Biodiversity

Three new peer-reviewed publications help to fill critical gaps in knowledge about Central America's freshwater ecosystems, which support extraordinary biodiversity but remain among the least-studied ecosystems in the world.

The new study by Newcastle University and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) offers a practical roadmap for tracking progress toward halting species extinctions by 2050. It guides users from understanding where species are most at risk in a given area, through taking action to reduce species threats, to measuring the real-world impact of conservation efforts on reducing species extinction risk over time.

When we think about Antarctica, many people imagine penguins, seals and whales. However, the majority of Antarctica's scientific wonders cannot be seen without a microscope. These microbial communities form the foundation of Antarctic ecosystems yet remain largely invisible to most visitors.

Nearly 200 countries recently came together in Armenia for the 2026 United Nations Biodiversity Conference to review progress toward halting and reversing biodiversity loss. Many of these governments will soon convene again in Turkey to discuss efforts to tackle climate change at COP31.

Countries renewed their promises to protect wildlife at U.N. talks in Armenia, but how to cover the costs remains a question.

Nearly 200 nations have struck hard-fought agreements at a UN biodiversity summit, but the outcome was accompanied by disappointment over missed opportunities to address humanity’s destructive toll on nature. Delegates cheered on Friday as crucial texts were approved in overtime but the celebrations were tempered by acrimonious debates and regret over limited progress on some of the most contentious issues. The Cop17 summit in Armenia sought to revive a landmark commitment to halt and reverse...

Science can't study a species—or unlock its potential to change the world—until people actually know it exists. Four new species of frogs have now been given names, thanks to the efforts of FIU biologist Alessandro Catenazzi.

"Taking Action for Nature" was the theme of CoP 17, the UN Biodiversity Conference 2026, which is drawing to a close in Yerevan, Armenia. A new analysis of African national biodiversity strategies and action plans shows how academic and research institutions can respond to this theme and help translate scientific evidence into taking action for nature.

The new EU project TETTRIX will present its plan for an integrated European taxonomic system at the UN Biodiversity Conference in Yerevan, arguing that species protection depends on identifying and monitoring them.

Although they account for just 7% of the Earth's land surface, island ecosystems harbor almost 20% of the world's biodiversity. From sea-level rise to biological invasions, islands are facing multiple pressures associated with ongoing global change, and yet they are still overlooked in global biodiversity conservation strategies.

Climate change and shifts in land use are affecting habitats and, consequently, plant diversity. To better understand the consequences of these developments, long-term and comprehensive data are essential. The "Floristic Mapping of Baden-Württemberg," coordinated by the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History, provides a foundation for this. The data collected over five decades as part of this citizen science project document significant changes in the flora of southwestern Germany, drawing on more than 2.5 million plant observations. They also provide insights into changes in plant diversity in Germany and Central Europe.

Researchers used environmental DNA metabarcoding in the Rioni River to detect 34 fish taxa, identifying three invasive alien species and a new country record for the ninespine stickleback.

A flower strip is established along the edge of a field. A wetland is restored. More seminatural habitats are created. The expectation is simple: give nature more space, and biodiversity will increase. But reality is often not so simple.

Global efforts to preserve habitat and the planet's most endangered species urgently need to be stepped up, according to a new report from Map of Life, the flagship initiative of the Yale Center for Biodiversity and Global Change.

As urbanization spreads worldwide, the loss and fragmentation of habitats are driving the global decline in biodiversity. At the same time, urban green spaces like parks, meadows and forests have the potential to contribute significantly to biodiversity conservation at the local and regional levels.

In 1987, biologists captured the last free-flying condor to transfer it to captivity, and the largest flying North American bird species was officially declared extinct in the wild. Today, after decades of coordinated efforts and millions of dollars spent on captive breeding and reintroduction efforts, more than 300 condors have been restored to their natural environment.

The EU Nature Restoration Regulation adopted in 2024 establishes the restoration of ecosystem functions as an objective of stream restoration. But can conventional measures that focus primarily on restoring the physical structure of rivers and streams fulfill this task?

The loss of Earth's animal and plant species is a crisis. Just don't call it an "extinction crisis" if you aim to mobilize public concern.

A large-scale computational analysis links distinct soil and climatic conditions with significant differences in predicted biosynthetic gene cluster richness among terrestrial Streptomyces populations.

The world is falling short of its biodiversity commitments because nature is still treated as an afterthought in decisions about housing, infrastructure, agriculture, energy, mining and conservation, according to a new UNSW report.

Curtin University researchers have detected traces of hundreds of plants and animals by collecting DNA from the air as they drove more than 1,100km (684 miles) across Western Australia.

Marine scientists have conducted the first re-survey of northern Patagonia's kelp forests in more than 50 years and discovered dramatic changes across one of the world's most remote marine ecosystems due to human activities.

A review identifies seven described freshwater planarian species in Chile and shows that sampling, mature-anatomy documentation and access to voucher specimens remain limited.

Community-led fieldwork in Boyacá, Colombia, documented two endangered vanilla crop wild relatives, including the first Colombian record of Vanilla karen-christianae and the first V. dressleri population east of the Magdalena River.

