Julián Monge-Nájera (born June 6, 1960)Monge-Nájera, Víctor y Julián Monge-Nájera. 2003. Costa Rica, Historia Natural. Editorial UNED, San José, Costa Rica. 320 páginas. is a Costa Rican ecologist, scientific editor, educator and photographer. He has done research with the following institutions: Universidad de Costa Rica, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and Universidad Estatal a Distancia. His scientific work has been featured by The New York Times; National Geographic; the BBC; Wired; IFLoveScience; The Independent (London) and Reader's Digest, among others. He is a member of the expert panel that sets the environmental Doomsday Clock; Onychophora curator in the Encyclopedia of Life; and team member of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Scientific career Monge-Nájera was the Editor of Revista de Biología Tropical/International Journal of Tropical Biology and Conservation for more than 30 years, but simultaneously published nearly 200 scientific articles and more than 20 books on a variety of biological topics and other areas.
Early work: mollusks and insects Early research focused on tropical freshwater turtlesMonge-Nájera, J. & B. Morera. 1987. Notes on the feeding behavior of a juvenile mud turtle (Kinosternon scorpioides). Herpetol. Rev. 18(1): 7-8. but soon Monge-Nájera moved to freshwater snails (Physidae).Monge-Nájera, J. 1984. Preliminary observations on the ecology and behavior of Aplexa fuliginea (Pulmonata: Physidae) in Costa Rica. Brenesia 22: 69-83. He described the vertical movements of the snails in the water column, embryo development and the presence of internal trematode parasites and of oligochaete worms on the snails' body surface.Monge-Nájera, J. 1984. Preliminary observations on the ecology and behavior of Aplexa fuliginea (Pulmonata: Physidae) in Costa Rica. Brenesia 22: 69-83. His study of invertebrate ecology always centered on the evolutionary origin of adaptations that allowed mollusks, velvet worms, and insects to inhabit particular places. After his early study of freshwater snails, he turned to terrestrial snails and how they could become agricultural pests after their original forests habitats, where they were rare, were cut down.Villalobos, C., J. Monge-Nájera & Z. Barrientos. 1995. Life cycle and field abundance of the snail Succinea costaricana (Stylommatophora: Succineidae), a tropical agricultural pest. Rev. Biol. Trop. 43(1-3): 181-188. Monge-Nájera's book on how to control terrestrial and aquatic mollusks of agricultural and medical importance has long been the only one available for tropical species.Monge-Nájera, J. 1997. Molluscs of economic and sanitary importance in the Tropics. Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica. 165 p. He published a detailed study on Hamadryas butterflies that analyzed their use of trees as territories and the why and how of sound production.Monge-Nájera, J., F. Hernández, M.I. González, J. Soley, J.A. Pochet & S. Zolla. 1998. Spatial distribution, territoriality and sound production by tropical cryptic butterflies (Hamadryas, Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae): implications for the "industrial melanism" debate. Rev. Biol. Trop. 46(2): 297-330. This study solved some questions that had been made but left unanswered by Charles Darwin in his Journal of Researches and in The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. His discoveries with butterflies were mentioned in National Geographic Magazine and The Reader's Digest With several colleagues he summarized previous knowledge on sound production by butterflies and described the basic ecology and field behavior of several species.Monge-Nájera, J. 1992. Clicking Butterflies, Hamadryas, of Panamá: Their biology and identification (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae). p. 567-572. In D. Quintero & A. Aiello (eds.). Insects of Panama and Mesoamerica: Selected Studies. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Read With H.F. Swanson, he reported that daily records of the Red Admiral butterfly (Vanessa atalanta) taken for more than 8000 consecutive days identified demographic patterns that can be missed in studies with less detailed observations.Swanson, H.F. & J. Monge-Nájera. 2000. The effects of methodological limitations in the study of butterfly behavior and demography: a daily study of Vanessa atalanta (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) for 22 years. Rev. Biol. Trop. 48(2/3): 605-614. In a copublication with I. Hedström, Monge-Nájera also found that larger fruit flies, which appear to have more sexual partners, are more frequently infected by sexually transmitted fungi.Hedström, I. & J. Monge-Nájera. 1998. Is sexually transmitted fungal infection evidence for size-related mating success in Neotropical guava fruit flies? Rev. Biol. Trop. 46(4): 1131-1134. With Ramírez and Chavarría, he found that fig wasps follow simple rules instead of complex calculations when defining the sex of offspring.William Ramírez-Benavides, Julián Monge-Nájera & Juan B. Chavarría. Sex ratio in two species of Pegoscapus wasps (Hymenoptera: Agaonidae) that develop in figs: can wasps do mathematics, or play sex ratio games? Rev. Biol. Trop. 57(3): 605-621. His work with Z. Barrientos found that even though the individual species change, the guild distribution within insect communities is similar among highland paramos of several countries, paralleling a phenomenon previously recorded in marine islands.Barrientos, Z. & J. Monge-Nájera. 1995. Geographic homogenity among insect communities in Neotropical paramos: a hypothesis test. Caldasia 18(86): 49-56.
