🍁 Alex Smith 🍁

@alexsmithants

Assoc. Prof of #Biology at UofG, Guelph, ON, Canada. Inspired by the #Biodiversity in ACG, Costa Rica. #Ecology, #Evolution, #Entomology Opinions my own & oh so rarely overlap with my employer. he/him www.malexsmith.com www.youtube.com/@Alex_Smith_Ants

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🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· 2d

🧪 Take a second 2 participate in an auditory study of biodiversity & nature perception by @biodiful.bsky.social Available in Spanish, French or English You will hear short recordings from tropical forests across Costa Rica. Choose the 1 you prefer the most. www.biodiful.org#/soundscapes...

screen grab of project website reading: Voices of the Tropical Forest
Welcome, and thank you for taking part in our survey!

This survey aims to evaluate people’s preference for tropical forests natural acoustic environments (soundscapes). We will present you with a series of short (5 seconds) recordings from forests across Costa Rica. For each pair, simply choose the one you prefer the most. The questionnaire will take about 5 minutes to complete. At the end, you will be asked to answer a few additional questions.

- The recordings were made in tropical forests in Costa Rica (hundreds of locations!). They consist of background sounds (sometimes quite loud) and foreground sounds, including birds, insects, other animals, and occasionally human activities.
- Please fill out this survey on a device with good audio quality and/or ideally wearing headphones.
- The recordings may be of variable loudness, we recommend starting on a lower volume and turning up the level as appropriate.
- Only adults can be included in this study (18+ years old)
- The survey is open till October 30, 2026 and is also available in French and Spanish.

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· 4d

🧪 🪰 🐜🪲🐞🦗🐛🦋🪳🦟 All the data is available here: doi.org/10.5683/SP3/... @gdfcf.bsky.social @rpuschen.bsky.social 🧵 end.

Image from ACG forests at ~1000m on Volcan Cacao - home to incredible insect diversity

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· 4d

🧪🧵 🪰 🐜🪲🐞🦗🐛🦋🪳🦟 Thanks to all co-authors, in particular José A. Hernández Ugalde from CONAGEBio, & all associated with ACG & GDFCF – the hybrid association formed to aid with the development, protection, & sustainability of ACG. doi.org/10.1139/gen-... @gdfcf.bsky.social @rpuschen.bsky.social

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· 4d

🧪🧵 🪰 🐜🪲🐞🦗🐛🦋🪳🦟 Nearly 4 million records and 152 891 species. That’s a lot! (and there’s more to be found!) doi.org/10.1139/gen-... @gdfcf.bsky.social @rpuschen.bsky.social

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· 4d

🧪🧵 🪰 🐜🪲🐞🦗🐛🦋🪳🦟 Were there patterns in what groups we found? 🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰A LOT OF FLIES 🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰 (and also loads of Hymenoptera, Coleoptera and Hemiptera). doi.org/10.1139/gen-... @gdfcf.bsky.social @rpuschen.bsky.social

Figure S2. Frequency of BINs for most Orders and Families collected across in 28 localities from 2017 to 2023, using Malaise traps.

image of the parasitoid tachind fly Santarosamyia woodrum (female paratype) from Part of: Fleming AJ, Smith MA, Hallwachs W, Janzen D (2025) A new genus and a new species in the tribe Eryciini (Diptera, Tachinidae) from Area de Conservación Guanacaste in north-western Costa Rica. Biodiversity Data Journal 13: e161853. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.13.e161853

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· 4d

🧪🧵 🪰 🐜🪲🐞🦗🐛🦋🪳🦟 After nearly 4 million records, we found extremely high turnover. Most species were exclusive to a single region & each life zone harbors unique assemblages, strongly associated with temperature and precipitation doi.org/10.1139/gen-... @gdfcf.bsky.social @rpuschen.bsky.social

Figure S9. A comparison of betadiversity decay when calculated as Bray Curtis (A, C, E) dissimilarity where points are coloured by the difference in mean annual temperature (A), precipitation (C) or elevation (E) from the 28 Costa Rican locations. Irrespective of index, the sites that are farther apart geographically and by some combination of annual temperature, precipitation or elevation are the most dissimilar.

Figure S6. Non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination (NMDS) based on the Bray–Curtis coefficient of community dissimilarity calculated from the 28 localities by 152 891 BIN incidence matrix of Costa Rica insects. Two of the significant vectors here (mean temperature, mean annual precipitation) were derived from the 30 arc-second (1km) resolution of future bioclimatic variables from the ACCESS-ESM1-5 climate model under the SSP5-8.5 emissions scenario for the 2021-2040 period in WorldClim version 2.1.

