News from TESS

Ebrahim Tangestani, Ravinder Kumar, Catherine M. Miller, Elsa Antunes

The widespread use of pharmaceutical compounds (PCs) has led to their extensive contamination in aquatic environments. Biochar, a carbon-rich and porous material, offers a promising solution for the remediation of PCs, particularly when modified. Modification methods can be physical (ball milling, steam activation, and CO2 activation) or chemical (acid/alkali treatment, oxidation, surface functionalization, metal impregnation, and nano structuring). These treatments enhance biochar's structural properties including pore size, pore volume, surface area, and surface functionality, thereby increasing its affinity for PCs and improving removal efficiency. Modified biochar enables multiple adsorption mechanisms, including pore diffusion, electrostatic interactions, hydrophobic effects, hydrogen bonding, and π–π interactions, which act synergistically to remove PCs from water. This review critically discusses various biochar modification techniques, their efficacies, and key parameters influencing their performance. It also highlights adsorption mechanisms, regeneration strategies, and the importance of biochar stability for economic and environmental feasibility. Additionally, life cycle and techno-economic analyses are discussed to evaluate the financial and technical viability of using modified biochar for PCs' remediation. Finally, the review outlines the major challenges associated with modification techniques and provides insights into future research directions to enhance the removal of PCs from aqueous environments.

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Matthew G. Connors, Peter Yeeles, Lori Lach, David C.F. Rentz

Kongobatha is one of the most commonly encountered of all Australian mantis genera, and yet despite this, very little is known about the taxonomy or biology of the genus. Described to include a single Australian species, K. diademata, the only subsequent work on the genus has been the description of a second species from New Guinea, K. papua. We here describe three additional species, K. spinosistyla Connors sp. nov., K. serpens Connors sp. nov., and K. rufilinea Connors sp. nov., and redescribe K. diademata and K. papua in detail, the latter of which is recorded from Australia for the first time. We also describe for the first time the unusual, heavily spinose styli of male Kongobatha. These are apparently unique among Mantodea as a whole, but their function remains unknown.

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Jarrod Sopniewski, Rhiannon Schembri, Craig Moritz, Andrew M. Baker, Stephane Batista, Stephen Donnellan,  Mark D. B. Eldridge, Emma L. Gray, Ian C. Gynther, Greta J. Frankham, Harry B. Hines, Conrad J. Hoskin, Michael Mahony, Eugene D. Mason, Jane Melville, Nicola J. Mitchell, Madeline E. F. Mutton, David Newell, Kate O'Hara, Paul M. Oliver, Sally Potter, Jodi J. L. Rowley, Ben C. Scheele, Glenn Shea, Joanna Sumner, Renee A. Catullo

Aim: The use of genetic analyses has become ubiquitous in conservation planning and management. Typically, such analyses are employed at the species-level, though as genetic data accrue, it is now possible to consider the genetic composition of multiple species across landscapes. Such macrogenetic perspectives can reveal the potential genetic ramifications of extreme disturbance events, such as the catastrophic Australian ‘Black Summer' wildfires of 2019–2020. Here, we present a framework to examine the
potential genetic impacts of this event upon populations of a variety of taxa.
Location: Eastern Australia.
Methods: Using hundreds of samples spanning dozens of frog, mammal and reptile species, we demonstrate a macrogenetic approach for using reduced-representation sequencing data from several species to describe the fine-scale distribution of genetic diversity across a landscape in a robust, comparable manner. We do so using standard population genetics metrics (heterozygosity); though we also propose a novel complementary measure—‘weighted distinctiveness’—to identify important regions of the landscape where narrowly distributed and evolutionarily distinct populations from multiple species reside.
Results: Although variable across the study area, we show that these unprecedented fires generally burned areas where genetic diversity of sampled taxa was higher than that of areas remaining unburned. Additionally, regions harbouring high concentrations of evolutionarily distinct and narrowly distributed species were disproportionately represented in burned regions, with the potential cross-taxonomic adverse effects being greatest in Australia's southeast and central eastern seaboard regions.
Main Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the macrogenetic impacts of the Black Summer wildfires have the potential to have been more severe than initially apparent. Importantly, they also demonstrate how conservation genetics principles often applied at a species level can be expanded to landscapes, whilst accounting for the challenges that arise when aggregating across taxonomic groups, thereby improving our understanding of the overall impacts of large-scale disturbance events.

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Maria Tengö, Isabel Díaz-Reviriego, Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, Pernilla  Malmer, Wilfredo V. Alangui, Puaʻala Pascua, Prasert Trakansuphakon, Rosemary Hill

1. The pivot towards evidence-based conservation since 2000 has inspired global environmental assessments to gather evidence across multiple knowledge systems, including through co-production with Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Knowledge co-production is highlighted as a strategy for transformative change towards a just future that conserves nature. The multiple evidence base (MEB) approach, one method for co-production developed alongside the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), identifies five tasks in co-production (mobilize, translate, negotiate, synthesize, apply) and centres the roles of diverse actors, their knowledge institutions and collaborative processes. The synthesis task is arguably the most challenging, involving knowledge conflicts, incommensurability, tensions between diversity and consensus, political and power dynamics — yet little guidance exists in literature about how to navigate these challenges.
2. Here, we address this knowledge gap with a state-of-the-art literature review of the synthesis task, iterated with reflections among our co-author team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants in three assessments for IPBES. Our analysis uses the MEB categories of actors, institutions and collaborative processes, with a dissonance theoretical perspective to tackle political dimensions.
3. We synthesize practical steps for IPBES and highlight key areas for action to more broadly stimulate evidence synthesis as a means of transformative change: working with diverse actors to address power dynamics and asymmetries for productive conflict; crafting co-governance institutions that embed justice and a rights-based approach together with attention to healing trauma; and encouraging processes that enable productive contestation of ideas using tools such as framing analysis and minority/majority messages. Fostering co-productive reflexivity and learning across epistemic, normative, cognitive and relational domains underpin the development of the political capabilities to navigate dissent. Promoting leadership by Indigenous and local knowledge actors, strengthening and funding opportunities to practice their knowledge for their own purposes as well as for co-production and navigating differences in how time is perceived are vital.
4. Science–policy interfaces that seek transformative, rather than incremental, change will always be characterized by the opposing discourses and narratives that underpin the political dynamics of socially just synthesis across knowledge systems. Implementation of our guidance will assist knowledge co-production efforts to progress transformative change.

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Zsanett Szilagy, Luke Nothdurft, Stephanie Duce, Jody Webster,  Mardi McNeil, Juan-Carlos Braga, Trevor Graham, Maria Byrne3, Bethany C. Behrens, Yusuke Yokoyama, Robin Beaman, Victorien Paumard, Jeffrey Shragge, Amy Nau, Christopher Berry, Catherine Kim, Sarah Goh, Jacquelin Reeves, Lara Picton, and Helen Bostock

Halimeda (calcareous green algae) bioherms are among the largest accumulations of biogenic sediment within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, covering more than 6000 km2 of the continental shelf and exceeding the area of adjacent coral reefs at equivalent latitudes1. Previous studies have documented their circular to reticulate shapes, the internal structure and thickness, underscoring their uncertain genesis and major contribution to the global Holocene neritic carbonate factory2,3. However, a detailed understanding of the formation and development of these uniquely shaped bioherms has been limited by the lack of high-resolution bathymetric maps, surface sediment samples, and densely spaced core material that target geomorphological variability.

This study presents new data from the RV Investigator voyage IN2022_V07 “Halimeda bioherms: Origins, function and fate in the northern Great Barrier Reef (HALO)”. The first sub-metre resolution (50 cm) multibeam bathymetry data and sub-bottom profiles reveal spectacular bioherm shapes and patterns not previously visible on 30 m models. Geomorphometric analysis of the 50 cm DEMs using ESRI ArcGISPro 3.3 quantified the surface characteristics and produced the first benthic terrain classification based on pattern recognition rather than differential geometry to define benthic features (Geomorphon Landforms tool).

Sixty-nine surface grab samples were collected using Boxcorer and Smith-McIntyre grab from three sites between 15° and 13° S. These samples were analysed for grain size, total carbonate and composition to characterise sedimentary variation across modern bioherms. Results highlight variability among different benthic structures, implying distinct and dynamic environmental settings.

In addition, forty-two densely spaced vibrocores (up to 6 m long) were recovered and scanned with high-resolution CT. Split cores were logged for facies and scanned with multi-sensor core logger (magnetic susceptibility, spectrophotometer, X-ray fluorescence). Subsamples at regular intervals (10cm) have been processed for grain size, total CaCO3% and microfossil analysis. Radiocarbon dates indicate the cores range from 12 ka to present. Initial observations revealed a range of morphotypes, including Halimeda floatstone-rudstone and Foraminiferal wackestone-packstone facies and layers of dense coral, mollusc, rhodolith and lithified clumps. This new dataset significantly advances our understanding of Halimeda bioherm morphology, development, and regional influences, providing new insights into their formation processes and ecological significance.

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Natalia de Aguiar-Campos, Yoko F. Ishida, Will Edwards,  Susan G. W. Laurance

Tropical forest transpiration strongly influences the global hydrological cycle and is often estimated through sap flow measurements. Due to their high diversity and complex canopies, estimates often rely on mean sap flow measured from cohorts of similar trees, although within-cohort variability remains poorly investigated in tropical forests. We aimed to quantify sap flow variability in a cohort of 10 similarly sized conspecific trees in an Australian tropical rainforest. Over three campaigns (dry, wet, and dry seasons), we measured sap flow simultaneously on north and south stem aspects and at two sapwood depths using heat-ratio sensors, and estimated crown exposure for each tree. Between the first and second campaigns, a tropical cyclone increased mean crown exposure of the cohort two-fold. We found that sap flow readings varied up to 14-fold between trees under the same environmental conditions, decreasing to nine-fold when within-tree variation was accounted for. Regardless of aspect or depth, sap flow varied by an average of 52.5% within trees across the study period. Although sapwood depth was a poor predictor of sap flow, averaging across the radial profile decreased within-tree variation to 34%. Despite similar stem dimensions, crown exposure largely explained variability among and within trees. During the dry seasons, north-aspect sap flow remained stable, whereas south-aspect sap flow increased by 44% following cyclone-induced increases in exposure. In contrast, variation within and across trees was substantially lower during the wet season, presumably due to more uniform soil water availability. These results yield two recommendations to reduce uncertainty in tropical forest transpiration estimates: (i) sap flow should be measured at more than one point (at different aspects and/or depths) to account for the 52.5% difference in readings per tree; and (ii) crown exposure should be incorporated into stratification approaches to reduce within-cohort sap flow variability.

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Daniel N.R. Longmuir, Simon Johnstone-Robertson, Andrew J. Hoskins, Roslyn I. Hickson, Stephen A. Davis

Wildlife aggregate for many reasons (e.g. reproduction, feeding) and at times these aggregations can be extreme, with host densities increasing several orders of magnitude. While the impact of seasonality on infectious disease dynamics is well studied, few—if any—studies have explicitly examined how extreme aggregation affects key epidemiological outcomes. Here we consider an epidemic in a closed SIR (Susceptible–Infectious–Recovered) metapopulation with a hub–satellite structure, where seasonal movement into the hub follows a modified Gaussian function. We numerically explore how aggregation duration and timing shape two outcomes: final size and peak prevalence. We find a narrow set of circumstances and pathogens for which even extreme aggregation materially alters these outcomes. When aggregation coincides with, or begins just prior to, infection introduction, aggregation can strongly affect pathogens with or , enabling epidemics that would otherwise fade. Effects are strongest under density-dependent transmission, where contact rate scales with local density; frequency-dependent transmission renders aggregation negligible. High transmissibility minimises aggregation’s impact because most susceptibles are infected regardless of density changes.

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Rachel Hay, Carrie Ann Wilson, Kristy Sparrow

To highlight the consequences of fragmented planning, ineffective investment and a lack of strategic oversight in telecommunications decisions across rural, regional and remote (RRR) Queensland. This paper aims to demonstrate how these issues can lead to poor outcomes, increased costs and low take-up of services. Case studies identify the urgent need for informed, collaborative, strategic and collective approaches to regional telecommunications that prioritise community engagement, independent advice and forward-thinking investment strategies.

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Alexander W. Cheesman, Peter Cox, Simon Jone, Kali B. Middleby, Lucas A. Cernusak and Peter J. Franks

Summary

• Stomatal conductance to water vapour (gs) is typically considered to operate in coordination with photosynthesis (A) to balance carbon gain and water loss in an optimal manner. However, at high temperatures that suppress A, gs has been seen to increase or remain high – reducing the predictive accuracy of some stomatal conductance models.
• We investigated the temperature sensitivity of leaf-level gas exchange and evaluated a temperature-dependent modification of a widely used stomatal conductance model across a temperature gradient (30 to 40°C) in three tropical tree species (Mallotus philippensis, Ficus congesta and Elaeocarpus grandis) grown and measured under near-ambient (420 ppm) or elevated (820 ppm) CO2, and under either constant or increasing vapour pressure deficit (VPD).
• Measured A and gs , as well as the model term g1, all exhibited a temperature sensitivity that was impacted by [CO 2 ] and VPD regime. Importantly, under both constant and increasing VPD, g1 increased with leaf temperature.
• These findings demonstrate that the coupling between A and gs is not static but varies with temperature and environmental context, and that incorporating a representation of this thermal sensitivity provides a tractable improvement to models of plant carbon–water exchange under future climate conditions.

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Sarah Letters, Angela Dean, Susan G. W. Laurance

Introduction: Forest restoration is increasing worldwide, driven by global initiatives and climate policy, yet the speed and scale of current efforts raise important questions about evaluating success. In tropical forests, restoration outcomes are inherently multidimensional and prolonged with structural attributes such as canopy closure recovering more rapidly than biodiversity, creating a temporal decoupling that complicates evaluation. This challenge is amplified as market-based mechanisms increasingly underpin large-scale restoration, demanding credible and ecologically meaningful monitoring.
Objectives: To understand the metrics tropical forest restoration organizations use to assess ecosystem recovery and evaluate how well current monitoring practice aligns with restoration goals.
Methods: We surveyed 25 organizations involved in tropical forest restoration in Australia’s Wet Tropics, assessing monitoring intensity, duration, indicators used, restoration goals, and perceived capacity constraints.
Results: Nearly all organizations (96%) conducted some form of monitoring, but intensity and duration varied. Most organizations focused on plant survival and canopy closure within the first few years of planting, ceasing monitoring once canopy closure or funder requirements were met. Yet their highest ranked goals were biodiversity conservation, habitat connectivity, and threatened species habitat—attributes poorly captured by structural indicators alone. More intensive monitoring, including vegetation and faunal surveys, was largely confined to nature market investors and land conservation trusts. Although 80% of participants indicated that monitoring was a moderate to very high funding priority, current practice reflects capacity constraints rather than lack of commitment.
Conclusions: These findings reveal a fundamental misalignment between restoration goals and monitoring practice, identify key capacity gaps, and highlight priorities needed to support practitioners in an era of expanding nature-positive markets.
Implications for Practice: Short-term structural indicators may not reliably reflect long-term restoration success. Indicators such as canopy closure and tree survival recover rapidly and may overestimate slower changes in biodiversity composition and ecosystem function. Monitoring must balance ecological relevance with practical feasibility as monitoring intensity and duration typically reflect limited funding, expertise, and staffing. Because restoration relies heavily on community organizations, socio-economic monitoring is needed to document participation, resource limitations, and social license. As nature-positive markets expand, credible monitoring must demonstrate a trajectory toward genuine ecosystem recovery.

