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Although co-occurring species may differ widely in their response traits, coordinated functional trait shifts may emerge at the community level in response to environmental factors. Here, the authors use data from 150 grassland sites to identify a coordinated slow-fast strategy response to land-use intensification across above- and belowground taxa.

Li and colleagues describe a monocyte-specific transcriptional state along with a persistent elevation of inflammatory markers specifically found in individuals with long COVID who had mild-to-moderate disease during acute SARS-CoV-2 infection.

A comparison of alpha diversity (number of plant species) and dark diversity (species that are currently absent from a site despite being ecologically suitable) demonstrates the negative effects of regional-scale anthropogenic activity on plant diversity.

Interactions between climate change and antimicrobial resistance across terrestrial, aquatic and health systems reveal shared drivers, synergies and trade-offs that shape health and environmental outcomes. This Comment outlines a solutions-oriented research agenda to advance evidence and action that addresses climate change and antimicrobial resistance as interconnected issues.

Global tree restoration could cause substantial and regionally variable changes in water availability, according to an ensemble of Budyko models and moisture recycling data.

The leaf epidermis is sealed by a lipid-rich cuticle to prevent water loss and interspersed with stomatal pores to allow gas exchange. Here the authors provide evidence that two barley proteins, HvYDA1 and HvBRX-Solo, regulate both processes linking epidermal patterning with cuticular properties in a cereal crop.

A global zoning scheme is proposed to limit the environmental costs of road building while maximizing its benefits for human development, by discriminating among areas where road building would have high environmental costs but relatively low agricultural advantage, areas where strategic road improvements could promote agricultural production with relatively modest environmental costs, and ‘conflict areas’ where road building may have large agricultural benefits but also high environmental costs.

Fine-scale geospatial mapping of overweight and wasting (two components of the double burden of malnutrition) in 105 LMICs shows that overweight has increased from 5.2% in 2000 to 6.0% in children under 5 in 2017. Although overall wasting decreased over the same period, most countries are not on track to meet the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target of <5% in over half of LMICs by 2025.

Prescribed burning is a common tool to mitigate the risk of dangerous wildfires. However, careful consideration of the public health impacts should be incorporated into forest management plans.

Many cities have enough space to satisfy their population’s demand for fruits and vegetables. A conceptual framework based on the city of Sheffield, United Kingdom, highlights key challenges and opportunities for the realization of untapped urban horticultural potential.

Analysis of a fossilized front flipper of the Jurassic ichthyosaur Temnodontosaurus that preserves details of soft tissue indicates the presence of a serrated trailing edge that would have reduced noise generated while swimming, enabling stealth hunting and hiding from predators.

The authors show how city design and climate both influence the release of chemicals to the world, and suggest that we can help reduce impacts on people and ecosystems by reducing emissions and using green space to trap and degrade chemicals.

Multilayer plastic packaging is essential for food storage but its complex structure makes recycling challenging. Here, a light-responsive thermoplastic adhesive enables the on-demand separation of polymer layers in multilayer packaging.

Newly sequenced seagrass genomes unveil a hexaploid ancestry for seagrasses. The transition to marine environments involved fine-tuning of many processes that all had to happen in parallel, probably explaining why adaptation to a marine lifestyle has been rare.

Emissions from landscape fires affect both climate and air quality. This study uses satellite-derived fire estimates and atmospheric modelling to quantify the effects on health from fire emissions in southeast Asia from 1997 to 2006. Strong El Nino years are found to increase the incidence of fires, in addition to those caused by anthropogenic land use change, leading to an additional 200 days per year when the WHO atmospheric particle target is exceeded and increase adult mortality by 2%. Reducing regional deforestation and degradation, and thereby forest fires caused by land use change would therefore improve public health.

Andrade, Adelino, Fonseca et al. used phylogenetic, phylogeographic, and temporal approaches to track yellow fever viral transmission across forestry, rural, and urban areas of Brazil. All genomes belong to the South American lineage, with one Amazon cluster showing hidden persistence and another in the southeast indicating reintroduction and sustained transmission.

As part of Black Space Week 2025, five stellar astrophysicists and solar physicists share information about their scientific interests, research projects and personal motivations for working in astronomy.

