Reviews & Analysis

Nature-based carbon projects are widely promoted as delivering both climate and biodiversity benefits. However, carbon accounting requirements can diverge from the needs of biodiversity conservation. This Perspective examines challenges related to additionality, leakage, permanence and unintended social and ecological impacts, highlighting limits to the utility of carbon markets for conservation.

Attributing biodiversity change to interacting human drivers requires causal frameworks that integrate observational, experimental and mechanistic approaches across scales. In this Perspective, the authors discuss an attribution framework to strengthen causal inference and guide more effective biodiversity management under rapidly changing global conditions.

The drivers of cognitive variation remain elusive. In this Perspective, Wooster et al. propose the predatory intelligence hypothesis, positing that the complex interactions between predator and prey promote cognitive variation on individual, developmental and evolutionary levels.

Climate model intercomparison projects have been essential in identifying mechanisms of human-caused climate change, but similar efforts in biodiversity science have lagged behind. This Perspective discusses existing biodiversity model intercomparison projects and identifies opportunities for their advancement in the future.

Scientists disagree about area-based conservation’s role in addressing biodiversity loss. This Perspective examines how conservation scientists, land systems scientists and political ecologists approach these debates differently and argues that environmental data justice frameworks can bridge epistemic divides, helping researchers to develop more effective and equitable conservation interventions.

Marine spatial planning (MSP) and ecosystem restoration are effective approaches to address marine and coastal biodiversity loss and meet Global Biodiversity Framework targets, but have been applied separately to date. This Perspective outlines how ecoscape restoration and climate-smart MSP can be aligned to deliver reciprocal benefits and accelerate biodiversity recovery.

Antarctica has a unique environment and geographic isolation that affect its biodiversity patterns. In this Perspective, the authors examine how five key ecological processes shape Antarctica’s biodiversity and use this information to establish predictions for future change in the region.

Although long neglected in biodiversity conservation policy, the importance of soil biodiversity is now recognized by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. This Perspective describes this important policy breakthrough and offers strategies to build on it for successful monitoring and conservation outcomes.

Historical ecology uses a wide and varied range of sources to investigate long-term dynamics of ecosystems, species and their traits, and different dimensions of nature–human interactions. This Perspective discusses the value of this approach for biodiversity and conservation science, and offers a strategy for the continued development of the field.

This Perspective explores the existing and potential applications of artificial intelligence in deep time biodiversity research as well as offer guidelines on equitable and ethical use of artificial intelligence methods.

The ecological importance of microclimate variation is increasingly recognized. This Perspective discusses the extent to which favourable microclimates (in other words, areas with temperature and precipitation within the niche of a species) can facilitate adaptation, plasticity, colonization of new patches and, ultimately, persistence under global change.

This Perspective argues for the use of genome engineering for restoring species genetic diversity and increase species resilience to environmental change. Genome engineering could be combined with traditional conservation approaches for more effective conservation initiatives.

This Perspective provides guidance about how to select the most appropriate type of interaction network for different research questions in ecology. Networks can vary according to the extent of node aggregation and the information that links represent; each kind of network formulation has advantages in different contexts.

Aquatic eDNA-based technologies offer the potential for universal and standardized biodiversity monitoring. In this Perspective, Altermatt et al. discuss how these technologies can help to achieve the targets of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework through informing appropriate policy and actions, and describe the next steps required for widespread and equitable use of these technologies.

Parasites and their hosts can have complex ecological interactions and evolutionary histories. This Perspective argues that parasites are a major driver of host speciation and outlines an empirical framework for testing this hypothesis.

The mycorrhizal symbiosis between plants and fungi is critical to the success of both partners. This Perspective explores how plant reliance on mycorrhizae varies across ecological scales and how the relationship shifts with changing ecological conditions.

In this Perspective, the authors explore several aspects that have shaped the practice of animal conservation translocation. They describe factors influencing how and where conservation translocation is applied, current challenges in the application and assessment of conservation translocation, and future implications of ‘de-extinction’ and the rise of synthetic biology.

Conservation efforts can be directed at multiple ecological scales, from species to ecosystems. This Perspective calls for conservation at the scale of ecological communities or assemblages and discusses the data and modelling advances that enable progress at this scale.

Wildlife are central to nature’s contributions to people (NCP) but are often overlooked in NCP policy and management. This Perspective presents evidence for the integral role of wildlife in supporting human well-being and proposes their recognition and incorporation into conservation decision-making as wildlife’s contributions to people (WCP).