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Nicholas J Bail , Conrad J Hoskin , Harry B Hines , Richard Frankham , Megan Higgie

Genetic management is well established as an essential component of threatened species management. In small populations, deteriorating genetic health—such as increases in inbreeding and losses of genetic diversity—becomes an important cause of extinction. Cost-effective genetic management practices exist, but a lack of awareness limits widespread application. We provide seven reasons threatened species managers must consider genetic health, each of which can be read in under 5 min. These reasons are intended to be a synthesis for a broader audience than is generally reached by specialist scientific literature. Consequently, we aim to empower threatened species’ managers, agencies, and policymakers to recognize the relevance of genetic health to the species under their responsibility and to actively seek the support of conservation genetics experts.

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Laura C. Lopresti, Lori Lach,  Paula Sosenski,  Victor Parra-Tabla  &  Daniel Montesinos

Plants with specialised pollination syndromes are less likely to become invasive compared to those with generalist syndromes, yet some highly invasive species have specialised syndromes. Few empirical studies have investigated the reproductive biology of invasive plants with specialised pollination syndromes, preventing a deep understanding of this apparent contradiction. Senna species (Fabaceae) exhibit the specialised buzz-pollination syndrome, and several Senna species are invasive globally. We assessed whether Senna obtusifolia could reproduce uniparentally via autonomous selfing, vector-mediated selfing, or without pollen (apomixis). We assessed whether it was pollen limited in either the studied native (Mexico) or invaded (Australia) regions. We experimentally manipulated pollinator access and pollen deposition in both regions and found that up to 40% of flowers set fruit from self-pollination and up to 24% of flowers set fruit in the absence of pollen. We found no evidence that S. obtusifolia was pollen limited in either region, suggesting that it has attracted suitable pollinators in both studied regions. Our findings suggest that S. obtusifolia has a mixed breeding system, combining selfing, apomixis, and outcrossing. This versatile breeding system may be key to its invasiveness, enabling uniparental reproduction during the early stage of colonization, while maintaining genetic diversity through outcrossing.

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Khandakar Faisal Ibn Murad, Anner Paldor, Dilip Kumar Roy, Bithin Datta

Salinisation of low-lying coastal aquifers arises via two interacting pathways—pumping-induced lateral saltwater intrusion (LSWI) and storm-surge-induced vertical saltwater intrusion (VSWI)—yet most studies model them separately, risking mischaracterisation of overall salinisation and suboptimal management. To address this gap, this study develops a fully-coupled, density-dependent surface–subsurface model that simulates the concurrent evolution and interaction of both intrusion pathways. A conceptual coastal aquifer is subjected to ten scenarios combining five pumping rates (0–200 m3/d) with either no surge or a single storm surge event over a 50-year horizon. Landward salt-mass is integrated and decomposed into LSWI, VSWI, and cross-effect components using normalised metrics. Results show that pumping is the primary control on multi-decadal salinisation and is nonlinear: stepwise increases in abstraction induce inland migration and thickening of the seawater wedge with more-than-proportional salt accumulation. A storm surge introduces an early vertical salt pulse whose magnitude and persistence increase with pumping. Without abstraction, the pulse peaks within a few years and largely flushes within ∼ two decades; with abstraction, it peaks later, decays more slowly, and at high rates leaves residual salinity that persists to year 50. Normalised analyses confirm that pumping amplifies surge impacts. Targeted comparison analyses under alternate hydraulic conductivity and recurrent-surge conditions indicate that the interaction framework remains qualitatively robust, although its expression depends on aquifer permeability and interruption of recovery by repeated flooding. Practically, the results argue for limiting overall pumping, temporarily curtailing abstraction during/after surges, and re-evaluating management interventions to avoid trapping surge-derived salinity in low-lying coastal aquifers.

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Marcus Sheaves, Michael Bradley, Katya Abrantes, Ronald Baker, Ross Johnston, Paul Nelson, Carlo Mattone, Ajay Venkataraman, Adam Barnett

Context: We lack basic scientific knowledge of coastal fish faunal diversity and distribution in the islands of the Bismarck Sea, such as New Britain. High-flow rivers and microtidal conditions result in a patchwork of salinity regimes, which creates a diversity of unique environmental settings and habitat features, such as extensive, low-salinity Nypa fruiticans mangrove-palm swamps adjoining major rivers.

Aims: Focusing on coastal, estuarine, and lowland freshwater systems we investigated the environmental settings present, the habitat features they contain and the patterns of utilisation by different fishes, to better understand the potential for adverse impacts from human activities. Methods: We used remote underwater video to define fish assemblages and habitat associations. Key results: Fish assemblages contained a unique mix of species with diverse habitat and physical requirements.

Conclusions: A large proportion of New Britain’s coastal and lowland fish utilise multiple environmental settings, underlining the importance of hydrological connectivity in enabling day-to-day and life-history migration requirements of the fish community.

Implications: The complex inter-setting utilisation of New Britain coastal and lowland fishes, their reliance on unique habitats (some derived from local and upstream forests), and intact watersheds, places them at risk from the landscape impacts stemming from extensive logging and oil palm.

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Fernando Ascensão, Rafael Barrientos, Adam Ford, Airam Rodriguez, Alejandro Sánchez de Miguel, Alice C. Hughes, Andreas Kindel, Andrew F. Jakes, Anthony P. Clevenger, Benjamin B. Phillips, Benjamin Goldfarb, Brooke Maslo, Carlos Camacho, Carol Bannock, Cassie J. Thompson, Cecilia G. Leal, Charl Deacon, Christopher J. W. McClure, Clara Grilo, Clayton Lamb, Daniela Araya-Gamboa, Diego Varela, Edgar A. van der Grift, Federico Morelli, Fernanda Zimmermann Teixeira, Francisco Moreira, Fraser M. Shilling, Frederico Mestre, Guillermo Carmona, Hans M. Hanslin, Jacinto Román, James Baxter-Gilbert, Javier Hernandez-Hernandez, Javier Millán, Jayden E. Engert, Jesse N. Popp, Jochen A. G. Jaeger, Johannes Kollmann, Jones N. Darryl, Jorge E. Celi, Josie Stokes, Juan E. Malo, Keren Gila Raiter, Kylie Soanes, L. Christine Paige, Laetitia M. Navarro, Larissa D. Biasotto, Mahmoud Ibrahim Mahmoud, Manisha Bhardwaj, Marcel P. Huijser, Margarita Mulero-Pázmány, Michael A. Weston, Michael J. Samways, Nuria Selva, Pablo Medrano-Vizcaíno, Pablo Quiles, Paul F. Jones, Renee G. Seidler, Richard T. Corlett, Rodney van der Ree, Rodrigo Megía-Palma, Rui Lourenço, Sara M. Santos, Sarah Chiles, Sean P. Boyle, Silviu Petrovan, Simone Santoro, Stephanie R. Januchowski-Hartley, Suzanne J. Milton, Svenja B. Kroeger, Sylvia Haider, Thomas A. Schlacher, Tom A. Langen, Tommy Lennartsson, Trina Rytwinski, Victor J. Colino Rabanal, Wendy J. Collinson-Jonker, William F. Laurance, Yun Wang & Marcello D’Amico

Road Ecology has experienced rapid growth as a field, yet significant knowledge and research gaps remain, particularly regarding underexplored impacts of roads on fauna and flora, ecosystems and landscapes, as mitigation methods and management solutions to avoid or reduce negative impacts. Here, we synthesize the key research needs identified throughout the book and emphasize topics that have received limited attention, highlighting the growing need for interdisciplinary and technologically advanced studies, and innovative statistical methodologies to assess infrastructure impacts and the combined effects of different types of infrastructures (such as roads and powerlines) on biodiversity. We highlight the need for more comprehensive studies on ecosystem functioning, evolutionary effects, and the role of roadside habitats, while calling for improvements in the cost-effectiveness of mitigation measures and large-scale assessments of road impacts. Emerging research priorities for Road Ecology include a growing emphasis on interdisciplinary and technologically advanced studies, and innovative statistical methodologies to assess infrastructure impacts and the combined effects of multiple infrastructures (such as roads and powerlines) on biodiversity. The impact of new infrastructure in areas supporting multiple migratory species is also becoming a priority issue, especially in regions where there is significant growth in infrastructure projects. Interdisciplinary efforts should prioritize strategies that balance infrastructure development with biodiversity conservation, especially in rapidly developing regions.

Link to eBook.

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Sara Santos, Yun Wang, Miriam Goosem, Pedro F. Develey & Rui Lourenço

Most published studies regarding the impact of roads on birds focus either on collision with vehicles or noise pollution and disturbance effects, but also on habitat fragmentation and chemical pollution. Fewer studies describe the positive influences of roads on birds. Many studies originate from Europe and North America. Recently, contributions from South America have increased, but studies from Asia, Australia, and Africa are still scarce. This pattern is consistent across collision and disturbance topics, except barrier effects, for which most contributions come from South America, especially from rainforests. Studies concerning collisions with vehicles generally focus on all road-killed vertebrates, while others specifically focus on mortality across all bird taxa. For most other impacts, passerines are the most investigated taxonomic group, although there are also relevant contributions focusing on birds of prey, owls, and some regionally endangered species. Roads can also provide some benefits to some birds, providing new foraging opportunities in the form of carcasses of road-killed animals, garbage, or spills from passing vehicles. However, there are negative consequences of this proximity, and roads might be an ecological trap for some species.

Although roads have many negative effects on bird populations, road mortality, fragmentation, and traffic noise can be more detrimental than other types of impacts. The impacts of roads on birds are very variable across landscape context, communities, taxa, or road type. Thus, it is crucial to investigate the situations where a road will or will not have negative effects on birds. Given the recent expansion of transportation infrastructure in many developing countries, it is also urgent to address long-term population consequences of road impacts for birds, in particular those with specialized habits.

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Jayden E. Engert and William F. Laurance

Road networks have been expanding at a dramatic pace in recent decades, driven by growing demand for resources, energy, and access to markets. However, roads can also open a Pandora’s box of environmental ills, the most significant of which may be habitat loss and fragmentation. The scale of habitat loss driven by roads is dependent on their capacity to promote travel, and hence outcomes differ for paved and unpaved roads and for different habitat types. Where habitat fragments remain intact, spiderweb-like road networks create edge effects and act as barriers to movement for disturbance-sensitive species of plants and animals. This fragmentation means large expanses of remaining habitats are highly degraded and have altered species composition and ecological function. A substantial proportion of all roads today are not recorded in existing roadmaps. With millions of kilometers of new roads expected worldwide in the near future, it will be vital to develop new methods to detect roads in order to document the effects of road-related habitat disruption, and develop strategic road plans to minimize these disruptions.

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Nicholas L. James, Martijn van de Pol, Bradley C. Congdon, Graeme S. Cumming

Small tropical seabirds operate in unpredictable environments where flexibility is key to survival. Yet, their responses to fine-scale environmental variability remain poorly understood and are likely to differ from those of larger or non-tropical seabirds due to differences in ecology and environmental conditions. Here, we used high-resolution GPS tracking and hidden Markov models to reveal how black noddies Anous minutus breeding on Heron Island, Great Barrier Reef, Australia, adjust their foraging strategies in response to shifting wind conditions, diel cycles, and seasonal changes. Across 4 years (2019-2022), birds showed considerable behavioural plasticity: outbound travel was favoured in light tailwinds, while strong winds triggered direct inbound returns, often into headwinds. High wind speeds suppressed resting activity, promoting persistent travel and foraging-search behaviours, emphasizing the energetic challenges posed by suboptimal wind conditions. Foraging effort peaked in mid-morning, with birds capitalizing on predictable prey availability, while night-time rest was strongly conserved. Notably, inter-annual shifts in movement patterns reflected changing prey landscapes, with increased foraging effort and travel during low-resource years. Despite relying on energetically costly flapping flight, black noddies dynamically modulated their behaviour to navigate fluctuating conditions. Our findings highlight the critical role of behavioural flexibility in enabling small seabirds to cope with environmental uncertainty while raising concerns about their vulnerability to increasing wind variability and changing ocean conditions in a warming climate.

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Tomonari Matsuo, Lourens Poorter, Lucy Amissa, Susan G W Laurance, Miguel Martínez-Ramos, Jorge A Meave, Frans Bongers, Masha T van der Sande, Jazz Kok, Laura Marteijn, Luis Octavio Zavala, Iris Hordijk

Secondary succession is a widespread phenomenon in the Anthropocene due to global land-use and climate change. Our ability to predict successional trajectories remains limited due to key knowledge gaps related to early secondary succession and how successional trajectories vary across socio-ecological systems and multiple forest attributes. Therefore, we analyzed the first 5 years of secondary forest succession across six tropical landscapes (i.e., socio-ecological systems) in three countries (Australia, Ghana, and Mexico) that differ in land-use intensity and two main forest types (dry and wet). We established 122 permanent plots in recently abandoned agricultural fields, monitored them annually for up to 5 years, and quantified 12 forest attributes related to structure, diversity, functional composition, and biotic interactions. We found that a large variation in successional trajectories was explained by the six landscapes (average r2 across 12 attributes is 54%; range: 18%–78%), indicating that succession is the result of a socio-ecological system. An additional 39% of the variation (range: 19%–70%) was explained by plots occuring within landscapes, which reflects variation in landscape context and local land use intensity. Countries had a stronger impact on succession than forest type, indicating that the social component is more important early in succession, whereas the ecological component may become more important later in succession. Countries with lower land use intensity (e.g., subsistence agriculture, shorter duration of use, no mechanization) showed a higher start and speed of succession, as vegetation legacies can kickstart succession. Forest attributes followed distinct successional trajectories: forest structure and diversity increased over time, reflecting a deterministic component of succession, whereas functional composition and biotic interactions varied more with forest type, reflecting environmental filtering. These findings highlight the importance of integrating early succession, socio-ecological systems, and multiple dimensions of forest recovery to better understand and predict forest succession in human-modified tropical landscapes.

Link to article.

Image © Emmeline B. B. Norris

The spectacled flying-fox (Pteropus conspicillatus) is a keystone species in the Wet Tropics, pollinating plants and dispersing seeds across the landscape. Yet monitoring its population has long relied on ground-based roost counts that are difficult to standardise and often impractical beneath dense tropical canopies.

TESS PhD researcher Emmeline Norris is leading a project to address this, in collaboration with CSE PhD researcher Xi (Zoey) Zhou and Dr Tao (Kevin) Huang at James Cook University, with oversight from TESS Director Susan Laurance. The team is developing an automated deep learning algorithm to detect and count individual flying-fox heat signatures in thermal drone imagery. This approach allows entire roost sites to be surveyed without disturbing the animals and greatly reduces the time required to analyse large orthomosaic images, which can otherwise take many hours to count manually.

Emmeline leads the ecological side of the project, including data collection from more than 25 roost sites across the Wet Tropics, curation of training imagery, and biological interpretation of model outputs. Zoey leads algorithm development and testing, and Kevin contributes expertise in computer vision and remote sensing. CSE Honours student Doa Roys also made a valuable contribution by annotating hundreds of training images.

The algorithm is already performing well under a range of survey conditions, with ongoing annotation and refinement improving results on more challenging sites and image types. A user interface has also been developed so that the workflow can be readily implemented by researchers, government agencies, and NRM bodies without requiring formal training in deep learning.

This project has been funded by the Australian Academy of Science Margaret Middleton Fund and the Australasian Bat Society Paddy Pallin Grant, with support from CADSI as the work progresses, contributing to a broader effort to strengthen flying-fox monitoring and conservation management in the Wet Tropics.

Krause, Amanda E., Sheaves, Alison, McShane, Connar, Miller, Dan, Connor, Jonathan, Muller, Jessica, and Ridep-Morris, Craig

Abstract only available.