Living fossils and biogeography In the decade of 1990 he published several works on the behavior, ecology and biogeography of velvet worms (Onychophora), a rare type of "living fossil". His studies included extant onychophorans and fossil species that lived in marine Cambrian communities. These studies were mainly coauthored with B.Morera and Hou Xianguang.Monge-Nájera, J. & X. Hou. 2000. Disparity, decimation and the Cambrian "explosion": comparison of early Cambrian and Present faunal communities with emphasis on velvet worms (Onychophora). Rev. Biol. Trop. 48(2/3): 333-351. Monge-Nájera is among those scientists who do not believe in a "Cambrian Explosion" and he published an ecological reconstruction of a Chinese Cambrian community that was surprisingly similar to extant shore communities.Monge-Nájera, J. & X. Hou. 2000. Disparity, decimation and the Cambrian "explosion": comparison of early Cambrian and Present faunal communities with emphasis on velvet worms (Onychophora). Rev. Biol. Trop. 48(2/3): 333-351. His 1995 work set more than a century of disconnected findings inside an evolutionary framework that explained the possible origin of the basic physiological, morphological and behavioral characteristics of the Onychophora, and also produced the first phylogeny that included both extinct and extant species.Monge-Nájera, J. 1995. Phylogeny, biogeography and reproductive trends in the Onychophora. Zool. J. Linn. Soc. (London) 114: 21-60. Contemporary work included some of the earliest experimental studies using these animals and identified the range of light frequencies that they can see.Monge-Nájera, J., Z. Barrientos & F. Aguilar. 1996. Experimental behaviour of a tropical invertebrate: Epiperipatus biolleyi (Onychophora: Peripatidae). Mem. Mus. Nac. Hist. Nat. 169: 439-434 He also produced two reviews that summarized the advances and limitations of historical and ecological biogeography.Monge-Nájera, J. 1999. Historical biogeography: Status and goals for the 21st century. Gayana 63(2): 165-170.Monge-Nájera, J. 2008. Ecological biogeography: A review with emphasis on genetic techniques, conservation and the neutral model. Gayana 72 (1): 102- 112.
Urban ecology and air pollution As a researcher of the Urban Ecology Laboratory at UNED (Costa Rica), Monge-Nájera has studied air pollution, long term vegetation change in cities, urban corridors and landscape quantification. Using tree trunk lichens as bioindicators, he reported that air pollution decreased after lead was eliminated from gasoline, explaining how topography and wind patterns disperse pollution in predictable routesMonge-Nájera, J. E. Neurohr Bustamante, VH. Méndez-Estrada. Use of a Geographic Information System and lichens to map air pollution in a tropical city: San José, Costa Rica 2013. Revista de Biología Tropical 61 (2), 557-563. and developed a new technique that reduces costs in pollution monitoring programs;Monge-Nájera, J., M.I. González, M. Rivas R. & V.H. Méndez-Estrada. 2002. A new method to assess air pollution using lichens as bioindicators. Rev. Biol. Trop. 50(1): 321-325. the method allows citizens (including school children) to identify health risks in their communities.Méndez Estrada, V.H. & J. Monge-Nájera. El uso de líquenes como biomonitores para evaluar el estado de la contaminación atmosférica a nivel mundial. Biocenosis 25 (1-2): 51-67. His long term vegetation change study found that after a century, habitat conditions can actually improveMonge-Nájera, J & Pérez-Gómez, G. 2010. Urban vegetation change after a hundred years in a tropical city (San José de Costa Rica). Rev. Biol. Trop. 58 (4): 1367-1386. thanks to bioalphabetization, and identified changes in the dangers faced by Roman ruins.Monge-Nájera, J. & Morera Brenes, B. 2014. Biodeterioration and biodegradation of Roman monuments: a comparison of the current status of 18th century paintings by the canalettos. International Journal of Conservation Science 5 (1 He also proposed detailed routes for urban corridors to improve cities for plants and animals that live in them,Monge-Nájera, J. 2013. Potencial de las capitales provinciales de Costa Rica para albergar corredores biológicos urbanos. Ambientico (232/233): 76-80. and was among the first ecologists to recognize that road mortality caused by vehicles is much higher among insects and other invertebrates than among mammals.Monge-Nájera, J. 1996. Vertebrate mortality in tropical highways: The Costa Rican case. Vida Silv. Neotrop. 5(2): 154-156. With Zaidett Barrientos he developed a quantitative method for landscape analysis that complements remote sensors at a very low cost and allows quantitative measures of changes through time,Monge-Nájera, J., Z. Barrientos & M. Zúñiga Solís. 2013. A satellite and ground evaluation of urban vegetation and infrastructure in the landscape of a tropical city: Heredia, Costa Rica. Cities and the Environment (CATE), 6 (1): 12. and published a route map for ecological restoration of the central region of Costa Rica.Barrientos, Z. & J. Monge-Nájera. 2010. Restauración Ecológica en la Meseta Central de Costa Rica. Biocenosis Vol. 23 (2) 32-37.
Chloroplasts, epiphyllous plants and bromeliads