News & Views
How biodiversity can help to repel invaders
Some of the islands created in Gatun Lake by the formation of the Panama Canal.
Photo courtesy Vilant/
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The route of the Panama canal, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Map courtesy Peter Hermes Furian/
www.shutterstock.com When the USA flooded Panama’s Chagres River valley in 1910, as part of the construction work for the Panama Canal, Gatun Lake held the record as the world’s biggest reservoir. This record has now been surpassed, but researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), who are now studying invading lizards on the tiny islands that dot the lake, discovered that islands with native lizards act as another kind of reservoir.