Sense of belonging between students and their university is critical to career readiness and an important driver of retention (TESQA, 2020). However, national Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) data shows that, in general, psychology students have the lowest levels of peer engagement (44.8% positive rating) in comparison to other disciplines, which is thought to be a consequence of high levels of external study. While work-integrated learning is integral to developing student understanding of their career pathways, placement-based learning can be restrictive and inflexible for students with location barriers and time-based demands. Consequently, as a team of tertiary psychology educators, we have developed a podcast series aimed at enhancing belongingness, career pathway clarity, and student retention. Launched in 2024 (and released as Professionally Psyched on Spotify), in addition to student involvement in podcast production, we have created an advisory board of students and staff to oversee the continuation of the podcast series. In this presentation, we will share findings from our program of evaluation research. With data collection underway, our discussion will focus on quantitative pre-post survey data as well as interview and focus group data concerning how a podcast series might cultivate a more connected, confident, and professionally engaged and resilient student community. Discussion of the findings will also address creatively disseminating career-related information to undergraduates via podcasts and how to optimize student engagement and address concerns of career readiness.

Tom Swan, Chris Fidelis, Belinda Nielsen, Ho Jun Jang, David Yinil, Tiago Rodrigues Tavares, David Guest, Paul N. Nelson, Damien Field

Note: this is a pre-print article. Cocoa is Papua New Guinea's (PNG) third-largest agricultural export, supporting about two million smallholder farmers. Recent cadmium (Cd) regulations in chocolate products and limits on Cd in soils pose possible risks to the sustainability of PNG's cocoa industry. This study provides the first nationwide assessment of Cd in cocoa-growing soils and cocoa beans in PNG, assesses soil nutrient status, evaluates the suitability of portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) for rapid soil Cd screening, and examines select cocoa bean attributes of market concern. A total of 122 soil samples were collected and analysed from eight cocoa-growing provinces and the Autonomous Region of Bougainville (ARoB), along with 71 cocoa bean samples from two of these provinces and ARoB. Across all provinces and ARoB, DTPA-extractable soil Cd (proxy for bioavailable Cd) averaged 0.13 mg kg^-1 (± 0.33 Standard Deviation). While no samples exceeded international limits (>3.0 mg kg^-1), one sample from New Ireland contained 2.43 mg kg^-1 of Cd, indicating the need for further targeted sampling to determine the extent and spatial distribution of high Cd concentrations. At the low DTPA-extractable Cd concentrations measured across PNG, pXRF lacked the sensitivity required for reliable detection and therefore is not recommended for screening. Bean Cd concentrations were not of concern. However, all samples exceeded industry thresholds for free fatty acids (FFA). Sealed hermetic storage may present a practical strategy to help mitigate FFA accumulation and improve bean quality. Finally, soils exhibited sub-optimal exchangeable Ca:Mg:K ratios, with widespread K deficiency and nutrient depletion, underscoring the need for targeted nutrient replenishment. This study provides the first nationwide baseline of soil and bean Cd status, as well as key cocoa attributes of market concern in PNG, offering insights relevant to cocoa-producing regions globally.

Link to article.

Sebastian Hoefer, Slade Allen-Ankins, Donald T. McKnight, Eric J. Nordberg, Lin Schwarzkopf

Mammals play vital roles in ecological communities, but many are in rapid decline worldwide. Comprehensive monitoring of mammal populations is crucial for effective conservation, but large-scale monitoring presents significant challenges. Remote sensing techniques such as passive acoustic monitoring offer viable and effective solutions for surveying animal communities. While passive acoustic monitoring has shown promising results for birds, its application in mammal biodiversity assessments has received little testing. In this study, we compared passive acoustic monitoring (combined with BirdNET embeddings) to traditional observer-based monitoring and camera trapping for assessing terrestrial mammal biodiversity over multiple years across an extensive spatial scale in eastern Australia.

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Lei Lv, Qing Zhao, Yang Liu, Xueyan Li, Helen L. Osmond, Loeske E. B. Kruuk, Andrew Cockburn & Martijn van de Pol

Population declines in common bird species abound, but it is unclear if these declines presage extinction. The consequences of climate change are particularly elusive, as there are typically both positive and negative effects on the seasonal- and life-cycles. We examine climate sensitivities of a population of a common and loved Australian bird, the superb fairy-wren Malurus cyaneus, with three decades of year-round fine-scale measurement of reproduction, survival and immigration. Population growth has been affected by many aspects of climate, but declines are most strongly linked to low fecundity in dry springs and reduced survival during unusually warm winters and preceding hot summers. Our comprehensive integrated population model is effective at summarizing these effects and predicting recent population volatility, suggesting it will be useful for assessing future population fluctuations and viability. A high risk of population extinction in the next 30-40 years is predicted. Accumulation of many small effects of climate change causes this decline. Hence a common species of Least Concern is in imminent danger, with virtually no time or way to prevent it. Such predicaments can only be detected in very well-studied species, and superb fairy-wrens may be the canary in the coal mine.

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Han She Lim, Alexander W. Cheesman, Paul N. Nelson, Rohan Eccles, Felix Egger, Marcus Bulstrode, Tony Weber

Sustaining agricultural productivity while reducing off-site impacts on water quality requires a detailed understanding of water and nutrient movement through alluvial landscapes. Within these settings, palaeochannels − old river courses infilled with coarse sediments − represent major but poorly quantified subsurface flow pathways. Their influence on water and solute transport is rarely incorporated into hydrological assessments or models, despite their widespread occurrence and hydraulic connectivity with surface drains, aquifers and streams.

This paper reviews current knowledge of palaeochannel structure, distribution and hydrologic function within agricultural alluvial systems, and evaluates approaches for their identification, characterisation and representation in hydrologic models. We examine the suitability of existing coupled modelling frameworks − such as HYDRUS-MODFLOW, SWAT-MODFLOW, MIKE-SHE and HydroGeoSphere − for simulating palaeochannel-mediated flow and material transport. Conceptual similarities between palaeochannels and engineered tile-drain networks are used to illustrate how established drainage formulations can inform future model development.

We highlight virtual experimentation, combining numerical simulation with targeted field monitoring, as a practical means of exploring how palaeochannel geometry, depth and connectivity influence water and nutrient fluxes at field to catchment scales. Integration of direct and remote sensing with coupled hydrological models will enhance the capacity to parameterise and validate palaeochannel networks. Collectively, these advances provide a pathway towards more realistic representations of subsurface flow heterogeneity, improving predictions of water and solute movement and informing management strategies in intensively farmed alluvial landscapes.

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Pre-print article by Emmeline B. B. Norris, Johan Larson, James A. Thomas, Jean L. Thomas, Tim F. Flannery

Monitoring rare and threatened arboreal mammals in tropical montane forests is constrained by low detectability using conventional ground-based methods, hindering robust assessment of population trends and conservation outcomes. We evaluated whether thermal drone surveys could overcome detection challenges for three threatened tree kangaroo species (Dendrolagus spp.) in community-managed conservation areas within the Torricelli Mountain Range, Papua New Guinea, where voluntary hunting moratoria have been in place for over two decades. Across 74 flights totalling 21 hours of active search at three sites, thermal drones detected 67 arboreal mammals in half of all flights, achieving unique-individual encounter rates ranging from 1.6–3.6 individuals h–1. We derived first density indices for Finsch’s tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus inustus finschi) (1.74–1.91 individuals km⁻2) and Golden-mantled tree kangaroo (D. pulcherrimus) (0.47 individuals km⁻2), though these should be interpreted as conservative lower bounds given that survey effort was not uniformly distributed across the elevational range occupied by each species. Only a single pair of the Critically Endangered Scott’s tree kangaroo (D. scottae) was detected, consistent with its reported rarity, as well as the limited survey coverage of higher-elevation core habitat due to altitude restrictions. These results demonstrate that thermal drones can generate repeatable detection data for threatened arboreal marsupials where conventional methods have proven inadequate, providing a foundation for evaluating community-led conservation effectiveness. With methodological refinement to address detection biases and spatial coverage limitations, thermal drone surveys have significant potential to enable long-term population monitoring for tree kangaroos in remote and inaccessible tropical forests.

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Chinedu Collins Anukam, Chinyere Udah, Hyacinth Udah, Abraham Francis

The resilience of migrant youth is under-theorised and poorly understood, yet it is crucial for successful adaptation and integration. This systematic review examines the literature on resilience and coping strategies among migrant youth. A systematic search of four academic databases (Emerald Insight, Google Scholar, ProQuest, and Scopus) identified 1,273 studies, of which 20 met the eligibility criteria for inclusion. The studies were thematically analysed, and their methodological quality was assessed using the Effective Public Health Practice Project (EPHPP) and the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) tools. Findings indicate the importance of family, peers, community support, and personal agency in fostering resilience. Despite growing empirical evidence on the impacts of social networks on migrant youth’s resilience and well-being, there is a research gap regarding the role of family processes and parental mental health literacy in promoting resilience among migrant youth experiencing psychosocial externalising challenges. Our findings indicate a need to adopt an intersectional and ecological lens to fully understand migrant youth experiences, resilience and coping strategies. There is a need for more evidence on the effects of specific types of resilience on the adversity experienced by migrant youth. However, the scope and methodology of the included studies are limited, necessitating further research to elucidate how resilience and coping support the well-being of this population.

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Jingrui Wang, Chaoqun Zhang, Yixuan Pan, Yongxian Su, Philippe Ciais, Taylor Smith, Jiali Shang, Jane Liu, Jing M. Chen, Alessandro Cescatti, Yongguang Zhang, William F. Laurance, Cornelius Senf, Zhiyan Zuo, Jinbao Liao, Raffaele Lafortezza, Kai Yan, Peng Zhu, Xiaobin Guan, Xing Li, Meimei Xue, Wenping Yuan, Xiuzhi Chen & Weiqi Zhou

Climatic and anthropogenic disturbances have led to intense small-scale tree cover loss in global forests. However, it remains unclear when forest attributes at a large scale (e.g., 0.05° resolution) will decline in response to such sub-grid (e.g., 30-m) tree cover losses within forest ecosystems. Utilizing global maps of forest attribute proxies, we discover that vegetation greenness, canopy structure, composition, and photosynthesis function can all increase under limited tree cover loss, indicating a widely existing safety margin in global forests that is primarily buffered by a positive edge effect of landscape fragmentation within forest ecosystems. The safety margin varies across biomes (tropical: 7.7%; temperate: 3.7%; boreal: 1.0%) and is often positively correlated with ecosystem resistance. In addition, about 35.7% of the remaining global forests have exceeded the safety margin. Our finding contrasts with the conventional perception that sub-grid tree cover losses are inevitably associated with declines in forest attributes and functions. It provides quantitative information for mitigating forest degradation and has strong implications for sustainable forest management practices.

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Poster at EGU General Assembly 2026 by Laleh Jafari, Ben Jarihani, Jack Koci, Ioan Sanislav, and Stephanie Duce

Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) are fundamental to hydrological modelling, watershed delineation, flood hazard assessment, and resource management. However, the reliability of these applications depends heavily on the vertical accuracy of the DEMs. Although several global DEM products with 30-m spatial resolution are widely available, variations in sensor technology, data acquisition methods, and surface characteristics can significantly influence their accuracy and suitability for hydrological studies. This research provides a comparative evaluation of five commonly used global DEMs—TanDEM-X, ASTER GDEM, SRTM, Copernicus DEM, and ALOS World 3D—by assessing their vertical accuracy against high-resolution airborne LiDAR data and ICESat-2 ATL06 measurements. The findings aim to inform best practices for selecting DEMs in hydrological modelling and catchment-scale applications, particularly in data-scarce regions.

The Flinders River catchment in northern Queensland was selected as the critical test area for evaluating how DEM errors propagate into hydrological calculations. This region is characterised by low rainfall and pronounced topographic variability, encompassing flat lowland plains, dissected upland terrain, and localised areas of steep slopes. All DEMs were standardised to a common horizontal and vertical reference framework and co-registered with the test datasets to eliminate systematic discrepancies. ICESat-2 ATL06 data were rigorously filtered to retain only the highest-quality measurements, based on a combination of quality flags, topographic slope thresholds, and signal strength criteria in vegetated areas.

Elevation differences were computed at matched locations, and DEM performance was evaluated using key statistical metrics, including bias, root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), median error, and standard deviation. To provide a more comprehensive assessment, error behaviour was analysed in relation to terrain slope and catchment characteristics, highlighting zones most vulnerable to error propagation in flow routing and watershed delineation. Systematic patterns in DEM error were further examined with respect to sensor characteristics under varying landscape conditions.

Results indicate that TanDEM-X and Copernicus DEM exhibit the highest vertical accuracy, closely aligning with ICESat-2 and LiDAR observations, whereas ASTER GDEM and SRTM show larger mean errors, particularly in dissected or mountainous terrain. These findings suggest that TanDEM-X and Copernicus DEM are preferable for hydrology-focused applications in semi-arid basins, while ASTER and SRTM should be used cautiously where precise modelling is required. The study underscores the importance of DEM accuracy evaluation in relation to basin characteristics, as errors can significantly influence hydrological modelling outcomes.

How to cite: Jafari, L., Jarihani, B., Koci, J., Sanislav, I., and Duce, S.: Comparative Analysis of 30-m DEM Products for Hydrological Applications: A Case Study in the Flinders Catchment Australia, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-1968, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-1968, 2026.

Link to poster.

For more information visit Update-May-2026.pdf

The missed mutualist hypothesis predicts that the absence of mutualistic partners poses a barrier to introduced species becoming invasive. Yet, some alien plants thrive despite potential dependence on certain pollinators. For example, buzz-pollinated plants typically have specialist floral morphologies and benefit from buzz pollinator behavior for pollination. Despite this apparent specialization, some buzz-pollinated plant species have become invasive. To understand this contradiction, we undertook field observations at three sites in one native region (Mexico), and at five sites in one invaded region (Australia), of an invasive plant with the buzz pollination syndrome (Senna obtusifolia; Fabaceae), to (1) identify the floral visitors and pollinators, (2) determine whether pollinator assemblages differ between regions, and (3) assess whether S. obtusifolia relied on specialized buzzing behavior for pollen transfer in both the native and invaded populations. We identified 15 different insect species (native region) and 11 species (invaded region) that contacted the stigma or carried pollen and classed these as potential pollinators. We calculated a pollination importance index based on the relative abundance, pollen load, pollen fidelity, stigma contact, and body size match index of each morphospecies; the most important pollinators were non-buzzing bees (Apis mellifera and Meliponini species) in both regions. We observed buzzing behavior infrequently (<9% of visits), and it was 3.8 times more common in the invaded region compared to the native region. The dominance of non-buzzing behaviors suggests that S. obtusifolia does not rely on a distinct pollinator niche. We found no evidence for the missed mutualist hypothesis.

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Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) are fundamental to hydrological modelling, watershed delineation, flood hazard assessment, and resource management. However, the reliability of these applications depends heavily on the vertical accuracy of the DEMs. Although several global DEM products with 30-m spatial resolution are widely available, variations in sensor technology, data acquisition methods, and surface characteristics can significantly influence their accuracy and suitability for hydrological studies. This research provides a comparative evaluation of five commonly used global DEMs—TanDEM-X, ASTER GDEM, SRTM, Copernicus DEM, and ALOS World 3D—by assessing their vertical accuracy against high-resolution airborne LiDAR data and ICESat-2 ATL06 measurements. The findings aim to inform best practices for selecting DEMs in hydrological modelling and catchment-scale applications, particularly in data-scarce regions.

The Flinders River catchment in northern Queensland was selected as the critical test area for evaluating how DEM errors propagate into hydrological calculations. This region is characterised by low rainfall and pronounced topographic variability, encompassing flat lowland plains, dissected upland terrain, and localised areas of steep slopes. All DEMs were standardised to a common horizontal and vertical reference framework and co-registered with the test datasets to eliminate systematic discrepancies. ICESat-2 ATL06 data were rigorously filtered to retain only the highest-quality measurements, based on a combination of quality flags, topographic slope thresholds, and signal strength criteria in vegetated areas.

