaching and widely felt. It increases local extinction rates for many plant and animal species; drastically alters species richness and abundance; and disrupts ecological processes, as well as creating opportunities for non-native species invasions, altering forest carbon storage and increasing vulnerability to fire.

Cryptic stowaways in fouling communities or ballast water of seagoing ships may look exactly like local marine animals. But a comparison of brittlestars reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society suggests that human-aided dispersal gradually blurs important genetic distinctions between once-isolated groups.

The long-held belief that more than ten percent of tropical insect species feed on a specific plant host is revised by a team reporting their findings from six years of research in Papua New Guinea in the April 25, 2002 edition of the journal Nature. Previous estimates of global biodiversity may be as much as ten times too high because closely related plants tend to share insect herbivores.

A new book features results from one of the longest ongoing studies of forest fragmentation in the Amazon, the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments project, a joint effort of Brazil's National Institute for Research in Amazonia and the U.S. Smithsonian Institution.