PHOTO: CREDIT GOES HERE AS SHOWN; CREDIT GOES HERE AS SHOWNF
ramed by drifting clouds, eco-
logist Andrea Vincent surveyed
the hot tub–size dome her stu-
dents had erected here at nearly
3800 meters, on Costa Rica’s high-
est peak. “We did it!” she exulted.
Vincent’s team from the Univer-
sity of Costa Rica (UCR) had made
the steep 15-kilometer hike up to
this tropical alpine landscape—known as a
páramo—in a bid to understand how global
warming might affect the mosaic of shrubs
and grasses. The team had built 20 of the
open-topped domes, which block the winds
that buffet the slopes, thus slightly warm-
ing the plants inside and mimicking condi-
tions they might experience in the future.
“There are interesting questions here,”
Vincent says. One is whether the páramo
will be overrun by the oak trees now re-
stricted to lower, warmer elevations, threat-
ening its biodiversity.
Setting up the experiment in February
marked a professional milestone for the
39-year-old Vincent: It was her first major
project as a principal investigator on a grant
from Costa Rica’s government, after years of
working as a collaborator with other scien-
tists, often from the United States. “It’s really
cool when it’s your intellectual child,” she
says. And she’s pleased that her project is part
of a network of similar studies taking place in
Ecuador and Colombia. “It’s ciencia criolla,”
she boasts—a term of pride for projects led by
scientists from Latin America.
Costa Rica’s renowned biodiversity has
made it a go-to destination for field bio-
logists from around the world. But despite
its relatively small population of just 5 mil-lion, the country has also been successful at
nurturing its scientific talent in recent de-
cades. And Vincent, who grew up mostly in
the capital of San José and trained in Europe,
is one of a growing number of Costa Rican
scientists who have returned home to launch
their careers. It’s a trend the government has
encouraged, in part by filling open slots at
universities with Ph.D.-level scholars, includ-
ing some promised jobs before they were sent
abroad for advanced schooling.
The result, Vincent says, is a new genera-
tion of Costa Rican scientists that is better
trained and more ambitious, especially in her
field of tropical biology. They are no longer
satisfied playing support roles for visiting
researchers. “A lot of people are hungry to
do research that is competitive at the inter-
national level,” Vincent says.
The blossoming has a downside, however:
Although Vincent and other Costa Rican bio-
logists have managed to build careers at
home, the country is struggling to absorb all
of the researchers it is producing. “There is
no room in Costa Rica’s universities for the
number of scientists who are coming back,”
says plant ecologist Oscar Rocha, a Costa Ri-
can working at Kent State University in Ohio.
“A lot of well-trained scientists are now work-
ing for field stations or programs that are
training undergraduates,” he says, instead of
leading projects.
Granted, researchers in many nations face
a scarcity of faculty jobs. But it’s an especially
painful paradox given the natural riches
beckoning scientists in Costa Rica. “A lot of
us were pushed [to excel] in a good sense,”
says insect ecologist Fernando Soley Guardia,
who earned a Ph.D. in Australia and is nowBy Jocelyn Kaiser, on Mount Chirripó in Costa RicaNEWSA new corps of Costa Rican biologists is studying
the country’s rich biodiversity, including this
montane forest. Andrea Vincent (right) is running
experiments that explore how climate warming
might alter tropical alpine ecosystems. PHOTOS: (LEFT TO RIGHT) GERRY ELLIS/MINDEN PICTURES; J. KAISER/
SCIENCE25 SEPTEMBER 2020 • VOL 369 ISSUE 6511 1559