WindSled, a zero-emission mobile science platform, is capable of traveling thousands of kilometers and doing valuable science on the Antarctic Plateau. Wind-driven aerosols condition the biogeographic distribution of bioburden from air to 4 m depth.

Analyses of inventory models under two climate change projection scenarios suggest that carbon emissions from abrupt thaw of permafrost through ground collapse, erosion and landslides could contribute significantly to the overall permafrost carbon balance.

A symbiosis between a diatom and a newly discovered species of alphaproteobacteria, ‘Candidatus Tectiglobus diatomicola’, can fix nitrogen in the ocean, providing evidence that nitrogen fixers other than cyanobacteria have a key role in the marine environment.

This study performs a systematic review of empirical evidence for climate change adaptation in coastal cities around the world. It found that reported adaptation is mostly slow, narrow, and not transformative as coastal cities predominantly focus their adaptation on past and current challenges, and not future scenarios of risk.

Analysis of peatland carbon accumulation over the last millennium and its association with global-scale climate space indicates an ongoing carbon sink into the future, but with decreasing strength as conditions warm.

The SiO₂ contents of erupted volcanic melts are correlated with persistent seismic signals that accompany eruptions—volcanic tremor—and may represent an eruption monitoring tool, according to a study of volcanic ash glasses from Cumbre Vieja volcano.

Soil microbiota can increase crop resilience to abiotic stressors. Here the authors show that Streptomyces produce bioactive spiroketal polyketides to enhance plant growth under drought and salt stress.

Ancestral sequence inference, directed evolution, structural analysis, NMR, and molecular dynamics simulations illuminate how enantioselective activity arises during the evolutionary trajectory of chalcone isomerase from a noncatalytic ancestor.

Graphene shows promise for saturable absorption, a key property for ultrafast lasing, yet graphene saturable absorbers operating in the terahertz region suffer from low absorption modulation. Here, the authors report terahertz saturable absorbers based on inkjet printed graphene with 80% transparency modulation.

The N₂-fixing symbiont ‘Candidatus Celerinatantimonas neptuna’ lives inside the root tissue of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica, providing ammonia and amino acids to its host in exchange for sugars and enabling highly productive seagrass meadows to thrive in the nitrogen-limited Mediterranean Sea.

Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome (SDS) is an inherited ribosome assembly disorder that increases the risk for haematopoietic malignancies. Here, the authors analysed clonal selection and evolution in SDS by sequencing patient-derived haematopoietic stem/progenitor cell colonies and exploring the function of key drivers in model organisms.

During the last glacial termination, the North Atlantic experienced a cold interval, but its impact on tropical climate variability is not clear. Here, a fossil Tahiti coral record shows that tropical sea surface temperature varied actively during this event, consistent with climate model simulations.

Comparative RNA-seq, ChIP–seq and quantitative phosphoproteomics reveal how the blast fungus uses the Pmk1 MAP kinase to regulate a network of transcription factors that orchestrate the complex transcriptome changes necessary for infecting rice plants.

The sudden collapse of thawing soils in the Arctic might double the warming from greenhouse gases released from tundra, warn Merritt R. Turetsky and colleagues.

Sea-level rise threatens coastal mangroves, with global consequences for these important blue carbon sinks. Here the authors analyse four Holocene sediment cores from islands in Florida Bay and find that mangroves that comprised the South Florida coastline 4–3000 years ago rapidly transitioned to estuarine conditions, despite low rates of sea-level rise, and propose that their demise was driven by high climate variability.

River floods have direct and indirect consequences for society, and can cause fatalities, displacement and economic loss. This Review examines the physical and socioeconomic causes and impacts of disastrous river flooding, and past and projected trends in their occurrence.

European river discharge observations suggest that catchments with similar flood generation processes produce similar extremes, enabling better predictability of megafloods using a continental scale perspective.

Wastewater treatment plants are important reservoirs of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Here, the authors analyze ARGs in a global collection of samples from wastewater treatment plants across six continents, providing insights into biotic and abiotic mechanisms that appear to control ARG diversity and distribution.