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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.

After forest loss, public subsidies often encourage reforestation with tree plantations. This modelling study finds that between 1986 and 2011, Chile’s forest subsidies probably reduced biodiversity without increasing carbon stored in aboveground plant material.

Wood density is an important plant trait. Data from 1.1 million forest inventory plots and 10,703 tree species show a latitudinal gradient in wood density, with temperature and soil moisture explaining variation at the global scale and disturbance also having a role at the local level.

Analysis of ground-sourced and satellite-derived models reveals a global forest carbon potential of 226 Gt outside agricultural and urban lands, with a difference of only 12% across these modelling approaches.

How landscapes are arranged affects soil pathogenic fungi worldwide. The authors reveal the global pattern and pronounced scale-dependency of landscape complexity and land-cover quantity on soil pathogenic fungal diversity.

Examining drivers of the latitudinal biodiversity gradient in a global database of local tree species richness, the authors show that co-limitation by multiple environmental and anthropogenic factors causes steeper increases in richness with latitude in tropical versus temperate and boreal zones.

Alternative stable states in forests have implications for the biosphere. Here, the authors combine forest biodiversity observations and simulations revealing that leaf types across temperate regions of the NH follow a bimodal distribution suggesting signatures of alternative forest states.

Species’ traits and environmental conditions determine the abundance of tree species across the globe. Here, the authors find that dominant tree species are taller and have softer wood compared to rare species and that these trait differences are more strongly associated with temperature than water availability.

Research in the tropics is unevenly distributed across regions and biomes. Here, the authors find that moist broadleaf forests account for 73% of all tropical citations but cover 29% of the land area, while drier, climate-vulnerable areas with fewer trees remain under-sampled and under-cited.

Cultivated areas have expanded at the expense of forests, including primary and protected forests, in Southeast Asian highlands, according to an analysis of satellite imagery of the region.

Field survey data from 1,034 bird species worldwide are used to show that species’ sensitivities to habitat fragmentation are more strongly related to their dispersal ability than to latitude and past habitat disturbance, and that variation in dispersal ability is in turn strongly associated with climate.

Forests are sinks for the neurotoxic mercury, but the sinks have large uncertainties. Our direct gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) exchange measurements show that GEM exchange includes complex patterns of multiple pathways to different ecosystem compartments varying over time

cellSTAAR advances noncoding rare variant association analysis by integrating single-cell genomics data.

The Amazon rainforest is dominated by relatively few tree species, yet the degree to which this hyperdominance influences carbon cycling remains unknown. Here, the authors analyse 530 forest plots and show that ∼1% of species are responsible for 50% of the aboveground carbon storage and productivity.

Screening methods to predict the development of type 1 diabetes (T1D) prior to pancreatic β-cell disruption are currently lacking. Here, the authors perform proteomics analysis of cord serum samples obtained from a Swedish birth cohort and identify an inflammatory signature predictive of disease development with good accuracy, suggesting that an inflammatory stage during pregnancy predisposes to T1D.

The utility of UV vision for visualizing habitat structure is poorly known. Here, the authors use optical models and multispectral imaging to show that UV vision reveals sharp visual contrasts between leaf surfaces, potentially an advantage in navigating forest environments.

Managing forests for the supply of multiple ecosystem services (ES) is key given potential trade-offs among services. Here, the authors analyse how forest stand attributes generate trade-offs among ES and the relative contribution of forest attributes and environmental factors to predict services.

A global research network monitoring the Amazon for 30 years reports in this study that tree size increased by 3% each decade.

Long-term experiments under realistic conditions are beginning to deliver data on how forests — or at least some forests — will react to increasing levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere.

Climate change is known to influence insect-induced tree mortality. Research now reveals knock-on implications for municipal water quality in Colorado, USA. Significantly higher levels of harmful disinfection by-products and total organic carbon were found in treatment facilities using water from mountain pine beetle-infested basins compared with unaffected watersheds.

The CO2 fertilisation effect in forests remains controversial. Here, the authors disentangle the effect of CO2 on forest wood volume from other environmental factors, showing that elevated CO2 had a positive effect on wood volume in planted and natural US temperate forests.

The anterior cingulate cortex encodes affective pain behaviours modulated by opioids; targeting opioid-sensitive neurons through a new chemogenetic gene therapy replicates the analgesic effects of morphine, providing precise chronic pain relief without affecting sensory detection.

The authors report on imaging developments of solid-density plasmas and the current filamentation instability by means of the LCLS-XFEL at SLAC. This offers insights on the instability in the solid density region, stimulating new modelling of laser-solid interactions.