Elevation differences were computed at matched locations, and DEM performance was evaluated using key statistical metrics, including bias, root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), median error, and standard deviation. To provide a more comprehensive assessment, error behaviour was analysed in relation to terrain slope and catchment characteristics, highlighting zones most vulnerable to error propagation in flow routing and watershed delineation. Systematic patterns in DEM error were further examined with respect to sensor characteristics under varying landscape conditions.

Results indicate that TanDEM-X and Copernicus DEM exhibit the highest vertical accuracy, closely aligning with ICESat-2 and LiDAR observations, whereas ASTER GDEM and SRTM show larger mean errors, particularly in dissected or mountainous terrain. These findings suggest that TanDEM-X and Copernicus DEM are preferable for hydrology-focused applications in semi-arid basins, while ASTER and SRTM should be used cautiously where precise modelling is required. The study underscores the importance of DEM accuracy evaluation in relation to basin characteristics, as errors can significantly influence hydrological modelling outcomes.

How to cite: Jafari, L., Jarihani, B., Koci, J., Sanislav, I., and Duce, S.: Comparative Analysis of 30-m DEM Products for Hydrological Applications: A Case Study in the Flinders Catchment Australia, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-1968, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-1968, 2026.

Link to the poster listing.

Climatic and anthropogenic disturbances have led to intense small-scale tree cover loss in global forests. However, it remains unclear when forest attributes at a large scale (e.g., 0.05° resolution) will decline in response to such sub-grid (e.g., 30-m) tree cover losses within forest ecosystems. Utilizing global maps of forest attribute proxies, we discover that vegetation greenness, canopy structure, composition, and photosynthesis function can all increase under limited tree cover loss, indicating a widely existing safety margin in global forests that is primarily buffered by a positive edge effect of landscape fragmentation within forest ecosystems. The safety margin varies across biomes (tropical: 7.7%; temperate: 3.7%; boreal: 1.0%) and is often positively correlated with ecosystem resistance. In addition, about 35.7% of the remaining global forests have exceeded the safety margin. Our finding contrasts with the conventional perception that sub-grid tree cover losses are inevitably associated with declines in forest attributes and functions. It provides quantitative information for mitigating forest degradation and has strong implications for sustainable forest management practices.

Read the full article.

The resilience of migrant youth is under-theorised and poorly understood, yet it is crucial for successful adaptation and integration. This systematic review examines the literature on resilience and coping strategies among migrant youth. A systematic search of four academic databases (Emerald Insight, Google Scholar, ProQuest, and Scopus) identified 1,273 studies, of which 20 met the eligibility criteria for inclusion. The studies were thematically analysed, and their methodological quality was assessed using the Effective Public Health Practice Project (EPHPP) and the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) tools. Findings indicate the importance of family, peers, community support, and personal agency in fostering resilience. Despite growing empirical evidence on the impacts of social networks on migrant youth’s resilience and well-being, there is a research gap regarding the role of family processes and parental mental health literacy in promoting resilience among migrant youth experiencing psychosocial externalising challenges. Our findings indicate a need to adopt an intersectional and ecological lens to fully understand migrant youth experiences, resilience and coping strategies. There is a need for more evidence on the effects of specific types of resilience on the adversity experienced by migrant youth. However, the scope and methodology of the included studies are limited, necessitating further research to elucidate how resilience and coping support the well-being of this population.

Read the full article.

Monitoring rare and threatened arboreal mammals in tropical montane forests is constrained by low detectability using conventional ground-based methods, hindering robust assessment of population trends and conservation outcomes. We evaluated whether thermal drone surveys could overcome detection challenges for three threatened tree kangaroo species (Dendrolagus spp.) in community-managed conservation areas within the Torricelli Mountain Range, Papua New Guinea, where voluntary hunting moratoria have been in place for over two decades. Across 74 flights totalling 21 hours of active search at three sites, thermal drones detected 67 arboreal mammals in half of all flights, achieving unique-individual encounter rates ranging from 1.6–3.6 individuals h–1. We derived first density indices for Finsch’s tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus inustus finschi) (1.74–1.91 individuals km⁻2) and Golden-mantled tree kangaroo (D. pulcherrimus) (0.47 individuals km⁻2), though these should be interpreted as conservative lower bounds given that survey effort was not uniformly distributed across the elevational range occupied by each species. Only a single pair of the Critically Endangered Scott’s tree kangaroo (D. scottae) was detected, consistent with its reported rarity, as well as the limited survey coverage of higher-elevation core habitat due to altitude restrictions. These results demonstrate that thermal drones can generate repeatable detection data for threatened arboreal marsupials where conventional methods have proven inadequate, providing a foundation for evaluating community-led conservation effectiveness. With methodological refinement to address detection biases and spatial coverage limitations, thermal drone surveys have significant potential to enable long-term population monitoring for tree kangaroos in remote and inaccessible tropical forests.

Link to the pre-print article.

Roads act as conduits for human incursions and hence underlie many of humanity’s impacts on nature, including deforestation, wildfires, poaching and natural-resource overexploitation. Unfortunately, existing roadmaps often drastically underestimate the true extent of road networks and future predictions of road-related impacts rely on incomplete and outdated data, undermining development planning and conservation decision-making.

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For more information visit Update-April-2026.pdf

For more information visit RSQ-grants-2026-Call-for-applications-2026-30-June-2026.pdf

• Several transects have been established to study the sensitivity of carbon isotope discrimination (Δ¹³C) in woody plants to mean annual precipitation (MAP) across Australia. These have shown a surprising divergence in Δ¹³C-MAP sensitivity among subcontinental regions.
• We analysed previously reported data alongside new measurements from a transect in northeastern Queensland to explore potential drivers of regional-scale Δ¹³C-MAP sensitivity.
• Multiple lines of evidence indicated this sensitivity is related to soil phosphorus. In phosphorus-poor regions, Δ¹³C decreased less with decreasing MAP than in phosphorus-rich regions. Along two contrasting transects in northern Australia, Δ¹³C correlated with leaf phosphorus in the phosphorus-poor Northern Territory, but not in phosphorus-rich northeastern Queensland, where it instead correlated with leaf nitrogen. Common garden experiments for species from phosphorus-poor vs phosphorus-rich regions showed contrasting relationships between Δ¹³C and species range MAP. Finally, using an Australia-wide leaf gas exchange dataset, we showed that soil phosphorus influenced the ratio of intercellular to ambient CO₂ concentrations (c_i : c_a), which in turn controls Δ¹³C; the influence was through stomatal conductance, not photosynthetic capacity.
• Higher stomatal conductance in phosphorus-poor regions appeared to moderate the decrease in Δ¹³C with decreasing precipitation. We suggest that high transpiration rates in these regions help to facilitate phosphorus foraging in phosphorus-impoverished, ancient soils.

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Capparis comprises ~145 species, of which ~21 occur in Australia; however, the relationships and taxonomic status of Australian Capparis taxa remain to be tested. We present phylogenies of all Australian Capparis taxa by analysing Angiosperms353 loci using coalescent and concatenated approaches. All trees resolve Capparis as monophyletic, with a whole-genome duplication (WGD) event detected at the crown. Capparis sect. Capparis and sect. Busbeckea are monophyletic but sect. Monostichocalyx is non-monophyletic. The relationships of species within sect. Busbeckea are poorly supported due to rapid radiation following ancient WGD. The relationships of taxa within sect. Capparis and the clades of sect. Monostichocalyx are well supported, with some incomplete lineage sorting. Capparis spinosa is geographically, morphologically and phylogenetically structured across northern Australia. Based on these results, we describe five new species and two new subspecies of Capparis, bringing the total number of species in Australia to 26. Capparis xylocarpa, C. megacarpa, C. loxophleba and C. splendidissima are newly described. Capparis loranthifolia var. bancroftii is raised to species level as C. bancroftii. Capparis spinosa subsp. nummularia is re-circumscribed, and two new subspecies, C. spinosa subsp. formicosa and C. spinosa subsp. insularis are described. We provide a key for all Australian taxa.

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Amphibians are among the most threatened vertebrate groups, yet monitoring cryptic, fossorial species is difficult and often risks disturbing both their microhabitats and the individuals themselves. We tested whether artificial shelters could serve as a monitoring and potential conservation tool for cryptic fossorial amphibians in natural habitats. We deployed two different artificial shelter designs (concrete and wood) in the Australian Wet Tropics and assessed the number of Austrochaperina robusta, a terrestrial-breeding microhylid frog, using them over 2 years. Monthly shelter surveys recorded the highest frog numbers in the cooler, drier months, indicating clear seasonal trends. Sliding-window analyses showed that frog numbers under concrete, but not wooden, shelters declined with warmer minimum temperatures over the 6 days pre-survey. Frogs used concrete shelters more (75% of records) compared to wooden shelters. This was partly because the concrete shelters did not degrade with time, but also likely reflects thermal buffering benefits. Microclimate logging indicated that concrete shelters provided greater daytime heat storage and slower nocturnal heat release than the wooden shelters. Invertebrate presence was weakly negatively associated with frog numbers, while greater understory cover and closer shelter spacing were stronger positive predictors of frog abundance. While most observations were of adult frogs, juveniles and metamorphs were also observed under both shelter designs. Additionally, six egg clutches were recorded, all under concrete shelters. Collectively, these results show that artificial shelters, especially concrete designs, offer a robust, low-impact method for long-term monitoring of fossorial frogs and may contribute to conservation by providing thermally favourable refugia and protection from disturbance.

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Indigenous Australians possess vast ethnopharmacological knowledge of native flora and have been using it for millennia. In a collaborative initiative to document and scientifically validate this knowledge, the Tropical Indigenous Ethnobotany Centre, Australian Tropical Herbarium and the James Cook University have been working closely with traditional custodians from the Iningai community near Barcaldine, Queensland. This study aimed to evaluate crude leaf extracts from eight medicinal plant species traditionally used by the Iningai people, focusing on their phytochemical profile, antioxidant potential, cytotoxicity and anti-inflammatory activity. Phytochemical screening confirmed the presence of alkaloids, phenolics, flavonoids and terpenoids. Antioxidant activity, assessed via the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging assay, showed moderate to strong activity, with IC₅₀ values ranging from 37.37 ± 1.01 μg/mL to 206.50 ± 2.44 μg/mL. Cell viability assay using human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) showed that Pittosporum angustifolium exhibited the highest cytotoxicity, resulting 73.97% cell death, suggesting potential toxicity to human cells. Anti-inflammatory activity was evaluated in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated PBMCs. Seven of the eight plant extracts significantly suppressed the release of proinflammatory cytokines, including tumour necrosis factor (TNF), interferon-gamma (IFN-γ), monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) and interleukin (IL)-23. Overall, this study provides scientific validation for the traditional use of these eight medicinal plants by the Iningai people. The identification of key phytochemicals, antioxidant potential and anti-inflammatory properties supports their ethnopharmacological relevance. Further investigation is warranted to isolate and characterise the active compounds from the most promising species for potential development into novel therapeutic agents.

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Climate change in tropical montane cloud forest (TMCF) is predicted to impact species adapted to consistent, mild temperatures. We used a temperature gradient plate to investigate the effect of temperature on germination and early seedling survival of Dracophyllum sayeri (Ericaceae), a tree species endemic to TMCF in northeast Queensland, Australia. Despite a narrow distribution, results suggest that a wide range of temperatures is conducive to germination of D. sayeri, including up to 8°C higher than current temperatures. At higher temperatures, a day/night temperature amplitude of at least 5°C was required for optimal germination. In addition, germination was greater when seeds were exposed to natural diurnal light compared to constant darkness. Based on temperature, predictions under future climate conditions include a shift in peak germination from summer to winter/early spring. Results also suggest that D. sayeri has multiple strategies for maximizing germination in warm, alternating temperatures and light-filled gaps, and possesses more acclimation potential to persist under a future climate than previously assumed.

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Inbreeding, intraspecific competition, and drought stress interact to shape plant fitness, species distributions, and ecosystem structure. However, it is uncommon for studies to examine more than one or two of these factors simultaneously. We conducted a common garden experiment to assess the combined effects of induced inbreeding, intraspecific competition, and drought on the fitness of the highly invasive annual forb Senna obtusifolia (Fabaceae). We conducted a fully factorial experiment in which we grew seeds derived from self or outcross pollen, either alone or in competition with a conspecific, under drought or well-watered conditions. We measured plant performance across multiple life stages, including seed size and germination, biomass allocation, growth rate, reproductive output, and defense response. We found some evidence that a single generation of induced inbreeding reduced plant performance. Low inbreeding depression (δ_cumulative = 0.2) suggested that S. obtusifolia can uniparentally reproduce with little fitness impact, at least in the short term. This may enhance its invasion success by ensuring that progeny are strong competitors when pollinators and mates are scarce, common conditions during early colonization stages. Competition did reduce individual plant fitness for every response variable, and this effect was exacerbated under drought stress for both relative growth rate and root:shoot ratio, which highlighted that S. obtusifolia is tolerant to single stressors but combined abiotic and biotic stress shifted resource allocation and slowed growth rates, impeding plant growth and fitness. Critically, collective reproductive output outweighed the individual reproductive output per unit area demonstrating a positive density dependent response, even under combined stressors. Overall, tolerance to inbreeding ensures that species can reproduce uniparentally in the short term and remain competitive, tolerance of intraspecific competition enhances seed abundance and propagule pressure, and tolerance to drought stress demonstrates ability to remain competitive in changing environments.

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For more information visit Update-March-2026.pdf

Social work education requires more than technical competence. It demands ethical judgment, critical reasoning, and the capacity to engage constructively with contested social issues. This article argues that academic freedom is not an abstract principle but an ethical and pedagogical imperative for social work education as a regulated, practice-based profession. In the context of neoliberal governance, accreditation pressures, and ideological polarization, academic freedom enables social work educators to design learning environments where diverse intellectual traditions including critical, decolonial, Indigenous, liberal, conservative, and faith-based perspectives can be used rigorously and ethically for preparing socially responsive practitioners. Drawing on social work pedagogy literature, this article moves beyond theory to outline teaching strategies and assessment tools that enable educators to teach contested content ethically without coercion or self-censorship while meeting accreditation and accountability requirements. By offering a practice-oriented model for teaching across difference, this article demonstrates how academic freedom strengthens professional identity formation, critical thinking, and ethical competence in social work education.

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This article examines the socio-ecological impacts of oil and gas activities in four communities in the Niger Delta using a political ecology lens and environmental justice perspective. Drawing on participatory mapping, focus group discussions, and key informant interviews, the study reveals that community exposure to extractive infrastructure is both spatial and structural—defined not just by proximity to pipelines and facilities but also by systemic neglect, weak governance, and infrastructural deficits. The concept of “structural exposure” is introduced to explain how absence of services (e.g., roads, hospitals, potable water) amplifies harm in affected communities, while the idea of “exposure displacement” captures how ecological pressure migrates when resource users are pushed into contested or degraded areas. These dynamics deepen environmental and livelihood vulnerabilities and are often mediated by institutional inaction.
Findings highlight a range of community impacts—environmental degradation, cultural erosion, psychological stress, and socio-political disempowerment—as well as coping strategies such as artisanal refining, self-medication, and overexploitation of non-oil resources. These responses, while pragmatic, are often maladaptive, reinforcing cycles of vulnerability in the absence of state or corporate support. The analysis shows that harm is not evenly distributed but shaped by differentiated access to institutional protection, reinforcing patterns of environmental injustice. By linking these lived experiences to broader policy and governance failures, this article offers a grounded empirical base for subsequent governance and actor-network analysis and contributes to global debates on extractivism, vulnerability, and environmental justice.

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Mountains, with their sharp climatic contrasts, are emblematic of climate-driven species movement and, ultimately, loss. Here, we argue that these same contrasts make mountains powerful natural laboratories for discovering the mechanisms that underlie biological change.

