In October and November 1993 Costa Rica and Panama detected indigenous transmission of dengue fever in their territories. The reappearance of the disease in these countries occurred after more than 40 years of absence in Costa Rica and more than 50 years in Panama. Consequently, there are no longer any continental Latin American tropical countries freefrom denguefever. In the last 10years, with...

BACKGROUND The role of meteorological factors on influenza transmission in the tropics is less defined than in the temperate regions. We assessed the association between influenza activity and temperature, specific humidity and rainfall in 6 study areas that included 11 departments or provinces within 3 tropical Central American countries: Guatemala, El Salvador and Panama. METHOD/FINDINGS Lo...

Physalaemus pustulosus, a small leptodactylid frog with South American affinities, ranges across northern South America through Middle America to southern Mexico. To investigate its geographic variation and evolutionary origins, we analysed the presumptive gene products of 14 allozyme loci and sequenced a portion of the mitochondrial COI gene from individuals sampled throughout the distribution...

Expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) studies are an integral tool to investigate the genetic component of gene expression variation. A major challenge in the analysis of such studies are hidden confounding factors, such as unobserved covariates or unknown subtle environmental perturbations. These factors can induce a pronounced artifactual correlation structure in the expression profiles, ...

[1] Hydrographic transects suggest an eastward flow with a subsurface core along the entire southern boundary of the Caribbean Sea. The transport of the coastal limb of the Panama-Colombia Gyre (PCG), known as the Panama-Colombia Countercurrent, decreases toward the east (from 6 Sv off Panama), as water is lost into the recirculation of the PCG. Off Panama, the flow is strongest at the surface,...

Panama disease caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense infection on banana is devastating banana plantations worldwide. Biological control has been proposed to suppress Panama disease, though the stability and survival of bio-control microorganisms in field setting is largely unknown. In order to develop a bio-control strategy for this disease, 16S rRNA gene sequencing was used to assess th...

In late 1994, for the first time in 17 years, dengue type 3 virus (DEN-3) was isolated from autochthonous dengue cases in the Americas. Two confirmed DEN-3 cases occurred in children in Managua, Nicaragua, in October of last year, and two others in patients in Panama (in the provinces of Chiriqui and Panama) in October and November. Genetic typing of the first DEN-3 isolate from Panama by the C...

This research compared the effectiveness of Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) outreach programs in New Mexico, Panama, and Chile. Understanding the role of human demographics, disease ecology, and human behavior in the disease process is critical to the examination of community responses in terms of behavior changes. Attitudes, knowledge, and behavior across three populations were measured th...

We measured in situ inherent optical properties and seagrass maximum depth distribution in widely differing optical water types, including turbid green waters of the Indian River Lagoon (IRL, Florida, USA), a mix of turbid and clear waters in Panama, and very clear waters in Belize. We used Hydrolight to model in situ spectral energy distributions and measured leaf absorbance spectra (Thalassia...

Shorebirds are among the most migratory of all birds and spend the majority of the year in a small number of essential wintering and migratory staging areas. As these birds take no notice of political borders, their conservation represents an international challenge (Myers 1983, Myers et al. 1987, Morrison & Myers 1989), one whose importance is emphasized by recent declines in North American sh...