Consensus tree of localities derived from 100 bootstrap replicates, using UPGMA based on Jaccard’s distance.,

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· 4d

🧪🧵 🪰 🐜🪲🐞🦗🐛🦋🪳🦟 Only 3.6% of species we recovered were linked to formal names and so we used DNA barcode derived ‘BINs’ as species proxies. doi.org/10.1139/gen-... @gdfcf.bsky.social @rpuschen.bsky.social

image of a staphylinid beetle with a staphylinid DNA barcode behind it

image of a micrograstrine wasp with a microgastrine wasp dna barcode behind it

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· 4d

🧪🧵 🪰 🐜🪲🐞🦗🐛🦋🪳🦟 Most samples emerged from Malaise traps in national biodiversity initiative, BioAlfa. We analysed these Malaise traps across Costa Rica sampled between 2017 and 2023. doi.org/10.1139/gen-... @gdfcf.bsky.social @rpuschen.bsky.social

Janzen and Hallwachs 2019 article about bialfa, https://journal.lib.uoguelph.ca/index.php/ibol/article/download/5526/5454,

Image of Malaise trap at 1300m on Volcan Cacao, ACG

images of malaise traps and forest at 1500m in cloud forest (top) and 8 m elevation in tropical dry forest (bottom)

image of insects in Malaise trap head at 8m elevation in tropical dry forest.

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· 4d

🧪 🪰 🐜🪲🐞🦗🐛🦋🪳🦟 We analysed 3.78 million DNA barcodes from 152,891 Costa Rican insect species. Our results reveal limited community overlap across ecosystems, suggesting unique species assemblages in each life zone. doi.org/10.1139/gen-... @gdfcf.bsky.social @rpuschen.bsky.social 🧵

collage of from top left going clockwise: microgastrine wasp with DNA barcode, Malaise trap at 1300 on Volcan Cacao, forest at 1500m on Volcan Cacao, three ACG volcanos, map of the predicted spatial distribution of insect diversity patterns across mainland Costa Rica. Each color represents one of the seven mainland distribution patterns delineated here. Central image of GDFCF associated people working on the paper.
Collage of authors: Clockwise from top left: Jenny Phillips, Roberto Fernandez, Jose Ugalde, Alex Smith, Jose Fernandez Triana, Mike Sharkey, Dan Janzen, Winnie Hallwachs, Rob Puschendorf and Ronald Zuniga

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· 18d

🧪 🪲 🌋 🌡️ The little things of ACG are teaching us much about the world. We enthusiastically thank ACG for protecting & preserving these species & spaces. @gdfcf.bsky.social @alexandreloureiro.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

photo of cloud forest at the top of Volcan Cacao

photo of Dan and Winnie and Alex at the Malaise trap at the top of Volcan Cacao

photo of Al and Alex at the top of Volcan Cacao

gigapan of cloud forest at the top of Volcan Cacao

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· 18d

🧪 🪲 🌋 🌡️ However, as predicted by Janzen’s Mountain Passes, most of these species do not move much; and eventually, there will be nowhere higher to go. @gdfcf.bsky.social @alexandreloureiro.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧵

photo of Dan Janzen at the top of Volcan Cacao

photo of rain/cloud forest intergrade on Volcan Cacao

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· 18d

🧪 🪲 🌋 🌡️ How to deal with the climate crisis? Refuge in the soil may provide temporary respite from rising temp. Larger spp that can move may move upslope and find respite in cooler temperatures. @gdfcf.bsky.social @alexandreloureiro.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧵

a photo of an irridescent green ACG staphylinind

Hawkins plot_volcan_cacao_la_cima
Departures from the norm in the cloud forest at Volcan Cacao are shown here as vertical bars coloured by how high above, or below that norm each day was. Temperatures in the cloud forest are increasing. Image credit: Alex Smith

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· 18d

🧪 🪲 🌋 🌡️ Tropical forest communities are vulnerable across elevation in different ways. This highlights the critical protective role that the ÁCG plays in preserving habitat these species and others like them. @gdfcf.bsky.social @alexandreloureiro.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧵

A year of temperature across elevation
A year of daily maximum temperature values across the elevational gradient sampled here (hot dry forests at the bottom moving up slope through mid-elevation rain forest and into high elevation cloud forests). Each day at each of eight locations is shown as a vertical bar with the colour of that bar illustrating the intensity of the daily maximum temperature. Image credit: Alex Smith

a species of staphylinid from the genus Stenus from ACG

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· 18d

🧪 🪲 🌋 🌡️ High-elev cloud forest spp r likely not capable of dealing with the coming temp. Low-elev dry forest spp, have higher heat tolerances, but r already exposed to temps that can exceed their thermal limits. @gdfcf.bsky.social @alexandreloureiro.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧵

photo of rain forest above the station on volcan cacao

photo of dry forest above near Santa Rosa

image from the paper illustrating how the safety margin of the soil (difference between heat tolerance of species and the 215 averaged maximum soil temperature of the collection site) changes with elevation