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1. Tropical forest restoration is a critical component of efforts to meet the global challenges of climate change, biodiversity decline and land degradation. Financing the adoption of large-scale restoration efforts requires accurate and robust evaluation of their benefits.
2. Ground-based techniques such as terrestrial or mobile laser scanning (TLS or MLS) allow for accurate, repeatable and importantly traceable determination of forest biomass and structure. The use of these techniques in assessing forest restoration offers an opportunity to both improve ecosystem models that underpin current carbon markets and provide for the direct tracking of carbon
sequestration into regenerating forests over time. Furthermore, the evaluation of ecosystem structural metrics (e.g. canopy closure and structural complexity) can help provide robust and transparent data to underpin nascent environmental and biodiversity markets to help support forest restoration.
3. Here, we consider the emerging role of ground-based laser scanning in supporting tropical forest restoration using experiences from the Wet Tropics of Australia as one of the most mature carbon markets on earth, and one in which co-benefits of tropical forest restoration are being incorporated into restoration finance models.
4. Solution: Integrating ground-based laser scanning into the evaluation of tropical forest restoration can provide stakeholders with direct evidence of restoration outcomes, thus increasing confidence in carbon and biodiversity credit valuation. By directly addressing known barriers to adoption, we believe the use of ground-based laser scanning, especially when coupled with other emerging technologies, will help support the financing of large-scale forest restoration efforts.

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Tropical forests support exceptional biodiversity yet remain underrepresented in long-term wildlife research and monitoring programs due to logistical, financial, and methodological constraints. Conventional ground-based survey methods are often ineffective in these environments, particularly for rare, cryptic, or arboreal species. Drone-mounted thermal cameras (thermal drones) offer a promising alternative by detecting endothermic animals from above based on their thermal signatures, with advantages for surveying inaccessible or densely forested habitats. This review synthesises the application of thermal drones for research on tropical forest fauna and provides a practical framework to support conservation practitioners in their deployment. Drawing on 38 studies published between 2018 and 2025, we examine how biological traits, environmental conditions, and technical parameters influence detection outcomes and evaluate whether thermal drones have potential to improve upon conventional methods. While most studies remain at the pilot stage, with limited progression to population inference, the available evidence indicates that thermal drones can outperform ground-based methods for detecting arboreal mammals in tropical forests when protocols are tailored to species behaviour and conditions that maximise thermal contrast. Based on the evidence, we summarise operational challenges and methodological limitations and highlight key constraints on inference, including variable detectability and species misclassification. We distil findings from the literature to provide best practice guidance for survey planning, flight configuration, and detection validation, supported by a decision tree to guide protocol design. Integration with long-term monitoring programs, improved error quantification, and broader taxonomic application will be essential to realise the potential of thermal drones for tropical biodiversity research.

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This chapter explores the concept of human flourishing, a topic which has entered mainstream discourse and is valued as a progressive and necessary goal on an international scale. As social workers, collective flourishing is idealised, but how can we begin working towards achieving this goal? Drawing on relevant literature, the chapter explores and discusses frameworks, such as positive psychology, social justice and environmental ethics, which can support human and community wellbeing. The chapter proposes that eco-social work perspectives and frameworks must be considered and utilised in the pursuit of achieving collective human flourishing and development goals.

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Agricultural land conversion is a major driver of global environmental degradation, contributing to habitat loss for threatened species and climate change when carbon-rich native vegetation is replaced with crops. Conversely, agricultural production remains a necessary land use to ensure food security, support regional employment, and generate foreign income. Hence, conservation interventions and nature-based solutions must compete with—and be balanced against—agricultural production, with careful consideration of the opportunity costs associated with provisioning land from agriculture to environmentally-focused purposes. Information on agricultural land value and opportunity costs are therefore important factors in land use planning, but such data is often limited. We developed a model of farmland value for Australia using socioeconomic and biophysical data and three years of farm sales records across 316 local government areas (LGAs). We then examined the relationships between farmland value alongside conservation values represented by threatened species habitat and carbon storage potential. Farmland value was primarily driven by population density, soil attributes, and rainfall amount, along with travel time to nearest city and forest productivity. Our modelled farmland value layers were strongly correlated with both threatened species richness and maximum woody biomass. Threatened species with higher mean farmland values also had lower mean habitat condition. These results demonstrate that areas in Australia with high importance for conservation and climate mitigation have higher economic and opportunity costs. Therefore, conservation interventions cannot simply focus on low-cost lands, and biodiversity and carbon financing schemes (such as carbon credits) must be sufficiently high to counter economic disincentives.

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Amazon rainforests face intensifying water stress due to increases in vapour pressure deficit and changing hydrological regimes. Embolism resistance (Ψ₅₀) is a critical metric of tree survival under drought conditions, it is defined as a plant’s capacity to resist disruption of xylem water flow due to air bubble formation from water stress. However, measurements of Ψ₅₀ are only available for a limited number of Amazon locations and species. Conversely, data on forest taxonomic composition are abundant across Amazonia, and if Ψ₅₀ is conserved phylogenetically, these data could provide a way to scale-up drought resistance patterns. Here we evaluate Ψ₅₀ measurements across non-flooded Amazonian tree taxa and reveal a moderate phylogenetic signal, with phylogenetic conservatism evident at the family-level. Notably, Fabaceae is amongst the most embolism-resistant tree families in Amazonia. Leveraging the phylogenetic signal we use species composition and tree size data from 448 forest plots across Amazonia to produce a macroecological assessment of Amazonian vulnerability to embolism. The resulting estimate spatial pattern reveals that forests in the Brazilian and Guiana Shield regions, where Fabaceae abundance is high, show strong resistance to embolism. In contrast, tree communities in Western Amazonia appear more vulnerable to embolism, suggesting a reduced capacity to withstand future drought conditions.

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Climate and atmospheric changes are impacting forest function and structure worldwide, but their effects on tropical forest diversity are unclear. Nowhere is the scientific challenge greater than in the Andes and the Amazon, which together include the world’s most diverse forests. Here, using 406 permanent plots spanning four decades of intact lowland and montane forest dynamics, we test for long-term change in species richness and assess the influence of climate and other variables. We show that, at a continental scale, species richness appears stable, but this masks substantial regional variation. Species richness increased in Northern Andean and Western Amazon plots, yet declined in the Central Andes, Guyana Shield and Central-Eastern Amazon. Overall, warmer, drier and more seasonal forests lost species, while those at higher elevations, in less fragmented areas and with faster rates of tree turnover experienced increases. Region-specific drivers, particularly precipitation seasonality and demographic factors, modulated these trends. The results highlight the diverse ways in which Amazon–Andes forests are changing and underscore the critical need to preserve large-scale ecosystem integrity to maintain local tree diversity. By doing so, Northern Andean forests in particular could serve as an important refuge for species increasingly displaced by climate change.

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On 29 January 2024, a truck accident spilled concentrated sulfonic acid into a river in Brazil's State of Santa Catarina. This disaster, which occurred in a protected area, killed various types of fish (e.g., crenuchids, heptapterids, and loricariids) and probably many other less observable animals, such as small invertebrates. The accident, similar to others around the world, gained national and international media attention. Because truck accidents causing aquatic pollution through chemical spills are occurring not just in Brazil but also globally, the recent event led us to consider similar cases and to recommend potential measures to help mitigate biodiversity loss in waterbodies near roads. Three factors need to be considered: (i) human (drivers); (ii) truck (mechanical condition); and (iii) road (e.g., infrastructure). In addition, improved expert assessments of the negative impact of these accidents on biodiversity are needed. A requirement to aid recovery of polluted ecosystems should be incumbent upon the companies involved in truck accidents.

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Understanding how the traits of lineages are related to diversification is key for elucidating the origin of variation in species richness. Here, we test whether traits are related to species richness among lineages of trees from all major biogeographical settings of the lowland wet tropics. We explore whether variation in mortality rate, breeding system and maximum diameter are related to species richness, either directly or via associations with range size, among 463 genera that contain wet tropical forest trees. For Amazonian genera, we also explore whether traits are related to species richness via variation among genera in mean species-level range size. Lineages with higher mortality rates—faster life-history strategies—have larger ranges in all biogeographic settings and have higher mean species-level range sizes in Amazonia. These lineages also have smaller maximum diameters and, in the Americas, contain dioecious species. In turn, lineages with greater overall range size have higher species richness. Our results show that fast life-history strategies influence species richness in all biogeographic settings because lineages with these ecological strategies have greater range sizes. These links suggest that dispersal has been a key process in the evolution of the tropical forest flora.

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Forests harbor some 80 % of Earth's terrestrial biodiversity and play a crucial role in sequestering and storing carbon that is linked to their ecological integrity and biological diversity functions. Forest degradation—the loss of forest-ecosystem integrity measured by changes to native-species composition, functional processes, and keystone structures—is a major source of emissions and significant cause of biodiversity decline. Addressing this loss is critically important for fulfilling the Paris Climate Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Additionally, the United Nations (2021a) Strategic Plan for Forests 2017–2030 calls for a halt to both deforestation and degradation by 2030. However, many countries, particularly in the Global North, fail to fully acknowledge forest degradation as a problem within their own borders, and countries are not presently on track to meet the 2030 deadline. Building from established literature, we propose a principle, criteria, indicator and verifier (PCIV) approach that would enable monitoring of degradation at various scales, ranging from the loss of large, old trees to intact landscapes relative to reference conditions derived from primary, mature, historic, and semi-natural conditions. Degradation drivers include multiple forms of commercial logging and road building that alters native species composition, structure, and functionality. Case studies from three major forested biomes (temperate, boreal, and tropical) illustrate the geographic extent and types of degradation. We highlight an urgent call for countries to better detect and assess the cumulative damages of forest-degradation and to end it as promised.

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James Cook University researcher Matthew Connors has discovered two new praying mantis species with the help of citizen scientists.

"One of these new mantises is not just a new species but an entirely new genus – the classification level above species – and was discovered thanks to citizen scientist Glenda Walter.

“We have named the new species Inimia nat – I. nat for short – as it was discovered thanks to the citizen science platform iNaturalist – also iNat for short.

“It’s a tribute to a new way of doing natural science. With a far greater number of people able to survey a much broader span of both time and space, citizen scientists can provide a wealth of data that would not otherwise be feasible,” said Mr Connors.

......."

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December 9, 2025

"Wildlife ecologist Matthew Luskin from the University of Queensland, who has mapped the impacts of African swine fever in South-east Asia, said the research joins “a long history in ecology of documenting how changes to a single species can trigger far-reaching cascading impacts in unexpected ways”.

Distinguished Research Professor William Laurance from James Cook University said similar outcomes likely occur in forests elsewhere.

“Other forests, such as those in Malaysia’s Pasoh Forest Reserve, have also seen dramatic fluctuations in wild pig numbers and significant ecological changes as a result,” added the environmental scientist, who studies conservation challenges across the globe.

In 2022, for instance, when the population of Pasoh’s wild boars plummeted due to an African swine fever epidemic, young trees were found to thrive in higher numbers, as the pigs could no longer damage saplings with their nesting habits.

On Pulau Ubin, the spike in mouse-deer is unlikely to have a huge impact on the forest, concluded both Dr Luskin and Dr Laurance, as the herbivores are delicate and relatively innocuous as compared to wild boars."

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December 17, 2025

"The road to hell is paved with … more roads.

That seems to be the message of one of this year’s most striking conservation papers. The research, published this April in the journal Current Biology, linked the “explosive growth” of secondary roads — those that branch off what the papers call “first-cut roads” — to tropical deforestation around the world.

These aren’t the typical suburban Streets, Drives, and Courts that spring up around developments. They’re “illicit, unplanned, often illegal roads,” says the paper’s senior author, William Laurance, distinguished research professor at James Cook University. The research was led by ecologist Jayden Engert."

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Roads act as conduits for human incursions and hence underlie many of humanity’s impacts on nature, including deforestation, wildfires, and natural-resource overexploitation. Unfortunately, existing roadmaps often drastically underestimate the true extent of road networks and future predictions of road-related impacts rely on incomplete and outdated data, undermining development planning and conservation decision-making. Here, we develop a multivariate “road expansion risk” index to identify areas prone to road building and therefore vulnerable to road-related environmental impacts. Using a massive road dataset—137 million 1-ha raster cells drawn from three different sources arrayed across the Amazon and Congo basins and insular Asia-Pacific region—we predict road-prone locations via a statistical model that integrates a range of biophysical, socioeconomic, and administrative data. This highly integrative, large-scale approach allowed us to identify areas likely to experience future road building and regions that may contain unmapped roads. Importantly, our road expansion risk index is a strong predictor of forest loss and degradation and can hence identify future road building and deforestation hotspots, even for the many tropical forest locales with grossly deficient road data.

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The large-billed tern Phaetusa simplex, is a South American species that breeds mostly inland on sandy river bars. While common, little is known about its demography. A nestling banded in July 2011 in a breeding colony on the Cuiabá River, in the Brazilian Pantanal, was recovered after 13 years and two months. It was found near another breeding colony 73 km upstream from where it hatched, setting a new longevity record for the species.

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Highlights

This study demonstrates that treatment with our novel plant-derived compounds effectively restores gut microbial balance.

We show that key bacterial pathways are upregulated, supporting intestinal homeostasis and maintaining gut barrier integrity.

We propose an IBD mechanism driven by gut microbiota, epithelial integrity, and immune response interactions.

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Please follow this link to the news article.

Recent evidence suggests that the ecological footprints of pre-Columbian Indigenous peoples in Amazonia persist in modern forests. Ecological impacts resulting from European colonization c. 1550 CE and the Amazonian Rubber Boom c. 1850 to 1920 CE are largely unexplored but could be important additive influences on forest structure and tree species composition. Using environmental niche models, we show the highest probabilities of pre-Columbian and colonial occupation sites, and hence human-induced ecological influences, occurred in forests along rivers. In many areas, the predicted pre-Columbian and colonial distributions overlap spatially with the potential for superimposed ecological influences. Environmental gradients are known to structure Amazonian vegetation composition, but they are also strong predictors of past human influence, both spatially and temporally. Our comparisons of model outputs with relative abundances of Amazonian tree species suggest that pre-Columbian and colonial-period ecological legacies are associated with modern forest composition.

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A targeted reptile survey of Scawfell Island, approximately 50 km offshore from Mackay, revealed a species of Lampropholis skink that could not be assigned to any described species. Here I describe this as a new species, Lampropholis isla sp. nov., based on morphological differences and genetic divergence from congeners. Subsequent assessment of museum specimens revealed that Lampropholis had been previously collected from Scawfell Island (in 1994, but assumed to be the widespread species L. delicata).
Lampropholis isla sp. nov. is restricted to rainforest areas on Scawfell Island and appears to be endemic to the island. Surveys on nearby islands of the South Cumberland Group, and islands to the north in the Whitsunday Islands Group, have failed to find any Lampropholis skinks. Suitable habitat is patchy on Scawfell Island but based on detection in all closed canopy sites surveyed, high density at most of these, and a lack of known threats, the conservation assessment of L. isla sp. nov. is Least Concern. Fire is a potential threat but impacts on rainforest habitat are limited due to rocky substrate in these areas. The island is protected within South Cumberland National Park. Lampropholis isla sp. nov. is the second endemic reptile species described for Scawfell Island, which is a higher number of vertebrate endemics than any other island off the coast of eastern Queensland. I discuss the general lack of rainforest-associated lizard species and genera on islands of this region.

