With the financial assistance of Standard Oil and the Guggenheim Foundation, Beebe established his next research station in Caripito, a small city in Venezuela around west of Trinidad and Tobago. Beebe and his team used this station to study the ecology of the region and recorded how its inhabitants were affected by its cycle of wet and dry seasons. One important study which resulted from this region was the first documentation of rhinoceros beetles using their horns in competition between males, proving that their horns were an adaptation for sexual selection rather than for defense against predators. Although Beebe's research at Caripito was productive, he felt that the extremity of its wet-dry cycle made it impractical as a research station, and the expanding oil operations in the region were in danger of destroying the local environment. For these reasons, Beebe did not return to Caripito after his first season there.