News & Comment

Seminar series are a key part of academic culture. We present practices that are aimed at increasing the diversity of seminar speakers, and thus broadening associated opportunities to more members of the ecology and evolutionary biology research community.

With growing attention on the remains of people held by museums and universities around the world, we outline ethical considerations that researchers working with human remains in anthropology must bear in mind.

We argue that naming species in honour of a specific person is unjustifiable and out of step with equality and representation. Reforming taxonomy to remove eponyms will not be easy but could bring multiple benefits for both conservation and society.

The international commitment to protect 30% of the world’s surface by 2030 is laudable and necessary, but scientists must now work with governments and other groups to ensure success in its implementation and evaluation, by using inclusive and evidence-led approaches, argues Alexandre Antonelli, Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and author of The Hidden Universe: Adventures in Biodiversity.

The US government has launched a national nature assessment, to be completed by 2026. This assessment is designed to take stock of changes in the country’s lands, waters, biodiversity, ecosystems and the benefits they provide. We spoke to Heather Tallis about the aims of the project, and how individuals can contribute to its development. Heather is the Acting Director of the assessment for the US Global Change Research Program, as well as the Assistant Director for Biodiversity and Conservation Sciences in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The text of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) was agreed 50 years ago, and it continues to be a valuable tool for species protection and an important early example of an international environmental agreement.

Projecting and managing the feedback between tropical deforestation and global Earth system dynamics, and identifying potential critical thresholds or tipping points, will be key to our species’ future on this planet. By understanding the major historical processes that underpin the origins of this interaction, and bringing natural and social systems together in interdisciplinary models, we can evaluate the degree to which past human impacts on tropical forests resulted in observable planetary ramifications that have left legacies for the twenty-first century and beyond.

Incorporating biological feedbacks into climate and Earth system models is challenging owing to multiple sources of uncertainty. Filling these knowledge gaps and learning lessons from climate forecasts will help to improve our understanding of biodiversity under future environmental change.