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Camera traps are widely used in wildlife research and monitoring, so it is imperative to understand their strengths, limitations, and potential for increasing impact. We investigated a decade of use of wildlife cameras (2012–2022) with a case study on Australian terrestrial vertebrates using a multifaceted approach. We (i) synthesised information from a literature review; (ii) conducted an online questionnaire of 132 professionals; (iii) hosted an in-person workshop of 28 leading experts representing academia, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and government; and (iv) mapped camera trap usage based on all sources. We predicted that the last decade would have shown: (i) exponentially increasing sampling effort, a continuation of camera usage trends up to 2012; (ii) analytics to have shifted from naive presence/absence and capture rates towards hierarchical modelling that accounts for imperfect detection, thereby improving the quality of outputs and inferences on occupancy, abundance, and density; and (iii) broader research scales in terms of multi-species, multi-site and multi-year studies. However, the results showed that the sampling effort has reached a plateau, with publication rates increasing only modestly. Users reported reaching a saturation point in terms of images that could be processed by humans and time for complex analyses and academic writing. There were strong taxonomic and geographic biases towards medium–large mammals (>500 g) in forests along Australia's southeastern coastlines, reflecting proximity to major cities. Regarding analytical choices, bias-prone indices still accounted for ~50% of outputs and this was consistent across user groups. Multi-species, multi-site and multiple-year studies were rare, largely driven by hesitancy around collaboration and data sharing. There is no widely used repository for wildlife camera images and the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) is the dominant repository for sharing tabular occurrence records. However, the ALA is presence-only and thus is unsuitable for creating detection histories with absences, inhibiting hierarchical modelling. Workshop discussions identified a pressing need for collaboration to enhance the efficiency, quality and scale of research and management outcomes, leading to the proposal of a Wildlife Observatory of Australia (WildObs). To encourage data standards and sharing, WildObs should (i) promote a metadata collection app; (ii) create a tagged image repository to facilitate artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) computer vision research in this space; (iii) address the image identification bottleneck via the use of AI/ML-powered image-processing platforms; (iv) create data commons for detection histories that are suitable for hierarchical modelling; and (v) provide capacity building and tools for hierarchical modelling. Our review highlights that while Australia's investments in monitoring biodiversity with cameras position it to be a global leader in this context, realising that potential requires a paradigm shift towards best practices for collecting, curating, sharing and analysing ‘Big Data’. Our findings and framework have broad applicability outside Australia to enhance camera usage to meet conservation and management objectives ranging from local to global scales. This review articulates a country/continental observatory approach that is also suitable for international collaborative wildlife research networks.

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Different regions of the tropics vary in overall tree species diversity, with the tropical Americas exhibiting strikingly higher regional tree species richness than Africa and Southeast Asia. We investigated whether these differences also occur at the local scale, and whether the environmental conditions associated with tree species richness are consistent across tropical regions despite highly dissimilar species pools. A spatial random forest (RF) model was trained using a network of 429 one-hectare plots across the tropics, together with 24 environmental variables, to predict plot-level tree α diversity. A combination of climatic, soil and topographical variables explained around 86% of variation in richness. Despite differences in regional species pools and potentially disruptive effects of different geological, climatic and evolutionary histories, the relationship between environmental variables and local scale tree species richness is closely similar across different continents. Our findings imply a pervasive role of niche-based mechanisms in structuring local tree species richness, regardless of regional species assemblages. This pantropical convergence in the richness-environment relationship poses a challenge for ecology to explain.

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Climate change and increasing availability of resources such as carbon dioxide are modifying forest functioning worldwide, but the effects of these changes on forest structure are unclear. As additional resources become available, for example, through CO2 fertilization or nitrogen deposition, large trees, with greater access to light, may be expected to gain further advantages. Conversely, smaller light-suppressed trees might benefit more if their light compensation point changes, while bigger trees may be the most negatively impacted by increasing heat and drought. We assessed recent changes in the structure of Earth’s largest tropical forest by analysing 30 years of Amazonian tree records across 188 mature forest plots. We find that, at a stand level, trees have become larger over time, with mean tree basal area increasing by 3.3% per decade (95% CI 2.4; 4.1). Larger trees have increased in both number and size, yet we observed similar rates of relative size gain in large and small trees. This evidence is consistent with a resource-driven boost for larger trees but also a reduction in suppression among smaller trees. These results, especially the persistence and consistency of tree size increases across Amazonian forest plots, communities and regions, indicate that any negative impacts of climate change on forests and large trees here have so far been mitigated by the positive effects of increased resources.

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Reliable detection methods are essential for monitoring threatened species. Yet detection remains challenging for low-density populations of nocturnal, canopy-dwelling mammals. The endangered mahogany glider (Petaurus gracilis), endemic to lowland woodlands in north Queensland (Qld), Australia, is difficult to survey using conventional survey methods, which can be labour-intensive and yield low detection rates. We tested the feasibility of using thermal drones for detecting mahogany gliders by conducting four consecutive nocturnal flights over a 64-ha woodland fragment that supports a high-density population. Six individuals were detected within 2 h while flying the drone 10–30 m above the canopy and using oblique camera angles. We identified gliders in thermal imagery by their size, long tail and gliding behaviour, with no visible disturbance observed. These preliminary results indicate that thermal drones can detect mahogany gliders under certain conditions. With further validation, this approach could complement existing techniques for presence–absence surveys, population assessments and behavioural observations.

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As the global protected area (PA) network expands to meet international targets, it is important to assess whether traditional reliance on public land will suffice for projected PA growth or whether other tenures, such as Indigenous or pastoral lands, may increasingly contribute. Another consideration is whether the relative importance of different tenures varies depending on the specific goals of the PA network. We used the mammal fauna of the Australian monsoon tropics (AMT), one of the world's largest intact tropical savannas, as a case study to address these questions. We applied systematic conservation planning to identify optimal PA configurations under 2 objectives (adding to the existing PA network from any tenure vs. expanding the Indigenous protected area [IPA] network through voluntary declaration of Indigenous lands by traditional owners) and 2 species protection criteria (prioritizing currently threatened species vs. species predicted to become threatened). We calculated planning unit selection frequencies for the resulting 4 scenarios to identify high-priority areas for mammal conservation and assessed their dependence on different tenure categories. All scenarios relied heavily on Indigenous lands to achieve species representation targets, with varying contributions from pastoral land depending on the criteria prioritized. Protecting potentially threatened species required more pastoral land and Indigenous land coexisting with primary industries, whereas targets for currently threatened species were more cost-effectively met through voluntary declarations of Indigenous freehold land as IPAs. Our results highlight the potential for Indigenous lands to play a major role in achieving biodiversity conservation targets and demonstrate that land tenure requirements vary depending on conservation priorities. These findings emphasize the need to explicitly consider tenure in conservation planning to guide collaborative strategies and ensure PA growth aligns with specific biodiversity goals across diverse land management contexts.

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In Far North Queensland, one special winged mammal helps keep rainforests alive. The spectacled flying fox travels vast distances each night, pollinating flowers and spreading seeds far and wide.

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The spectacled flying-fox Pteropus conspicillatus population has declined by 75% in two decades to become endangered. This systematic review, the first since 2011, updates knowledge of the species and identifies pressing issues in its conservation, some not recognized previously. Gaps in knowledge have been identified and, where appropriate, species phylogenetically close to P. conspicillatus have been used to inform better understanding of the focal species. Extreme heat events are now a lethal reality, habitat loss and declining condition continue, pressure to disperse roosts is pervasive, and conservation is affected by false perceptions of the species' impacts. Averting threats to this species and obtaining resources to help it recover are urgent. Priorities for action should now include surveys and characterization of roosts; modeling future heat events to inform recovery priorities; physiological studies to determine heat tolerances; developing a population growth model to inform targets for population recovery; reinstating systematic population counts; improving monitoring methods; tracking individuals over time to understand habitat use; improving understanding of diets; restoring and managing roosts in accordance with research and best practice; and improving knowledge of diseases. The article updates and revises known diet species and the number of roosts used by P. conspicillatus in Australia.

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Tropical forests play a critical role in biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and climate regulation, but are increasingly affected by heatwaves and droughts. Vulnerability to warming may vary within and between species because of phenotypic divergence. Leaf trait variation can affect leaf operating temperatures—a phenomenon termed ‘limited homeothermy’ when it helps avoid heat damage in warmer conditions. However, evidence for this capacity and the relative roles of acclimation or adaptation remain limited. We measured photosynthetic heat tolerance and leaf thermal traits of three co-occurring rainforest tree species across a thermal gradient in the Australian Wet Tropics. Using a leaf energy balance model parameterised with field-measured traits, we predicted variation in leaf-to-air temperature differences (∆T_trait) and resulting thermal safety margins. We combined this with individual-based genome-wide data to detect signals of adaptive divergence and validated findings in a glasshouse trial with provenances grown under contrasting temperature and humidity conditions. Intraspecific trait variation reduced ∆T_trait and increased heat tolerance in warmer sites for Darlingia darlingiana and Elaeocarpus grandis, but not Cardwellia sublimis. As a result, thermal safety margins declined less steeply with increasing growth temperature in species capable of increased heat tolerance and avoidance, indicating these strategies can effectively buffer warming. All species showed genomic signals of selection, with associations to temperature and moisture variables. In E. grandis, glasshouse results confirmed a negative cline in ∆T_trait with temperature of origin. Although contrasting growth temperature and humidity lead to acclimation of individual traits, their coordination maintained ∆T_trait across the conditions imposed. Our findings provide evidence of limited homeothermy and suggest climate gradients have selected for trait combinations that reduce leaf temperatures at warmer sites in some but not all species. Given the rapid pace of climate change, those species with limited capacity to adjust their thermal safety margins through acclimation or adaptation may be at greater risk of local extinction.

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Restoring habitat corridors between fragments and continuous forests can potentially counter the effects of isolation, especially in tropical forests where species sensitivity to fragmentation is high. The ability of restored linear habitats to absorb natural disturbance in inimical surroundings potentially reflects resilience, an important aim of ecological restoration practice. Soil seed banks (SSBs) are reservoirs of plant life that can respond to disturbance and contribute to site recovery and resilience. Using seedling emergence, we compared SSB floristics in three restored wildlife corridors aged 10–26 years and their adjoining reference forest and adjacent pastures in tropical northern Australia. A total of 1427 seedlings from 69 species and 27 families were counted and identified from 131 samples. SSBs in restored corridors, while containing higher numbers of exotic species, were more similar in composition to reference forests than pastures, which are dominated by exotic species. Small, vertebrate-dispersed seeds of gap trees dominated reference forest SSBs and were also conspicuous in corridors. Exotic herbs and grasses occurred in all corridors, were most abundant in pastures, but rarely emerged in forest samples. Both distance from forest (z-value = −2.641, p < 0.01) and year of planting (z-value = −4.213, p < 0.001) had significant effects on the proportion of native species. Almost all of the exotic species recorded in corridors are benign. Few have a demonstrated ability to block or arrest native species regeneration, suggesting SSBs in linear restored habitats can make a significant contribution to resilience and recovery.

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Jeonju, South Korea / Cairns, Australia – July 25, 2025

Four curious young minds from Jeonju Girls' High School in South Korea travelled to Australia last month as part of a school-led science inquiry project focusing on global environmental change and ecological challenges.

The Year 10 students, accompanied by their science teacher, arrived at the Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science (TESS) Centre in Cairns on July 25, coinciding with the James Cook University’s annual Open Day in Cairns. Their visit formed part of a broader research trip exploring the impacts of climate change and environmental pollution—particularly phenomena such as coral bleaching and biodiversity shifts.

As part of their learning experience, the students conducted interviews with TESSian Daniel Montesinos and environmental science student Nyoka Hrabinsky, who shared insights into work in tropical forest ecology, ecosystem science, and environmental monitoring. The discussions focused on how climate change is reshaping ecosystems in the Tropics and the vital research being undertaken to guide conservation strategies.

The visit to TESS allowed the students to gain firsthand knowledge of the kinds of fieldwork and scientific collaboration needed to address environmental challenges worldwide. The exchange also highlighted the importance of international engagement and education in driving sustainability awareness among future generations.

Huge thanks to Daniel and Nyoka for their participation. TESS was delighted to host the students and commends their commitment to science learning and global citizenship.

Tasmania, an island state in Australia, is renowned for its unspoiled natural environment. However, ongoing pollution in Tasmania’s rivers, estuaries, and coastal regions, driven mainly by primary industries, raises significant concerns. This pollution will likely worsen without more effective mitigation measures. In this study, we apply a polycentric environmental governance framework to critically examine Tasmania’s water quality challenges. The limited regulatory actions taken to address water pollution reflect an asymmetric power dynamic between major industry players and state-level governance bodies, potentially obstructing state-based regulatory reforms. Instead of relying upon state-level interventions, we argue that a national-level policy initiative could strengthen water quality governance in Tasmania and other Australian states and territories. Our findings also emphasize that the value of a polycentric governance framework lies in its capacity to uncover hidden obstacles and to address multi-scalar challenges, offering valuable policy insights at broader levels.

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Tropical forest transpiration is essential for the maintenance of the water and carbon cycles and regulation of the global climate. However, recent collective efforts to compile sap flow data, which is the most widely used method for quantifying transpiration in woody stems, have revealed a large data gap in the tropics. Furthermore, accurately upscaling point measurements of sap flow to whole-plant water use (PWU) requires data inputs and corrections that may be difficult to determine in highly diverse tropical forests. This systematic review has two main goals: to assess the methodological limitations of PWU research in tropical forests and to highlight geographical and ecological gaps among current tropical forest PWU research. Our Web of Science search used terms related to ‘plant water use’ and ‘tropical forest’ and gathered all peer-reviewed studies that used sap flow sensors and upscaled point measurements to PWU in tropical forests. Based on 72 studies conducted in 85 locations, we found that drier forest types (based on Holdridge life zones) are largely underrepresented in the literature, with more than 75% of the research output concentrated in wetter forest types. We also identified a substantial knowledge gap on liana sap flow, which appeared in less than 6% of the studies. Regarding the methodological limitations, most studies omitted information regarding the number of sensors deployed per plant and the method of zero-flow determination. Other shortcomings specific to each sap flow sensor type are highlighted. Our study underscores the need for standardising key methodological aspects and identifies significant geographical and ecological gaps in tropical forest PWU research. It provides a foundation for further studies to refine estimates of the present and future contributions of tropical forest transpiration to the global water cycle.

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Quaternarists often point to the likely policy relevance of their papers, usually without ideas for how their work could influence policy.  I provide a set of personal experiences and reflections on how research influenced policy, or failed to do so, contextualized by an account of the nature of evidence–based policy making and on ways in which scientists can present themselves to policymakers. I conclude with suggestions for those who wish to influence policy.

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Context Tracking the movements of an animal increases our understanding of its behaviour and ecological preferences.

Aims This study aimed to assess the movements, home range, nesting sites, and microhabitat use of a very small, cryptic, terrestrial microhylid frog species (Austrochaperina robusta) in an upland rainforest, during the breeding season.

Methods We used harmonic direction-finding (HDF) technology with ultra-light harnesses/tag combinations of two sizes (small 0.023 g and large 0.033 g) to track male A. robusta. These are substantially lighter than all tag/harness combinations previously used in amphibian tracking studies and represented a small proportion (1.8–2.58%) of the body mass of the very small study species, A. robusta (1.27 ± 0.20 g).

Key results Both tag sizes were effective for tracking, and tag size did not change the distance moved or time until an individual was found. Males did not move far between surveys (average 58.2 ± 24.7 cm) and had small home ranges (0.46 ± 0.20 m2) over the 5-day tracking period.

Implications Our study highlights that HDF can be used to track very small vertebrates in structurally complex environments. This method has the potential to fill important knowledge gaps regarding the ecology of small terrestrial breeding amphibians, providing insights that can inform conservation measures and population assessments for vulnerable species.

