Julian Monge Najera

Botanical research by Monge-Nájera has focussed on two areas, the evolution of chloroplasts and the ecology of plants that grow on other plants. As part of an international team led by USDA's K.C. Vaughn, he found that the anthocerote chloroplast is unique among the embryophytes and can be used in taxonomy at the generic level. Experiments with artificial leaves answered the old question of whether epiphyllous plants extract nutrients from their host and found that driptips kept leaves dry enough for epiphyllous plants to develop. He also tested a long-standing hypothesis about epiphyte distribution matching the Holdridge Life Zone System, and found that the correlation is poor. At the 100th anniversary of Picado's theoretical model of bromeliad colonization, he measured experimentally the effect of rain and fallen debris on macroinvertebrates that reached artificial water tanks in a forest.

After 2001, he started to publish on how humans interact with the environment, both from the point of view of human biology and urban ecology; in human biology mainly about the sociobiology of human sexuality in relation with sex work in Costa Rica. The published studies on sexuality have detailed censorship, and working conditions of prostitutes and how they are presented by the media. Later research also deals with human intimate behavior, and self-presentation of their personalities by glamour models. He also studied work-related diseases and how social interactions affect health self-care.

He wrote several textbooks used in Latin American colleges and high schools, including some on tropical natural history, ecology, general biology and one on sustainable development that is considered a landmark for its extensive use of cartoons. From the beginning of his career, Monge-Nájera included conservation in his work. His book with Z. Barrientos was meant to be a handbook for tourists who could feel disappointed by not seeing the jaguars and quetzals of travel ads: if they could understand the amazing stories behind the simplest bugs and leaves; their key idea: they would never get disappointed. In his 1994 anthology he defended the view that people from poor villages perceived conservation very differently from the powerful people in governments and NGOs and insisted that their voice be heard before policies were implemented. For many years he had a TV show about scientific rights and wrongs in movies in the official television channel of the University of Costa Rica. As a nature artist he illustrated several books for the Costa Rican Distance University and as a photographer his work was published in books by several Costa Rican publishers and by Fauna Magazine (New York). His website Tropinature includes several galleries of free-to-reproduce nature photographs as well as portraits and figure.

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 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. 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 extanct species. Contemporary work included some of the earliest experimental studies using these animals and identified the range of light frequencies that they can see. He also produced two reviews that summarized the advances and limitations of historical and ecological biogeography.

In the decade of 1990 Monge-Nájera produced several articles on the use of computers and Internet for distance education, which was in its early stage at the time. On a more philosophical line, he also published on the ethics of education and science in the times of Internet, and on the need to include people with disabilities when designing website and other products. He has published on the relationship between scientists working in rich and poor countries, insisting on the view that cooperation and quality research under more egalitarian conditions are needed among researchers.

Julián Monge-Nájera (born June 6, 1960 in San José 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 Magazine; the BBC; Wired; IFLoveScience; The Independent (London) and The 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.