Featured
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Nature Podcast |
How whales sing without drowning, an anatomical mystery solved
Baleen whales sing using a modified larynx, but this leaves them them unable to escape human noise.
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News |
Why citizen scientists are gathering DNA from hundreds of lakes — on the same day
Massive environmental DNA project will take a record-setting snapshot of biodiversity worldwide.
- Lydia Larsen
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Editorial |
It’s time for countries to honour their million-dollar biodiversity pledges
Promises to safeguard biodiversity need to be translated into money in the bank.
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Article
| Open AccessRainforest transformation reallocates energy from green to brown food webs
Conversion of rainforest to plantations in Sumatra leads to higher energetic losses in animal food webs aboveground than belowground, with the belowground energy being reallocated from diverse arthropod communities to invasive earthworms.
- Anton M. Potapov
- , Jochen Drescher
- & Stefan Scheu
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Analysis
| Open AccessCritical transitions in the Amazon forest system
Analyses of drivers of water stress are used to predict likely trajectories of the Amazon forest system and suggests potential actions that could prevent system collapse.
- Bernardo M. Flores
- , Encarni Montoya
- & Marina Hirota
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Correspondence |
Build global collaborations to protect marine migration routes
- Jianguo Du
- , Bin Chen
- & Wenjia Hu
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News & Views |
From the archive: river pollution, and a minister for science
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Where I Work |
I listen to the sounds this remote wetland makes to learn its rhythms
Peter Chatanga uses weeks-long audio recordings to build a picture of biodiversity in Lesotho’s crucial wetlands.
- Linda Nordling
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Career Q&A |
I took my case to Nepal’s highest court to improve conservation
After seeing an endangered-animal pelt displayed on television, Kumar Paudel embarked on a five-year legal battle, advocating for equitable enforcement of wildlife laws.
- Saugat Bolakhe
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Nature Podcast |
Cancer’s power harnessed — lymphoma mutations supercharge T cells
Genetic changes that help tumour cells thrive can be co-opted to improve immunotherapy’s effectiveness, and looking at the electric vehicle batteries of the future.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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News |
How do otters protect salt marshes from erosion? Shellfishly
Sea otters inadvertently protect the vegetation that binds sandy shorelines together.
- Jude Coleman
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News & Views |
Ecosystem effects of sea otters limit coastal erosion
Conservation is bringing back certain predators that are high in the food chain, but how this affects an ecosystem overall is debated. Rigorous fieldwork provides strong evidence that sea otters help to mitigate coastal erosion.
- Johan S. Eklöf
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Article |
Top-predator recovery abates geomorphic decline of a coastal ecosystem
Sea otters recolonizing an estuary in California indirectly reduce erosion by reducing burrowing crab abundance, suggesting that restoring predators could be a key mechanism to improve the stability of coastal wetlands and other ecosystems.
- Brent B. Hughes
- , Kathryn M. Beheshti
- & Brian R. Silliman
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Nature Video |
‘Like a moth to a flame’ — this strange insect behaviour is finally explained
Many explanations have been put forward for insects’ attraction to light, but high tech cameras now suggest a different answer.
- Dan Fox
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News |
Indian forest act faces challenge in Supreme Court
Ecologists, bureaucrats and conservationists say India’s amended Forest Conservation Act will reduce biodiversity and harm livelihoods.
- Gayathri Vaidyanathan
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Research Briefing |
Predator die-off reshapes ecosystems in expected and unexpected ways
Mass-mortality events of predators are becoming more common, but their precise effects on food webs remain unclear. Experimentally induced predator die-offs led both to reduced predation and to fertilization from the bottom up. Together, these effects stabilized food webs.
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Article |
Predator mass mortality events restructure food webs through trophic decoupling
Predator mass-mortality events lead to the proliferation of diverse consumer and producer communities resulting from weakened top-down predator control and stronger bottom-up effects through predator decomposition.
- Simon P. Tye
- , Samuel B. Fey
- & Adam M. Siepielski
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Nature Podcast |
This AI just figured out geometry — is this a step towards artificial reasoning?
How ‘AlphaGeometry’ solves Mathematical Olympiad-level problems, and what happens to an ecosystem after a mass predator die-off.
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News |
Largest genetic database of marine microbes could aid drug discovery
A trove of more than 300 million gene groups from ocean bacteria, fungi and viruses has been made freely available online.
- Carissa Wong
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Editorial |
Norway’s approval of sea-bed mining undermines efforts to protect the ocean
The decision to permit exploratory deep-sea extraction of valuable minerals breaks a promise to the other nations on the Ocean Panel and to scientists.
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News Feature |
Chimpanzees are dying from our colds — these scientists are trying to save them
Humans are increasingly passing pathogens to animal populations, imperilling endangered species such as chimpanzees and gorillas.
- Rachel Nuwer
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News |
Can foreign coral save a dying reef? Radical idea sparks debate
Devastation brought on by climate change and other threats prompts a last-resort proposal to rescue Caribbean corals.
- Heidi Ledford
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Article
| Open AccessConsistent patterns of common species across tropical tree communities
Inventory data from more than 1 million trees across African, Amazonian and Southeast Asian tropical forests suggests that, despite their high diversity, just 1,053 species, representing a consistent ~2.2% of tropical tree species in each region, constitute half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees.