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Globally, species with small distributions face disproportionate extinction risk, with the impacts of land use change more likely to have catastrophic consequences. Identifying, protecting and managing sites where such species occur is essential for minimising their extinction risk. Yet across Australia, efforts to protect and manage such species' habitats have hitherto been insufficient. Here, we present an example of an analytical and interpretive pathway for the conservation of such species, for a continental-scale case study. We identified 305 Critically Endangered species that have narrow ranges (<20,000 km2), and are distributed in fewer than six discrete patches. We refined existing species' habitat maps with advice from 18 experts via a modified Delphi approach. We assessed how much of each species' habitat is outside protected areas and considered to have agricultural capability, potentially elevating risk of conversion. We identified ∼85,000 km2 of habitat (∼1% of Australia) for these 305 species that must receive protection and management if the nation is going to meet its commitment to halt new extinctions. Approximately half of this habitat is outside the protected area estate, including the entire distribution of 39 species. Approximately 55% of habitat outside of protected areas had at least some agricultural capability. Protecting and managing the habitats of these narrow-range species should be a high priority in state and national conservation policy. Our case study serves as a template for the identification of important habitat for threatened species and could be applied in other regions of the world.

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Diabetes remains a global health challenge, with increasing numbers of patients diagnosed annually. Managing diabetes, particularly type two diabetes (T2D), requires a healthy lifestyle and medication to prevent further complications. New and effective antidiabetic drugs derived from natural products, including medicinal plants, are urgently needed because of the undesirable side effects associated with current antidiabetic drugs. Australian Aboriginal people possess rich traditional knowledge of plants used for food and therapeutic purposes. Here, we reviewed the literature on Aboriginal medicinal plants and found that a total of 126 Australian tropical plant species belonging to 47 families and 88 genera were reported as being used for treating wounds and diabetes-related conditions. We found that 28 of these 126 species were edible, of which fruits were the most consumed part. Among the 126 species, crude extracts from 29 species have been tested for their antidiabetic properties, and crude extracts of Syzygium cumini and Morinda citrifolia were the most extensively studied. Crude extracts from some species (e.g., Morinda citrifolia, Eleocharis dulcis, and Brassica rapa) have also been clinically evaluated in diabetic patients. Additionally, among 29 species, 374 pure compounds were isolated from 26 species. From the 374 isolated compounds, 51 have already been tested, out of which 16 were identified as antidiabetic drug leads. A total of 73 Aboriginal medicinal plants have not been tested for their phytochemical content or antidiabetic activity. These plants not only present potential targets for the biodiscovery of novel antidiabetic drug leads but also for the development of antidiabetic nutraceuticals based on traditional bush food knowledge.

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Remember learning about basalt at school? Well there's a bit more you mightn't know about this important rock. When basalt breaks down not only is it a great fertiliser but it also removes carbon dioxide from the air. A Brisbane start-up is speeding up the weathering process and predicts farmers will be the big winners. Landline’s Pip Courtney reports.

TESSians Paul Nelson and Fred Holden were interviewed in the field and discussed their enhanced rock weathering (ERW) and carbon capture research (Paul was literally wearing his TESS hat).

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20 May 2025

Distinguished Professor William F. Laurance was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society. Over 90 outstanding researchers from across the world have been elected this year. The 2025 cohort includes trailblazers across a wide range of fields, from artificial intelligence and electron microscopy to global health and neuroscience. Among them are a public health expert working to prevent HIV in young women, a Nobel Prize winner whose team created the transformative AI model, AlphaFold, an immunologist whose work has led to new insights into how the immune system can distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ microbes, and the first Sudanese scientist to be elected to the Fellowship.

Sir Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society, said:

“It is with great pleasure that I welcome the latest cohort of outstanding researchers into the Fellowship of the Royal Society.

“Their achievements represent the very best of scientific endeavour, from basic discovery to research with real-world impact across health, technology and policy. From tackling global health challenges to reimagining what AI can do for humanity, their work is a testament to the power of curiosity-driven research and innovation.

“The strength of the Fellowship lies not only in individual excellence, but in the diversity of backgrounds, perspectives and experiences each new member brings. This cohort represents the truly global nature of modern science and the importance of collaboration in driving scientific breakthroughs.”

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Distinguished Professor William Laurance FRS.

Although often typified as an Australian short story writer, Louis Becke’s literary oeuvre includes over sixty articles and stories concerning the natural environments and ecologies of the South Pacific region, his knowledge of which was so respected by his peers that he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. In The World in Which We Occur, Neil W. Browne uses the term “ecological writing” for that literary understanding of the participation between the human and natural worlds evident in this group of Becke’s works. Here, Becke observes and discusses not only animals (particularly fish and birds), as well as flora and fauna of various Pacific Islands and the Australian east coast littoral, but also human participation in those environments and ecologies that includes the Islanders’ sustainable management of their natural resources. At the turn of the nineteenth century, at a time when Americans, Europeans, and Australians alike knew little about the South Pacific, Becke articulated in his ecological writing, within his own literary ecosystem of the imagination in which writer, reader, text, landforms, creatures, and humans were vitally entwined, the complex interactions between the region’s human culture and natural world.

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Bright photoluminescence in the fur of mammals has recently raised considerable scientific interest. The fur of many mammal species, including Australian northern long-nosed (Perameles pallescens) and northern brown (Isoodon macrourus) bandicoots, photoluminesces strongly, displaying pink, yellow, blue and/or white colours. We used reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography and electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry to investigate the luminophores contributing to this photoluminescence. At least two classes of luminophore were observed in bandicoot fur extracts, and four of the orange-pink photoluminescent molecules had molecular masses consistent with protoporphyrin, coproporphyrin, uroporphyrin and heptacarboxylporphyrin isomers. Fur extracts of three other species of marsupial, a placental and a monotreme also contained a luminophore consistent with the molecular mass of protoporphyrin, whether or not pink photoluminescence was evident in the pelage as a whole. This study is the first chemical analysis of luminophores contributing to photoluminescence in the fur of Australasian mammals since two tryptophan metabolites were identified more than 50 years ago.

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Climate change is a major driver of global biodiversity loss, yet the precise mechanisms linking climate change to population declines remain poorly understood. We developed a novel, broadly applicable framework that integrates biophysical, nutritional, and population modeling to capture fundamental physiological constraints on mammalian herbivores and applied it to investigate the causes of declines in ringtail possums of the Australian Wet Tropics (Pseudochirops archeri and Hemibelideus lemuroides). Our approach bridges the gap between mechanistic (“bottom-up”) models, which simulate species' responses based solely on their traits and local microclimates, and the more common (“top-down”) statistical models, which infer species' responses from occurrence or abundance data and standard environmental variables. We quantified population dynamics over a 30-year period by generating species-specific estimates of temperature and water stress, foraging limitations, and linking these with annual monitoring and nutritional quality within an open population model. Our findings demonstrate that climate change has impacted populations through physiological stress, but in a species-specific manner. Both species have experienced population collapses at lower elevations and in low-nutritional sites. For P. archeri, we found evidence that population changes were driven by reduced survival due to overheating and dehydration, alongside diminished recruitment from limited foraging. In contrast, our model suggests that H. lemuroides populations were primarily affected by foraging constraints, emphasizing the importance of considering climate-driven limitations on foraging activity in addition to direct physiological stress. These mechanistic insights offer a foundation for targeted conservation strategies to mitigate the impacts of climate pressures on wild populations.

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Rural China is undergoing dramatic transformation along with modernization and globalization, driven by increasing capitalist engagement to increase commercial crop production. This phenomenon has been termed “crop booms” and was widely observed in tropical and subtropical frontiers of the Global South. International concerns about crop booms driven capitalist agrarian changes have been widely documented due to its unexpected environmental and socioeconomic outcomes, such as exacerbating large-scale land acquisition, socioeconomic inequality, and environmental degradation. However, knowledge gaps can be found from existing literature, mainly ignorance of voices needs of smallholder farmers and the role of the state behind crop booms. By combining qualitative and quantitative methods, this paper offers insights to crop booms and agrarian change through case studies of coffee plantations in Southwest China. Different from large-scale and capital-intensified crop booms in other regions, which often result in negative environmental and social consequences, this paper reveals relatively positive aspects of crop booms in which fewer land transfers occurred and enhanced benefit-sharing helped improve equality. Findings suggest that security of agricultural land tenure system, increasing both international and domestic market competition, and involvement in value-added processing activities all enable smallholder farmers to engage in coffee plantations with support from government agencies and international companies. In connection with crop booms and agrarian change, policy implications drawn from this research call for deeper understanding of local dynamics in agrarian change and investment from governments to improve land tenure security and market infrastructure across the Global South.

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We report on a decade of research on elephant impacts in equatorial evergreen forests in Gabon and Malaysia, comparing sites with (+) and without (−) elephants and documenting major differences in forest structure, tree species composition and tree species diversity. In both regions, we compared sites supporting natural densities of elephants with otherwise undisturbed sites from which elephants had been absent for several decades. Elephant (+) sites supported low densities of seedlings and saplings relative to elephant (−) sites. In Lope National Park, Gabon, 88% of saplings and small trees (<20 cm dbh) were of species avoided by elephants, implicating forest elephants as powerful filters in tree recruitment. In Malaysia, Asian elephants showed strong preferences for monocots over dicots, as we found through both indirect and direct means. Loss of elephants from both Asian and African forests releases diversity from top-down pressure, as preferred forage species increase in abundance, leading to increased density of small stems and tree species diversity. In contrast, loss of other major functional groups of animals, including top carnivores, seed predators and seed dispersers, often results in negative impacts on tree diversity.

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Forest Transition (FT) is a theoretical framework for understanding tree cover changes but often overlooks differences within countries, across forest types (e.g., second-growth forests, tree plantations replacing natural forests), regions, and climates. We quantified tropical tree cover dynamics across eight regions in four tropical countries, examining how these patterns relate to FT and how they vary between climates and forest types. Each country represented a different stage in the FT trajectory. We combined Landsat-derived time-series from 1990 to 2020 with Sentinel-2-based land cover classification to distinguish between mature natural forests (MF), second-growth forests (SF), tree plantations (TP), and their dynamics. During this period, 50 % of MF was lost, while tree cover gains averaged 16 % across regions; SF contributed 23 % and TP 12 % of total tree cover by 2020. SF steadily increased, yet its average lifespan was only 10 years, limiting its ecological contributions compared to MF. The studied regions followed the theoretical FT trajectory: the Ghanaian regions were in early transition (pre-inflection), Mexican regions were in late transition (pre-inflection), and the Australian and Brazilian (São Paulo state) regions were in post-transition (post-inflection). Evaluating FT while including or excluding TP results in different conclusions about the FT trajectory of a region or country. MF was lower in dry (from 55 % in the 1990s to 23 % in 2020) than in wet (from 73 % in the 1990s to 35 % in 2020) forest regions. SF gains were higher in dry (31 %) than in wet (23 %) regions, though SF increases did not compensate for MF loss, resulting in reduced biodiversity and ecological functioning. Hence, halting deforestation and protecting young forests are equally crucial. Evaluating FT excluding TP and quantifying SF persistence may have far-reaching consequences for how to evaluate tree cover by not only evaluating tree cover quantity, but also tree cover quality. Our findings can inform policymakers to design smart policy mixes that sequence the right policy instruments at the right time. Local people must participate in forest restoration strategies and issues of equity, justice and power imbalances must be addressed to facilitate FT. Dissecting FT increases our understanding of the underlying forest cover dynamics, which can lead to better policies for protecting local people`s livelihoods, halt deforestation, and facilitate FT to restore the natural world upon which people`s lives and society depend.

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Anthropogenic biodiversity decline threatens the functioning of ecosystems and the many benefits they provide to humanity. As well as causing species losses in directly affected locations, human influence might also reduce biodiversity in relatively unmodified vegetation if far-reaching anthropogenic effects trigger local extinctions and hinder recolonization. Here we show that local plant diversity is globally negatively related to the level of anthropogenic activity in the surrounding region. Impoverishment of natural vegetation was evident only when we considered community completeness: the proportion of all suitable species in the region that are present at a site. To estimate community completeness, we compared the number of recorded species with the dark diversity—ecologically suitable species that are absent from a site but present in the surrounding region. In the sampled regions with a minimal human footprint index, an average of 35% of suitable plant species were present locally, compared with less than 20% in highly affected regions. Besides having the potential to uncover overlooked threats to biodiversity, dark diversity also provides guidance for nature conservation. Species in the dark diversity remain regionally present, and their local populations might be restored through measures that improve connectivity between natural vegetation fragments and reduce threats to population persistence.

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Water loss and carbon gain are balanced by stomatal control, a trade-offthat has allowed trees to survive and thrive under fluctuating environmental  conditions. During periods of lower water availability, stomatal closure prevents excess water loss. Various strategies of stomatal control have been found among tree species, but the trigger for this behaviour remains elusive. We found a uniform pre-dawn water potential threshold (−1.2 MPa) for stomatal closure across species, which coincided with stem-growth cessation. Meanwhile, midday water potentials at stomatal closure were more variable across species and stomatal control did not follow species-specific thresholds of hydraulic failure, a commonly adopted theory in plant biology, and often used in predictive water-use modelling. This indicates that nocturnal rehydration, rather than daytime hydraulic safety is an optimization priority for stomatal closure in trees . We suggest that these processes are critical for forecasting the global carbon cycle dynamics.

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Until a few tens of thousands of years ago, Earth harboured a remarkable collection of large animals¹, including giant ground sloths (Megatherium), woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) and elephant birds (Mullerornis and Aepyornis). Most of these iconic beasts are now extinct, and many large mammals are vanishingly rare following widespread human persecution and habitat disruption. Yet in India, a nation with a burgeoning human population, good news is reverberating about the population of wild tigers (Panthera tigris). Writing in Science, Jhala et al.² present findings about tigers that provide key lessons for conserving imperilled large animals elsewhere in the world.

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Evidence is accumulating of declines in widespread, abundant insect species. The consequences of these losses for ecosystem functioning are predicted to be severe but remain poorly tested in real-world ecosystems. Here we tested the relative importance of functional redundancy versus complementarity in conferring stability of multifunctional performance in the face of dominant insect species decline. We conducted an experimental manipulation of functional trait-space occupancy within naturally occurring ant communities in Australia. Experimental suppression of dominant ant species in multiple trait groupings caused a counterintuitive increase in multifunctional performance, which was associated with an increase in species richness. The resident ant community had high functional redundancy, contributing to rapid compensatory dynamics following suppression. However, colonization by new species with increased trait complementarity drove higher multifunctional performance. This increased multifunctionality probably occurred via reduced interspecific competition but at the cost of increased sensitivity of ecosystem multifunctionality to further species loss. Our findings show that functional redundancy can buffer multifunctional performance of a community against decline of dominant insect species but suggest that future stability of ecosystem multifunctionality depends more on functional complementarity and altered competitive interactions.

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Animals communicate using multiple sensory channels, including via vision. The colourful plumage of birds is a model system to study visual communication having evolved through a complex interplay of processes, acting not only on the ability of a plumage patch to convey information, but also in response to physiological and environmental factors. Although much research on inter-specific variation in bird plumage has concentrated on sexual selection, much less has considered the role of non-sexual selection and how it is affected by the joint effects of avian viewing conditions and receiver vision. Here, we combined a taxonomically diverse databases of avian plumage reflectance measurements with bird vision models, habitat and behavioural data to test the effect of three factors that affect viewing conditions—habitat openness, migratory preference and diel activity—on avian plumage contrast, accounting for shared evolutionary history and variation in avian visual systems. We find that habitat structure and migratory preference predicted plumage visual contrast, especially for females. Our study therefore demonstrates the important role of nonsexually selected traits, viewing conditions and bird vision, in shaping avian plumage contrast.

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The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity built on these principles. Negotiations are now underway for a post-2020 framework for biodiversity. Ambio papers have argued for a stronger scientific basis for conservation and for the need to adapt to changing conditions and to the rich diversity of societal preferences for conservation. International processes favour simple, generalizable approaches to conservation but we call for recognition of the diversity of ecological and human conditions in which conservation occurs. There is a need to build capacity to support a diversity of conservation approaches that are adapted to changing local conditions and to the priorities of diverse human societies.

