Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Charles Doolittle Walcott reached an agreement with Federico Boyd to conduct a biological inventory of the new Canal Zone in 1910, and this survey was subsequently extended to include all of Panama.
==Historia==La historia del STRI comienza con un acuerdo establecido en 1910 entre el secretario del Instituto Smithsonian, Charles Doolittle Walcott y Federico Boyd, encaminado a facilitar el estudio de diversidad biológica de la Zona del Canal de Panamá.