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· 18d

🧪 🪲 🌋 🌡️ Diverse tropical leaf litter-dwelling rove beetles in Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) Costa Rica (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), show how thermal tolerance can change with elevation. @gdfcf.bsky.social fcf.bsky.social @alexandreloureiro.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

image from paper illustrating the decline with elevation of environmental temperature and the CTmax.

photo of an acg staphylinid with coloured text of a DNA barcode

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· 18d

🧪 🪲 🌋 🌡️ When are things too hot to handle? Our new paper on insect thermal tolerance across elevation in @pnas.org nas.org suggest perhaps not too far in the future. @gdfcf.bsky.social sky.social @alexandreloureiro.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧵

photo of dorsal view of 15 species of staphylinid from ACG

photo of an array of tubs containing ACG staphylinids with light in the background

photo of strangler fig standing in cloud in ACG

photo of co-authors Smith and Loureiro in ACG

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· Jun 29

🧪🧵 🪰 🐜🪲🐞🦗🐛🦋🪳🦟 In many ways, the deeper story is that patient, long-term inventory work in one very special place, involving the people of that place, has generated insights about biodiversity at a global scale. @gdfcf.bsky.social doi.org/10.1073/pnas... grateful to have been part of the team🧵

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· Jun 29

🧪🧵 🪰 🐜🪲🐞🦗🐛🦋🪳🦟 Highly collaborative work is directly rooted in decades of biodiversity inventory in ACG — the Lep inventory begun by Dan Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs, the work of the #parataxonomists, Malaise trapping, DNA barcoding, and global taxonomic collaborations. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Parataxonomist Harry Ramirez tending a Malaise trap on Volcan Cacao, Area de Conservacion Guanacaste

Parataxonomist Guillermo Pereira, tending a Malaise trap on Volcan Rincon de la Vieja in Area de Conservacion Guanacaste

Parataxonomist Manuel Pereira, tending a Malaise trap on Volcan Rincon de la Vieja in Area de Conservacion Guanacaste

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· Jun 29

🧪🧵 🪰 🐜🪲🐞🦗🐛🦋🪳🦟 Using different kinds of sampling, including parasitoids reared from caterpillars and collected using Malaise traps, we extrapolate to a conservative estimate of how many species of insects exist in ACG, and then, by comparing to other taxa, the world. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Malaise trap contents in Area de Conservacion de Guanacaste

Caterpillar rearing barn (Estacion Cacao) in Area de Conservacion Guanacaste

Malaise trap in the forest in Area de Conservacion Guanacaste

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· Jun 29

🧪🧵 🪰 🐜🪲🐞🦗🐛🦋🪳🦟 We begin by estimating how many species of microgastrine wasp there may actually be - based on (the!) Anne Chao's estimation using DNA barcoded wasps from all collection methods.

DNA barcode for Apanteles parasitoid wasp included in this paper

Image of wasp and caterpillar by co-author Daniel H. Janzen. The images show the host caterpillar Euglyphis mariaDHJ03 adorned with white cocoons of Cotesia Whitfield25 next to the tube (5 cm) containing the newly eclosed wasps.

This microgastrine wasp was named by co-author Jose Fernandez-Triana in honour of Costa Rican parataxonomist Roberto Espinoza in recognition of his contribution to understanding the plant biology of ACG. The species is Snellenius robertoespinozai. The image is Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) so can reused provided the original author (Jose Fernandez-Triana) and the source are properly cited. The source is: Fernandez-Triana JL, Whitfield JB, Smith MA, Kula RR, Hallwachs W, Janzen DH (2015) Revision of the genera Microplitis and Snellenius (Hymenoptera, Braconidae, Microgastrinae) from Area de Conservacion Guanacaste, Costa Rica, with a key to all species previously described from Mesoamerica. Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift 62(2): 137-201. https://doi.org/10.3897/dez.62.5276

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· Jun 29

🧪🧵 🪰 🐜🪲🐞🦗🐛🦋🪳🦟 In our paper, we (an international team of authors) root our answer in the globally unique biodiversity hotspot, (and UNESCO World Heritage Site), in northwestern Costa Rica, the Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG). @gdfcf.bsky.social

Authors clockwise from top left: Laura Melissa Guzman, Robert K. Colwell, Michael J. Sharkey and Anne Chao (with Alan Turing). R.K.C., L.M.G, and M.J.S contributed equally to this work and the statistical underpinnings were critically dependent on Anne Chao's estimations.

