And, Maybe On To Panama In May?

UAH is trying to establish some kind of university presence in Panama as some form of international campus, which is fine with me in general. To support this they've made some money available for faculty to visit Panama and work on establishing funded research projects. Naturally I stood up and said, "Sure! I can do that!". And it's true. I've proposed visiting the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in May for two weeks to meet staff scientists and hopefully start a research project. The project would be examining populations of a local livebearer fish, Brachyraphis episcopi, for trematode gill parasites and relating that to reproductive function. A surprising amount of research has been done with this species that shows that different populations respond to the presence or absence of a larger predatory fish in a stream. I'm curious if parasite load varies with such predatory pressure. Plus, as far as I can tell, no one has ever described such parasites from Panamanian freshwater fishes, so there's an unknown swathe of biodiversity to be described. The chances look good that the university will give me a reasonable amount of money to cover airfare and expenses at STRI. At least my passport is current.