Using different high-resolution satellite datasets, this study analyses gross forest carbon loss associated with forest removal over the tropics during the twenty-first century focusing on regional fluxes and trends, as well as drivers of loss, both aspects rarely studied in previous work.

The MOUNTAINEER phase 2 trial demonstrated the efficacy and safety of tucatinib (HER2-targeted TKI) and trastuzumab (anti-HER2 antibody) in patients with HER2 + , RAS wildtype unresectable or metastatic colorectal cancer that had progressed on chemotherapy, resulting in the approval of the regimen. Here, the authors report the updated analysis of the MOUNTAINEER trial.

Integrating inventory data with machine learning models reveals the global composition of tree types—needle-leaved evergreen individuals dominate, followed by broadleaved evergreen and deciduous trees—and climate change risks.

There is a need for an easy-to-use clinical tool, that could predict favorable early PSA response and subsequently enhance early risk stratification, as well as guide treatment planning. Here, the authors show that based on patient data from four phase III randomized trials, Nadir androgen receptor pathway inhibitor (APRI)- Derived Integrative Response (NADIR) model predicts favorable early PSA response to ≤0.2 ng/mL by 6 months in metastatic hormone sensitive prostate cancer (mHSPC) patients initiating treatment with an APRI.

Continental export of silicon to the coast is linked to ocean carbon sinks, but terrestrial silicon fluxes have not been quantified. Here, human deforestation and cultivation of the landscape are shown to be the most important factors in silicon mobilization in temperate European watersheds.

Large-scale tree planting programmes have been implemented or planned for areas around the world suffering from deforestation, but this study presents evidence that such efforts may not necessarily deliver the desired environmental and economic outcomes.

Capacity for carbon capture and storage in forests may not be monolithic but instead a function of complex dynamics of forest strata and age. The smaller trees that make up the understory in African tropical forests store their carbon longer as compared to sub-canopy and canopy trees and they represent a disproportionately large share of the carbon sink, in spite of their small size.

A spatially explicit global map of tree symbioses with nitrogen-fixing bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi reveals that climate variables are the primary drivers of the distribution of different types of symbiosis.

Multi-ancestry genome-wide and transcriptome-wide association studies of aortic stenosis identify more than 200 independent risk loci and provide insights into its genetic architecture.

Analysis of changes in functional groups of species and potential drivers of environmental change for protected areas across the world’s major tropical regions reveals large variation between reserves that have been effective and those experiencing an erosion of biodiversity, and shows that environmental changes immediately outside reserves are nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate.

Unlike Amazonian forests, African forests have maintained their carbon sink until recently but by 2030 the African carbon sink will have shrunk by 14 per cent and the Amazonian sink will reach almost zero.

Wood density is a key control on tree biomass, and understanding its spatial variation improves estimates of forest carbon stock. Sullivan et al. measure >900 forest plots to quantify wood density and produce high resolution maps of its variation across South American tropical forests.

Deforestation causes elevation-dependent warming over tropical mountain regions, according to high-resolution climate simulations.

The authors analyze 162 primary mismatch-repair-deficient gliomas and identify three subgroups underpinned by distinct somatic mutations in replicative DNA polymerases and IDH1.

Implementation of policies to reduce forest loss challenges the Earth observation community to improve forest monitoring. An important avenue for progress is the use of new satellite missions and the combining of optical and synthetic aperture radar sensor data.

An analysis of data from 522 population-based studies encompassing 82 global regions and spanning more than a century (1920–2024) shows spatiotemporal transitions across epidemiologic stages 1 to 3 of inflammatory bowel disease, and models stage 4 progression.

A re-assessment of the global carbon budget shows the natural land sink is substantially smaller than previously estimated, indicating emerging impacts of climate change on the evolution of the carbon sinks.

Some cancer patients first present with metastases where the location of the primary is unidentified; these are difficult to treat. In this study, using machine learning, the authors develop a method to determine the tissue of origin of a cancer based on whole sequencing data.

Tissue phenotypes arise from molecular states of individual cells and their spatial organisation, so spatial omics assays can help reveal how they emerge. Here, the authors apply graph neural networks to classify tissue phenotypes from spatial omics patterns, and use this approach to understand patterns in cancers and their microenvironments.

Mitochondrial DNA heteroplasmy associates with context-specific nuclear CpG methylation, supported by a cell model. Heteroplasmy–CpG scores relate to mortality and cardiovascular risk, though direction and mechanisms remain unclear.

The authors analyse tree responses to an extreme heat and drought event across South America to understand long-term climate resistance. While no more sensitive to this than previous lesser events, forests in drier climates showed the greatest impacts and thus vulnerability to climate extremes.