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· Jun 29

🧪🧵 🪰 🐜🪲🐞🦗🐛🦋🪳🦟 How many species of insect are there? A seemingly simple question, but one that has been 'bugging' scientists for years. Our work out today suggests that there are millions more than we had previously expected. doi.org/10.1073/pnas... @gdfcf.bsky.social

This photo was taken in Area de Conservacion Guanacaste

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· Jun 29

🧪 Looks like a fantastic volume on "Life in natural microcosms" in PhilTransB of @royalsocietypublishing.org pitcher plants, lichen, bromeliads, bivalves, 🐌, insect symbionts oh my!

screen grab reading Life in natural microcosms
Ecosystems have been simulated within artificial constructs such as petri dishes, culture flasks, freshwater tanks and ecosystem chambers termed ecotrons. These simulations consist of artificial assemblages of organisms whose populations can be conveniently established. While these unnatural experiments have been valuable in elucidating important ecological and evolutionary processes, they fail to capture the totality of natural ecosystems. Natural microcosms are therefore ideal because within a small space they encapsulate all natural processes such as colonization, establishment, dispersal, nutrient cycling, predation, herbivory, photosynthesis, decomposition and waste management. Natural microcosms such as galls, pitchers of carnivorous plants, endosymbiont glands within insects, and splashpools in the intertidal zone are valuable model systems within which complete ecosystems and their processes can be experimentally validated. This theme issue brings together research to highlight research in this area.

cover photograph showing: Lower pitcher of Nepenthes bicalcarata emerging from a swampy area in the peatswamp forest of Brunei Darrussalam (Borneo). See Bazile et al. in this issue. Photograph by Vincent Bazile.

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· Jun 8

🧪📢🧪📢🧪📢 Volunteer opportunity in Costa Rica!! Join us in the Guanacaste Conservation Area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, to train as a Heritage Ambassador. Scan the QRcode for more information 🧪📢🧪📢🧪📢 Please, repost widely!

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· Jun 3

🧪 "Bilingualism predicts executive function resilience after COVID-19 in aging" doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Abstract: Bilingualism has been associated with enhanced executive functions (EFs), particularlyattentional control, and may confer protection against cognitive decline in older age. Atthe same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as a factor negatively affecting EFin older adults. Bilingualism might offer resilience against these COVID-related cogni-tive declines, especially in late adulthood, by bolstering cognitive reserve. The presentstudy collected data from 312 community-dwelling individuals spanning the adultlifespan (aged 18 to 80) to address two goals. Goal 1 was to identify a latent structurelinking bilingualism and EF across the adult lifespan, using a continuous multivariateapproach to help resolve controversies in the literature. Goal 2 was to determine whetherbilingualism can protect against post-COVID EF decline in the most vulnerable olderage group. We used partial least squares correlation (PLSC) analysis to extract latentrelationships between multiple bilingual experience measures (and relevant covariates)and a battery of EF task outcomes. Results revealed that individuals with greater bilin-gual experience (earlier L2 age of acquisition and greater L2 proficiency) showed amultivariate association with executive function measures, with the most consistentbehavioral expression observed in task-switching performance. Earlier L2 AoA wasmost robustly associated with better nonverbal task-switching performance among olderadults reporting a history of COVID, even when modeling COVID burden continuously(i.e., number of infections and recency of last infection). These findings demonstratethat bilingual experience contributes to resilience in attentional control under flexibletask-switching demands in older adults even in the context of COVID-19.

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· May 31

Yup. Terry Mosher aislin.com Montreal Gazette

Political cartoon in the Montreal Gazette by Terry Mosher that reads,

Merci a nos Hans , for the most exciting hockey here in years

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· May 28

Similar vibes to when Hölldobler and Wilson called Lasius neoniger a “dumpy little” ant archive.org/details/jour...

Text from Hölldobler and Wilson’s “Journey to the Ants” where they called Lasius neoniger “dumpy little”

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· May 28

Canadians - register your displeasure with Bill C-22 Please sign and share Petition e-7416 www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en...

Screen grab of petition that reads, We, the undersigned, citizens and residents of Canada, call upon the House of Commons to
1. Withdraw Bill C-22, An Act respecting lawful access, or vote against it at all stages;
2. Remove all suspicionless bulk metadata retention requirements from any future lawful access legislation; and
3. Explicitly prohibit any future lawful access legislation from requiring the weakening or
breaking of encryption.
Sign this Petition
If you wish to sign this petition, please provide

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· May 28

An isopod surveils its kingdom

An isopod on the near side of a log looking towards the forest
Out of focus in the background

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants· May 21

"How would you describe the rest of your life in five words" youtu.be/dpvYMAY1RN0?... #StephenColbert