David A. Donoso

This study examines how goat grazing affects ant community richness and functional traits in a tropical dry forest, finding reduced species richness and shifts in functional composition with higher degradation.

The paper describes two new turtle ant species from Ecuador using morphology and DNA barcoding, expands the known diversity of the genus, and highlights conservation concerns.

Integrating 1,794 records from museum collections, literature, GBIF, and iNaturalist with COI DNA barcoding establishes a checklist of 15 Bombus species and their floral interaction networks across continental Ecuador.

The paper examines insect seasonality in an ever-wet tropical forest, finding seasonal peaks in leaf production and herbivore abundance linked to climate and host phenology.

The study estimates cryptic species diversity in 22 insect assemblages on Barro Colorado Island, finding 10.6% of species are cryptic, with some groups showing higher proportions.

The paper introduces a large-scale chronosequence in the Ecuadorian Choco to study forest recovery, finding that forest structure, biomass, and species richness increase with regeneration time and approach old-growth levels after decades to centuries.

This study shows that undefended poison frogs accumulate low levels of alkaloids from their diet, suggesting passive accumulation as an intermediate step in the evolution of chemical defenses.

This study examines the dietary preferences of Rhinella alata, finding that it preferentially eats large, textured ants regardless of nutritional content, and avoids smaller ants even when abundant.