News & Comment

States at the United Nations have begun negotiating a new treaty to strengthen the legal regime for marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Failure to ensure the full scope of fish biodiversity is covered could result in thousands of species continuing to slip through the cracks of a fragmented global ocean governance framework.

Metastatic disease remains invariably fatal. Until truly curative therapies are developed, can clinical oncology benefit from lessons learned in pest management?

Land policies around the world tend to focus on support for agricultural output. We argue that this leads to ineffective public expenditure, environmental harm and missed opportunities for the use of rural resources. Applying thinking centred on ecosystems services to the governance of rural land would secure greater social value.

As Bolivia approaches presidential elections in October 2019, the country’s environmental leadership is at stake. We discuss urgent challenges and opportunities for reconciling conservation and societal needs in this mega-diverse country.

Current mangrove planting schemes aimed at reversing global losses are prioritising short-term increases in area over long-term establishment. Without sound, evidence-based restoration policies, this approach could accelerate the demise of mangrove forests and the ecosystem services they provide.

The inauguration of Jair Bolsonaro as Brazil’s new president has heralded a rapid acceleration of the erosion of environmental protection measures in the country. Brazil’s scientific community should rally to provide evidence that this is economically and socially unwise.

New antibiotics are urgently needed to combat rising rates of resistance against all existing classes of antimicrobials. We highlight key issues that complicate the prediction of resistance evolution in the real world and outline the ways in which these can be overcome.

Macroscopic organisms from the late Ediacaran period have often been described as failed experiments in the history of life. We argue that the field of Ediacaran palaeobiology should dispense with unhelpful historical classification schemes and embrace phylogenetic systematics if we are to establish the evolutionary relevance of these fossils.

Since its inception, the East African Association for Palaeoanthropology and Palaeontology has brought together scholars and researchers who conduct research in palaeoanthropology, archaeology and palaeontology, creating a balanced forum for the study of human heritage in Africa.

Researchers in various contexts have long struggled with an apparent disconnect between an individual’s level of understanding of biological evolution and their acceptance of it as an explanation for the history and diversity of life. Here, we discuss the main factors associated with acceptance of evolution and chart a path forward for evolution education research.

Sociocultural transitions and medical advancements can disrupt evolutionary equilibriums underlying modern human anatomy, physiology and life history. Disentangling such complex biosocial evolutionary dynamics poses serious ethical questions but has strong potential for guiding public health policies.

Ash forests in North America and Eurasia are rapidly being lost to two invasive alien species: the emerald ash borer and Chalara ash dieback fungus. We argue that better regulatory policy and science-based intervention can help slow losses, and recommend an international consortium to coordinate science-based intervention.

Debate surrounding the dilution effect hypothesis in disease ecology has reached such intensity that it is stymying further research. Yet collaborative progress is important for human health and biodiversity conservation.

Biodiversity underpins the function of ecosystems. Here we discuss how biodiversity–ecosystem function theory could apply to our bodies and buildings, outline practical applications and call for further research.

Evidence overwhelmingly shows structural barriers to women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, and suggests that the onus cannot be on women alone to confront the gender bias in our community. Here, I share my experience as a scientist and a woman who has collected data during more than ten years of scientific training about how best to navigate the academic maze of biases and barriers.

Ensuring an environmentally friendly overhaul of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy will entail payments for environmental objectives, promoting High Nature Value Farmlands, improved flexibility and policy integration.

Globally, flora, fauna and many indigenous cultures have evolved to coexist sustainably with fire. We argue that the key to sustainable contemporary human coexistence with wildfires is a form of biomimicry that draws on the evolutionary adaptations of organisms that survive (and flourish) in the fire regimes in which they reside.

Indigenous knowledge and ecological science have complementary differences that can be fruitfully combined to better understand the past and predict the future of social-ecological systems. Cooperation among scientific and Indigenous perspectives can improve conservation and resource management policies.

Recently publicized killings of environmental defenders are the latest iteration of a long and tragic history of violent conflict over access to land and resources. To bring about effective change, we must first understand the drivers and conditions that lead to violence in the sphere of environmental and land conflict.

The emergence of chronic wasting disease among wild reindeer in Norway triggered the decision to eradicate an entire population of more than 2,000 animals. The cull, now complete, was a tremendously difficult process both politically and practically.