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We anticipate that conventional management approaches will be insufficient to protect coral reefs, even if global warming is limited to 1.5 °C. Emerging technologies are needed to stem the decline of these natural assets.
Targets for human development are increasingly connected with targets for nature, however, existing scenarios do not explicitly address this relationship. Here, we outline a strategy to generate scenarios centred on our relationship with nature to inform decision-making at multiple scales.
As sea levels rise, human displacement and subsequent land-use change may be as ecologically significant as the direct impacts of climate change. New work suggesting that mean sea level will rise further and faster than previously thought calls attention to the importance of these indirect processes for ecology and conservation.
Ecological research projects that span decades provide unprecedented insight into the functioning and dynamics of populations, communities and ecosystems. We should treasure and protect them.
The actions that lead to conservation successes and failures are the result of decision-making by individuals and organizations about what to conserve and how to conserve it. The psychology of decision-making should be considered when assessing conservation outcomes.
The pernicious problem of evidence complacency, illustrated here through conservation policy and practice, results in poor practice and inefficiencies. It also increases our vulnerability to a ‘post-truth’ world dealing with ‘alternative facts’.
Cancer evolution is central to poor outcomes of cancer therapies, enabling tumour progression and the acquisition of drug resistance. Joint efforts of evolutionary biologists, oncologists and cancer researchers are necessary to understand the principles of cancer evolution and to derive therapeutic strategies that can control it.
Increasingly, the pathogens that pose the greatest threats to humans are those that evolve to escape prior immunity and pharmaceutical interventions. In response, we need to employ evolutionary thinking to manage infectious disease.
Evolutionary principles and tools harbour the potential to revolutionize the struggle against medical challenges such as antibiotic resistance, infectious disease and cancer.
