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Climate change has led to a significant decrease in streamflow, particularly in the Negro River in the Andes, posing water scarcity risks and necessitating effective management strategies, according to streamflow reconstruction and tree-ring data analysis.

Glacier melt sustained water discharge from South America’s mountain basins during a recent severe drought, but summer runoff from glaciers could drop by 48% in future megadroughts, worsening water scarcity, according to analyses of past and projected events.

A previously unsampled deep lineage in central Argentina was discovered that had distinctive genetic drift by 8,500 bp and persisted as the main Native American ancestry component in the region up to the present day.

Analysis of 128 high-coverage Indigenous American genomes shows extensive diversity shaped by several South American dispersals, ancient Australasian admixture, archaic introgression and long-term adaptation, indicating a far more complex evolutionary history than previously assumed.

Global analysis of obesity trends from 1980 to 2024 in 200 countries and territories using data from 4,050 population-based studies reveals that framing obesity as a single global epidemic masks the highly varied dynamics across countries and age groups.

Analysis of data on 971 bird species in natural habitat and cattle pasture in Colombia finds that near-national-scale losses of bird diversity greatly exceed losses recorded at the local scale, suggesting that extrapolations from local studies will severely underestimate biodiversity losses.

Latin Americans trace their ancestry to the admixture of Native Americans, Europeans and Sub-Saharan Africans. Here, the authors develop a novel haplotype-based approach and analyse over 6,500 Latin Americans to infer the geographically-detailed genetic structure of this population.

Synthetic aperture radar interferometry reveals that 19 Gt of ice is lost per year from glaciers in South America — mostly from Patagonia — contributing 0.04 mm annually to global sea-level rise.

Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

An Atlantic meridional overturning circulation slowdown drives widespread shifts in tropical rainfall through the propagation of high-latitude cooling into the tropical North Atlantic.

Genetic analyses in more than 15,000 individuals from across the Americas, including individuals with autism and family members, define the genetic landscape of autism in Latin American populations and identify significant overlap with other ancestries.

How the abrupt warming events recorded in Greenland ice cores during the last glacial cycle have influenced the tropical climate is not well known. Here the authors present new lake sediment data from the Peruvian Andes that shows that these events resulted in rapid glacier retreat and large reductions in lake level.

Selecting economically viable forest management strategies that deliver carbon storage and biodiversity benefits can be a difficult task. Now, research in the western Andes of Colombia shows that naturally regenerating forests can quickly accumulate carbon and support diverse ecological communities at minimal cost.

When 100 social and behavioural science claims were examined, 34% of reanalyses closely matched the original results, with 74% reaching the same conclusion, revealing limited robustness of single-path analyses and the need to address analytical uncertainty.

Glaciers lost 408 ± 132 Gt of mass during the hydrological year 2025, equivalent to 1.1 ± 0.4 mm sea-level rise. Since 1975, glacier mass loss has totalled 9,583 ± 1,211 Gt, equivalent to 26.4 ± 3.3 mm of sea-level rise, with six of the highest mass-loss years on record occurring in the past seven years.

Here, the authors present a timeline of human influence on the ecology of the Upano Valley (Ecuador) spanning the last 2770 years. They demonstrate how Pre- and Post- Columbian of maize cultivation and changing patterns of land use have produced a distinct forest composition today.

Exposome analyses across 34 countries showed that social exposures were associated with faster functional brain aging and physical exposures with faster structural brain aging.

The controls on plant functional diversity are unclear. Analysis of spectral data from the tree canopy in the Amazonian lowlands implies that plant functional traits are influenced by nutrient supply, which in turn varies with topography.

Genome-wide analyses of ancient DNA from individuals from California and Mexico shed light on the spread of Mexican ancestry to California and how it correlates with linguistic flow.

The second Global Amphibian Assessment finds that the status of amphibians is continuing to deteriorate globally, driven predominantly by climate change, disease and habitat loss.

Genomic analyses of ancient and modern common beans reveal that most domesticated traits were selected 2,500 years ago or earlier, but genetic erosion occurred only in the past 600 years. This decoupling indicates a weak selection pressure imposed by early Andean farmers.

The authors assess the impact of Spanish colonization on forest dynamics across the tropics, finding variable responses according to regional land use strategies, as well as other cultural, social and biophysical factors.

An analysis of 24,202 critical cases of COVID-19 identifies potentially druggable targets in inflammatory signalling (JAK1), monocyte–macrophage activation and endothelial permeability (PDE4A), immunometabolism (SLC2A5 and AK5), and host factors required for viral entry and replication (TMPRSS2 and RAB2A).

Using a global dataset of traded species, it is found that the highest levels of traded phylogenetic and functional diversity are from tropical regions, where high numbers of evolutionary distinct and globally endangered species occur.

The CMS experiment at CERN reports one of the highest-precision measurements of the W boson mass, finding it in line with standard model predictions and at odds with recent anomalous measurements.

Inventory data from more than 1 million trees across African, Amazonian and Southeast Asian tropical forests suggests that, despite their high diversity, just 1,053 species, representing a consistent ~2.2% of tropical tree species in each region, constitute half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees.

Assessing the effectiveness of protected areas requires sufficient monitoring data inside and outside of protected areas; such data are lacking in many tropical regions. Here the authors use robust citizen science data on bird occupancy to show that protected areas are effective in maintaining bird species diversity across eight tropical biodiversity hotspots.

Data from a variety of sources—including satellite, climate and soil data, as well as field-collected information on plant traits—are pooled and analysed to map the functional diversity of tropical forest canopies globally.

Potatoes originated in the Andes and were introduced in Europe in the sixteenth century. Using historical genomes, the authors show that European potatoes were closely related to Andean landraces and find signatures of admixture with Chilean genotypes in Europe.

The last glacial period was marked by rapid reorganizations of oceanic and atmospheric circulation. Speleothem records from the Amazon Basin suggest that precipitation variability was linked to these events.

The authors use a mechanistic microclimate model to model the below-canopy conditions for 300,000 tropical forest locations across 30 years. They show that small temperature increases have already resulted in novel temperature regimes across most sites, and highlight areas that may act as refugia.

The Amazon faces worsening droughts, yet little is known about large-scale variation in the physiological limits of Amazon trees. Here, the authors reveal family-level conservatism in embolism resistance and estimate that Brazilian and Guiana shield forests are more resistant than Western Amazonia forests.

A global analysis of 1,412 studies shows that one in five women and one in six men experienced sexual violence as children, highlighting the urgent need for evidence-based prevention and intervention programmes worldwide.

The potential of seasonal pumped hydropower storage (SPHS) plant to fulfil future energy storage requirements is vast in mountainous regions. Here the authors show that SPHS costs vary from 0.007 to 0.2 US$ m⁻³ of water stored, 1.8 to 50 US$ MWh⁻¹ of energy stored and 0.37 to 0.6 US$ GW⁻¹ of installed power generation capacity.

Machine-learning algorithms trained on 25,000 geolocated soil samples are used to create high-resolution global maps of mycorrhizal fungi, revealing that less than 10% of their biodiversity hotspots are in protected areas.

U-shaped glacial valleys dominate >10 ka since the last major glaciation and the transitions from glacier-dominated to fluvial regimes are poorly understood. Here, the authors use digital topographic data to show that glacial topography is rapidly replaced by fluvial topography where rock uplift rates are high.

A wooded flora thrived during the Late Miocene greenhouse climate in the currently hyperarid Peruvian desert, according to analysis of paleobotanical samples from the Pisco Formation, Peru.

The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.