- Declan L. M. Cooper
- , Simon L. Lewis
- & Stanford Zent
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Correspondence |
Climate policy must integrate blue energy with food security
- Yuyan Gong
- , Liuyue He
- & Jiangning Zeng
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News |
Tasmanian devil die-off is shifting another predator’s genetics
Devil population crashes caused by contagious tumours have knock-on effects elsewhere in the food chain.
- Miryam Naddaf
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Where I Work |
How I fuse Western science with Traditional Knowledge
Indigenous Canadian ecologist Jennifer Grenz abandons colonial restoration dogma to reshape land systems according to community needs.
- Virginia Gewin
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Research Highlight |
Life is short for baby monkeys amid the oil palms
Young southern pig-tailed macaques, an endangered species, are less likely to reach their first birthday if they spend time on plantations.
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Nature Podcast |
The Nature Podcast highlights of 2023
The team select some of their favourite stories from the past 12 months.
- Benjamin Thompson
- , Nick Petrić Howe
- & Shamini Bundell
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World View |
How a surge in organized crime threatens the Amazon
The global community needs to break the web of transnational crime networks and corruption threatening one of the world’s largest carbon sinks.
- Bram Ebus
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Article
| Open AccessDisproportionate declines of formerly abundant species underlie insect loss
An analysis of more than 500 sites distributed worldwide finds that declines in the abundance of terrestrial insects are attributable mainly to decreases in species that were formerly abundant, rather than being the result of losses of rare species.
- Roel van Klink
- , Diana E. Bowler
- & Jonathan M. Chase
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News |
Surge in extreme forest fires fuels global emissions
Climate change and human activities have led to more frequent and intense forest blazes over the past two decades.
- Xiaoying You
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News |
Humans might have driven 1,500 bird species to extinction — twice previous estimates
Humans are probably responsible for the extinction of 12% of bird species, many of which were never documented.
- Gemma Conroy
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Where I Work |
How I’m protecting Clanwilliam sandfish
Cecilia Cerrilla’s PhD project is to protect a tiny species of fish from predatory bass.
- Jack Leeming
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Article
| Open AccessUnequal climate impacts on global values of natural capital
Country-level changes in economic production and the value of non-market ecosystem benefits show unequal impacts on the global values of natural capital resulting from climate-change-induced shifts in terrestrial vegetation cover.
- B. A. Bastien-Olvera
- , M. N. Conte
- & F. C. Moore
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News Feature |
Research in Chornobyl zone restarts amid ravages of war
The area surrounding the nuclear reactor was a science hotspot — until it was on the front line of the Ukraine war.
- Matthew Ponsford
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News & Views |
Domestic cats eat whatever they can catch
A meta-analysis of the diets of domestic cats.
- Andrew Mitchinson
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Research Highlight |
The Tree of Life, emoji version
What about the worms? Analysis of the 112 official emojis that represent organisms shows that there is a bias against invertebrates.
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News |
Eat less meat: will the first global climate deal on food work?
A declaration on reducing the eye-watering emissions from food production is a start, say researchers — but it sidesteps contentious issues in the role of food production in global climate change.
- Carissa Wong
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News |
Forecast warns when sea life will get tangled in nets — one year in advance
Computational model uses sea surface temperatures to predict when whales and turtles are likely to get stuck in fishing gear.
- Carissa Wong
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News & Views |
From the archive: Uri Geller’s tricks, and willows to the rescue
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Where I Work |
Hard data: looking deep into Indigenous forests
Louis De Grandpré studies the traditional lands of Canada’s Pessamit people in the face of widespread logging.
- Nicola Jones
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Research Briefing |
Pesticide cocktails harm bumblebees in European fields
Exposure to the complex mix of pesticides used in agriculture in Europe significantly reduces bumblebees’ health. This suggests that current risk-assessment processes, in which pesticides are assessed separately, are not fit for purpose. Continuous monitoring is needed to quantify the real-world effects of pesticides on pollinator health.
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News & Views |
The overlooked role of landscape dynamics in steering biodiversity
Scientists have long sought to understand what drives biodiversity changes. A study unifies ideas about marine and terrestrial biodiversity in one explanatory framework, pointing to physical geography as dictating life’s trajectory.
- Alexandre Pohl
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Article
| Open AccessPesticide use negatively affects bumble bees across European landscapes
Results from 316 Bombus terrestris colonies at 106 agricultural sites across eight European countries find pesticides in bumble bee pollen to be associated with reduced colony performance, especially in areas of intensive agriculture.
- Charlie C. Nicholson
- , Jessica Knapp
- & Maj Rundlöf
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Article
| Open AccessLandscape dynamics and the Phanerozoic diversification of the biosphere
A model of sediment flux from the land to the oceans over the Phanerozoic eon explains differences in the fossil records of marine animal genera and land plant genera.
- Tristan Salles
- , Laurent Husson
- & Beatriz Hadler Boggiani
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News & Views |
California wildlife pays the cost of megafires
Increasingly intense wildfires in the United States could have profound impacts on natural habitats — potentially leaving hundreds of animal species struggling to recover.
- Holly Smith
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Editorial |
Swathes of Earth are turning into desert — but the degradation can be stopped
The latest United Nations data paint a grim picture. But countries that are getting land-restoration measures right provide some cause for hope.
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