The Bug I Shouldn’t Have Killed
One smashed bug. One gasp around the table. What came next became a documentary. by Josh Ault, Journalism Teacher, Spring Woods High School, Houston, TX…
Understory Surprises: Insect Richness in a Rainforest Vertical Study
What happens when you look for biodiversity on both the forest floor and in the rainforest canopy? During the Amazon Research Initiative for Educators (ARIE), educators and researchers used simple fruit-baited traps at the Amazon Conservatory of Tropical Studies (ACTS) in Peru to explore …
Different Year, Different Fish: Tracking Change in Amazon Floodplain Streams
Fish communities in the Peruvian Amazon floodplain experience strong seasonal and interannual variability driven by annual flood pulses. To examine how these dynamics influence local assemblages, Morpho researchers sampled fishes
Following the Beetles: Discovering Connections Between Plants and Insects in the Amazon
[ARIE 2025] Heliconia species are iconic in the Neotropics, but many remain surprisingly understudied in the Amazon rainforest. One of those is Heliconia juruana. Our research team studied populations in the Napo-Sucusari Biological Reserve near the ACTS Field Station, focusing on how leaf beetles from the Chrysomelidae family interact with these plants.
Learning by Doing: Educators Build a Long-Term Orchid Bee Inventory
[ARIE 2025] This summer, teachers became researchers at the ACTS Field Station, continuing a long-term inventory of orchid bee diversity. By documenting species richness and distribution from the forest floor to the canopy, they gathered data that will support future monitoring of environmental change.
What Makes a Morpho Field Program Exceptional?
What Makes a Morpho Field Program Exceptional? 1. Deep Immersion in a Biodiversity Hotspot Morpho’s professional development programs in the Amazon place you in the…
When Was the Last Time Professional Development Changed Your Life?
When Was the Last Time Professional Development Changed Your Life? A new Morpho impact survey has the answers! Summary: Professional development is often measured in…
What if We Start with AWE? Designing Classrooms for Transformation.
By Rosanna Ruiz, EdD, Morpho Institute, Board President Unlearning to Learn: How Awe Clears the Way for Deeper Learning What if one of the most…
Jaguar spotted by 3rd graders – pandemonium ensues
Guest Blog by Dr. Ben Olsen, Cedar Falls Schools, Iowa Did I just lose control of my classroom?? If someone had walked past my classroom…
Are Amazon forests ghosting us?
[From the Director] As we watch the rapid disappearance of forests around the world, it’s hard to ignore the growing phenomenon of “ghost forests”—areas once…
A Tree Falls in the Amazon: What happens next?
[ARIE 2024] Sunlight is critical to plant survival, accounting for the aggressive growth after a tree fall, fighting for the light available through the canopy gap. Seeds lie dormant underground, ready for rapid growth to take over the opening. Since rainforests store about half of the world’s carbon, understanding the new growth in a tree plot extends our knowledge of rain forest dynamics and carbon absorption that help us address climate changes in other ecosystems. Measuring changes in plant life, organisms and light density over time provides insight into how tropical rainforests evolve as carbon sinks for the world.
Heliconias & Leaf Beetles: Making the Connection
[ARIE 2024] Teacher researchers examined the relationship between Heliconia plants and leaf beetles in the Napo-Sucusari Biological Reserve, in the Peruvian Amazon. They found that larger Heliconia patches tend to support more beetles, and that Heliconia flowering patterns vary across colonies. These insights add to our understanding of tropical plant-animal interactions and demonstrate the ecological role of Heliconia as a host species of diverse insects in this ecosystem.