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Our results show that any of these alternative scenarios would provide a policy that is not only more coherent, but that also would result in more effective and efficient policy implementation. This policy audit method should have wide potential application for auditing best practice and policy effectiveness in complex landscapes across the globe and should have immediate application in helping to resolve the current issues on the Kampar Peninsular.

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Forest cover changes in Indonesia’s terrestrial national parks between 2012 and 2017. Biodiversitas 22: 1235-1242. Tropical rainforests are among the most important ecosystems on earth. After Brazil, Indonesia has the second-largest tropical forest area in the world. Since the 1970s, Indonesia's forests have decreased from covering 87% to 50% of its land area. With the ever-increasing pressures from economic and human development, it appears likely that much of the biodiversity and ecosystem services provided by forests in Indonesia will only remain in protected areas. National parks currently cover around 60% or 16 Mha of the total area of protected areas in Indonesia. Between 2012 and 2017, 43 terrestrial national parks in Indonesia lost 1.62% of their total forest cover. However, primary forest cover increased by 0.07%. National parks in the Jawa Bali bioregion, through their better management inputs and community collaborations, ecosystem services to the surrounding areas, as well as natural mountainous conditions, have contributed to the increase of primary forest covers and keeping total forest loss relatively low in Indonesia’s national parks.

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The human footprint (HF) was developed to measure of the impact of human activities on the environment. The human footprint has been found to be closely related to the vulnerability of protected areas around the world. In Indonesia, as nature conservation is still seen as hindering economic development, it is especially important to assess the human footprint in order to comprehend the overall pressures resulting from the various human activities on Indonesia’s national parks. This study measured the change in the human footprint in and around 43 terrestrial national parks over 5 years, between 2012 and 2017. As many as 37 out of 43 NPs experienced an increase in the HF, ranging from 0.4 to 77.3%. Tanjung Puting in Kalimantan experienced the greatest increase (77.3%), while Ujung Kulon in Jawa Bali bioregion had the greatest decrease (10.5%). An increase in human population density and improved access to parks from roads, rivers and coastlines are the main drivers of increasing impacts on national parks.

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Road-infrastructure projects are expanding rapidly worldwide while penetrating into previously undisturbed forests. In Sumatra, Indonesia, a planned 88-km-long mining road for transporting coal would imperil the Harapan Forest, the island's largest surviving tract of lowland rainforest. Such roads often lead to increased forest encroachment and illegal logging, fires, poaching, and mining. To evaluate the potential impact of the proposed road, we first manually mapped all existing roads inside and around the Harapan Forest using remote-sensing imagery. We then calculated the expected increase in forest loss from three proposed mining-road routes using a metric based on travel-time mapping. Finally, we used least-cost-path analyses to identify new routes for the road that would minimize forest disruption and road-construction costs. We found that road density inside and nearby the Harapan Forest is already 3–4 times higher than official data sources indicate. Based on our analyses, each of the three proposed mining-road routes would lead to 3,000–4,300 ha of additional forest loss from human encroachment plus another 424 ha lost from road construction itself. We propose new routes for the mining road that would result in up to 3,321 ha less forest loss with markedly lower construction costs than any other planned route. We recommend approaches such as ours, using least-cost-path analysis, to minimize the environmental and financial costs of major development projects.

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TESS’s team explores how the chance of a pandemic similar to COVID-19 breaking out in Australia might seem far-fetched

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TESS's team uses network analysis to find the key players for effective conservation in Cambodia.

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TESS's Bill Laurance and collegues quantified global patterns of tree palm relative abundance to help improve understanding of tropical forests and reduce uncertainty about these ecosystems under climate change.

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TESS' Bill Laurance and colleagues says: Tree mortality decreased with wood density and generally increased with tree size, but was apparently unaffected by neighborhood crowding.

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TESS's Bill Laurance and colleagues generated the first globally-consistent, continuous index of forest condition as determined by degree of anthropogenic modification, by integrating data on observed and inferred human pressures and an index of lost connectivity.

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TESS' Bill Laurance and colleagues says: Amazonian forests are diverse but the estimatives on richness is debatable.

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Prof Bill alerts: Brazilian citizens and decision-makers must consider the consequences of such bills for Brazilian national parks and make their concerns about irreversible environmental impacts known to policymakers.

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TESS' team says: Local institutions in tropical forest landscapes must have greater control over development benefits if they are to
reinvest assets to achieve conservation success.

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"These five techniques have proven effective in achieving deeper understanding of context, engagement with all stakeholders, negotiation of shared goals and continuous learning and adaptation."

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They found that despite the incredible diversity of species (~600 species) produced for restoration plantings, a relative small handful (52) of species dominated seedling production.  Most of these species had characteristics of early successional species such as small animal dispersed seeds, and low wood densities which demonstrates some of their similarities to natural forest recovery.

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"Climate responsive urban planning and design is, therefore, key to secure a healthy urban lifestyle"

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Willingness to reforest at landscape scales depends, to a large extent, on restoration costs, opportunity costs, and a reliable and reasonable carbon price. Finding the most beneficial restoration methods is essential.

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"How urban spaces perform during disease outbreaks now also demands our close attention."

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"...However, the implications of the development of highway and dams for forest integrity, biodiversity and ecosystem services remained largely unreported".

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Biodiversity hotspots that have given species a safe haven from changing climates for millions of years will come under threat from human-driven global heating, a new study has found.

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We urge that ungazetted protected forests be given equal priority to gazetted protected forests in regard to conservation planning for road development, and also that gazetted forests be expanded in the Leuser Ecosystem and Batang Toru area to hedge against further incursions.

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Sophisticated modelling was used to determine not only the likely routes travelled by Aboriginal people tens of thousands of years ago, but also the sizes of groups required for the population to survive in harsh conditions.

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This study is the first to demonstrate innovation ability across task complexity in an Australian rodent and provides promising avenues for future studies of innovation.

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Influence of floods on the Australian biota should be considered an ongoing ecological and evolutionary driver, and one that is likely to intensify as extreme floods are expected to become more frequent under climate change.

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A celebration of the exceptional contribution Australian sites make to humanity's collective legacy, it is also an entreaty to preserve them for future generations.

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Persistent effects of fragmentation on tropical rainforest canopy structure after 20 yr of isolation

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A simple thing like designing an area to make it more walkable can boost local business profits.

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The science says one of our most endangered bird species – the black-throated finch – is at serious risk under the present Adani plan to dig up the Galilee Basin for coal.

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Professor Steve Williams, a co-author of the Report, has been monitoring rainforest biodiversity for over 20 years across the whole Wet Tropics region. The long-term monitoring of the rainforest vertebrates has observed a systematic decrease in the abundance and distribution of many Wet Tropics endemic species.

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Australia heavily relies on the work of Indigenous rangers to meet our conservation targets, but they’re being short-changed by federal government funding.

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An accurate understanding of the impacts of climate change on terrestrial vegetation is essential for managing risks associated with human-caused climate change: gauging the historic response of terrestrial photosynthesis is an important step in this direction

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Peter Hitchcock was one of Australia’s most remarkable environmentalists, with national and global contributions to forest conservation, rainforest protection, World Heritage, and national parks.

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Recognized as World Expert in Conservation of Natural Resources.

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Antioxidant supplementation during tropical summer appears to mitigate the negative impact of heat stress on DNA integrity but not concentration nor motility of boar spermatozoa; which may provide one solution to the problem of summer infertility in the pig.

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We believe that future liana research will benefit from new technologies such as high‐quality aerial photography taken from drones when the aim is to detect the relative burden of lianas on individual trees.

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Tropical fire ants (Solenopsis geminata), originally from central and South America, are a highly aggressive, invasive ecological pest. Our new research has shed light on how they successfully establish new colonies

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For time immemorial, many wildlife species have survived by undertaking heroic long-distance migrations. But many of these great migrations are collapsing right before our eyes.

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The endangered African wild dog (AWD; Lycaon pictus) is a highly social canid living in packs with a separate male and female hierarchy. Immobilisation, handling and translocations are acute stressors for AWDs, however such interventions are often needed for species management.

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We are living in the most explosive era of infrastructure expansion in human history.  The most ambitious scheme is China’s Belt & Road Initiative, which will involve 7,000 planned infrastructure and extractive-industry projects that span much of the planet.

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There is a global shift of forest management to local levels to better reconcile local livelihoods and biodiversity conservation. We argue that achieving such outcomes will require embedding science in landscape-scale management systems.

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Made from discarded plastic bottles—to underscores the growing threat of micro-plastics in our environment and bodies.

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That, essentially, is one of the key conclusions of a new landmark study of the Leuser Ecosystem in northern Sumatra, Indonesia — the last place on Earth where orangutans, tigers, elephants, and rhinos still survive together.

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Sperm banking and AI could benefit endangered African wild dog conservation. However, it is unclear whether their dominance hierarchy causes a decrease in reproductive and sperm quality parameters in subordinate males that typically do not breed.

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By 2070, there will be no suitable tiger habitats remaining in the Bangladesh Sundarbans.  Climate change will have a more pronounced effect on tiger habitats than that of sea level rise in the area.

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We found that planned and ongoing road and rail-line developments will have many detrimental ecological impacts, including fragmenting large expanses of intact forest.

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Home to such unusual creatures as Tree-Kangaroos and Birds of Paradise, New Guinea is exceptional not only for the uniqueness of its fauna and flora but also its astonishing cultural diversity — with more than 700 indigenous societies and languages.

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Summer infertility continues to undermine pig productivity, costing the pig industry millions in annual losses.

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This week marks the twentieth birthday for the towering crane that stands at the heart of James Cook University’s Daintree Rainforest Observatory (DRO) at Cape Tribulation

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Clarivate Analytics has published the list of the top 1% of the globe’s researchers, based on data related to how often other researchers cite their published work.

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A brief review of ongoing Brazilian national initiatives that would allow the construction of a general biomonitoring network scheme in protected areas; with additional focus on linking independent monitoring schemes.

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Scientists must call out — not merely greenwash — infrastructure building that will ruin environments, lives and economies, urges William Laurance.

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Research co-led by a James Cook University professor suggests the Amazon rainforest is changing fast—but not fast enough to keep up with climate change.

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The Best Australian Science Writing 2018 draws on the knowledge and insight of Australia’s brightest authors, journalists and scientists to challenge perceptions of the world we think we know.

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Production of many crops, including bananas, is threatened worldwide by the spread of pathogenic strains of Fusarium oxysporum, the causal agent of Fusarium wilt. Though not all soil attributes can be managed, pH, organic matter content and availability of nutrients show promise for manipulation to reduce disease severity and mitigate risk.

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The social impacts of roads, particularly on indigenous people, have not been adequately quantified. In reality, indigenous people are rarely consulted in the planning phase of road projects despite the fact that they have rights to self-determination and consultation involving the development of indigenous lands and resources, including road construction...

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Earth's environmentally riskiest venture ever undertaken?

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Scientists Warn That World’s Wilderness Areas Are Disappearing

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As oil palm plantations continue to expand in Latin America, identifying critical transitions in land use, at which animal communities can be drastically altered, is crucial for conservation planning.

The Rising Stars Early Career Researcher (ECR) Leadership Program provides advanced professional development to fast-track the careers of JCU's future research leaders. It is an elite program with a cohort of 5-10 ECRs selected biennially on a competitive basis.

The Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) is an academic research communication competition developed by The University of Queensland (UQ), Australia. JCU has a proud history of participating in the event.

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Follow archaeologist Professor Sean Ulm's journey from growing up in a small country town in coastal eastern Australia to collaborating with Aboriginal communities across northern Australia to help tell the incredible epic story of Australia's past.

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“This new protected area not only brings more key wildlife habitat under protection, but also protects vital forested watersheds that provide important ecosystem services to the people of Terengganu,” Sheema Abdul Aziz, a conservation ecologist and president of the Malaysia-based conservation research NGO Rimba, said in a statement.

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This and many of the other of NSHE's arguments are outlandish and easily countered. The best analogy I can use is this: using NSHE's logic, someone could cut off your head and there would only be minor damage, because far less than 1 percent of your tissue would be destroyed.

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If Orinoco oil palm cultivation surpasses 75 percent of the total area, mammal populations will suffer drastic and accelerated declines, a new study warns. A “sustainable” level of cultivation would need to reserve 55 percent of the land for natural ecosystems. Palm cultivation in the country’s eastern grassland plains has already exceeded these limits.

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Rhinos in Australia might seem like an insane proposition – after all, we’ve had historically bad luck with introduced species. But on reflection it’s not quite as crazy as it sounds.

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We found removing rare species at any cover threshold produced characteristic species appearing to correspond to landscape scale changes and better predicted species cover in grasslands and shrublands. However, in woodlands it made no difference.

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This paper contributes to the debate on why scientists need to learn to program, not only to challenge prevailing approaches to mangrove research, but also to expand the temporal and spatial extents that are commonly used for mangrove research.

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A project as sweeping as China’s multitrillion-dollar "Belt and Road" initiative has the potential to shake up global trade and geopolitics. But its toll on the environment may be just as significant.

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KUALA TERENGGANU, 15 August – Malaysia’s Terengganu state government announced today that it has designated 10,386 hectares of land formerly slated for logging as a new protected area for conservation. This new state park in the Kenyir region of Terengganu is phase one of a much larger conservation project that lies within a globally important Tiger Conservation Landscape and critical wildlife corridor.

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"Screen, not just green’ infrastructure projects to help economies and the environment"

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Debugging diversity ‐ a pan‐continental exploration of the potential of terrestrial blood‐feeding leeches as a vertebrate monitoring tool.

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We need to make our urban areas more welcoming to wildlife.

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Global forest discourses must connect with local forest realities.

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We are living in the most explosive era of infrastructure expansion in human history. To meet the United Nations’ development goals, we would need to invest tens of trillions of dollars in new roads, railways, energy ventures, ports, and other projects by 2030.

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A pair of proposed hydroelectric dams that will encroach on the habitats of critically endangered primates—in Guinea and Indonesia—are receiving fierce criticism from conservation groups, who fault what they call inadequate scientific review of the harmful effects of these big infrastructure projects'

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New research has revealed a deadly disease that threatens the survival of the world's frogs originated from East Asia, and global trade was almost certainly responsible for the disease's spread.

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China is planning a series of massive infrastructure projects across four continents, an initiative that conservation biologist William Laurance described as “environmentally, the riskiest venture ever undertaken.”

Research shows for the first time that colonisation of Australia by 50,000 years ago was achieved by a globally significant phase of purposeful and coordinated marine voyaging.

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The rapid expansion of oil palm cultivation in the Neotropics has generated great debate around possible biodiversity impacts.

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It’s being called the biggest infrastructure project in human history, the likes of which Planet Earth has never seen before.

Into the sinkhole. Ecologist Mick Brand and meteorologist Costijn Zwart of James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, abseil a boat into a 40-metre sinkhole in Arnhem Land to investigate the area’s geological record.

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Susan Laurance describes the excitement of working on the frontiers of science. She describes the incredible experiment to create drought conditions in the Daintree Rainforest and what we can learn about how climate change is affecting our environment.

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Conserving Species in a Fragmented World: The Established Researcher.

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TESS team shows that road improvement enhances smallholder productivity and reduces forest encroachment in Ghana.

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Newly Discovered Orangutan Species Requires Urgent Habitat Protection.

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China-backed Sumatran dam threatens the rarest ape in the world.

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Crushed rocks to boost crops,

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Chocolate: brought to you by bugs!

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Innovation Award winner, Prof. Bill Laurance, affirms the importance of protecting the planet's most ancient ecosystems.

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Many believe that Australia's draft 'Strategy for nature' doesn't cut it.

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Africa's great migrations are failing.

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Warning signals may aid in identifying the proximity of ecological communities to biodiversity thresholds from habitat loss—often termed “tipping points”—in tropical forests.

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