As governments prepare to gather in Yerevan, Armenia, this week for the U.N. Biodiversity Conference (COP17), new research identifies 13% of Earth's land area as hotspots for biodiversity conservation, highlighting where conservation efforts are most urgently needed.

A new non-venomous keelback snake from southeastern Yunnan is distinguished by its anatomy, coloration and mitochondrial DNA, revealing another layer of hidden biodiversity in East and Southeast Asia.

A sweeping analysis of 17 million citizen-science records shows that cities flatten the classic latitudinal diversity gradient of native birds in North America, most dramatically during winter.

According to two new UNSW studies, researchers often choose research topics based on personal preferences and cultural attitudes, including exposure to films, TV shows and even zoos, rather than attempting to fill the most pressing gaps in knowledge. The studies are published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

A large-scale analysis of marine species names reveals that nearly one in five epithets within the same genus differ by three edits or fewer, exposing hidden risks in the fuzzy matching tools that underpin biodiversity big data.

A new collaborative survey in the Italian Botanist documents dozens of new and confirmed records of algae, bryophytes, fungi and lichens across Italy, including rediscoveries of species absent for over a century.

A new study documents numerous new records for algae, bryophytes, fungi, and lichens across Italy, expanding the known distribution of rare species in alpine and coastal habitats.

Tropical montane cloud forests are among the most biologically complex and geographically isolated ecosystems on Earth, yet they remain significantly understudied, particularly regarding their insect fauna. In a recent study published in Neotropical Biology and Conservation, researchers presented the first

A new species of groundwater copepod, Elaphoidella quangnamensis, has been discovered in the hyporheic zone of a stream in central Vietnam, becoming only the second endemic Elaphoidella species recorded in the country.

A new global initiative called GReG is using environmental DNA to map and protect the hidden biodiversity of groundwater ecosystems across four continents.

Deep in the forests and meadows of the Franco-Swiss borderland around Geneva, a quiet census of some of the least glamorous beetles in Europe has produced results that are anything but boring. A comprehensive new survey of four beetle families

President Masoud Pezeshkian has arrived in Yerevan to attend the 17th biodiversity summit, as Tehran vows to document environmental damage caused by US-Israeli military aggression against Iran.

A super El Niño fueling record ocean temperatures poses a "terrifying" threat to the world's fragile coral reefs, the chair of the U.N.'s expert nature panel told AFP.

Researchers from the Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies (BCSS) Ocean Observatory have documented ancient forests that grew on the Mozambican coast thousands of years ago and have been found beneath the sea, where they now serve as hotspots teeming with marine life similar in biodiversity to coral reefs.

The European Commission risks obstructing wind power development if it reopens debate on key rules regarding the protection of wildlife habitats in member states, industry body WindEurope has warned.

A survey of 206 European ponds shows that richer aquatic biodiversity strongly boosts ecosystem multifunctionality, while nutrient pollution from intensive cropland undermines it.

Golden rice fields stretch across the Vercelli plain between Milan and Turin, a parcelled landscape broken only by the wood and wetlands created by Cerutti, now home to rare birds and insects. "We have planted over 10,000 native plants, such as oaks, alders, ash, and hornbeams. It is amazing to see how quickly nature responds," Cerutti told AFP, as she stood in a coppice set around a natural spring. "Since the first trees were planted, there has been a spectacular increase in butterflies, dragonflies, and biodiversity in general," said the 43-year-old, who took over running the family's Cascina Oschina farm in 2012. In the fields around the woods, Cerutti grows red and black rice along with historic varieties such as Carnaroli Classico and Arborio Classico, which are more resilient and produce smaller but higher-quality yields than modern ones. She says her Carnaroli Classico was grown without using "a single gram of chemical fertilizer." That is because she uses green manure and

Four hundred years after monks transformed a patch of marshlands in northwest Italy into rice fields, farmer Alice Cerutti has restored a third to their natural state, prioritizing biodiversity over crop yield.

The open-access journal Biological Diversity has launched a call for papers for a special issue on the evolutionary mechanisms that form, change, and maintain biodiversity, with submissions due by 31 August 2027 and article processing charges waived.

Outgoing IPBES Executive Secretary Anne Larigauderie identifies systems thinking, transformative change and business engagement as the scientific priorities needed to accelerate global biodiversity action.

Researchers have developed a protocol that uses host species distribution models and biodiversity monitoring principles to strategically prioritize where and what to sample in wildlife disease surveillance.

Researchers propose Functional Trait Capacity, a mechanistic metric that predicts how much biodiversity a landscape could sustain under different management, revealing hidden ecological potential that species counts and habitat metrics cannot detect.

Biodiversity indicators can help companies make more sustainable decisions. But only 9% of the world's largest companies in sectors with a major impact on biodiversity use such indicators, according to a new study from Lund University. The researchers also show that different indicators can lead to different conclusions and present seven recommendations for how they should be used.

A landmark synthesis of 423 studies and over 200,000 data points shows that biodiversity strengthens most ecosystem functions and services worldwide, with oceanic carbon sequestration exceptionally sensitive and pest regulation forecast to decline fastest in fast-growing, low-development countries.

A 27-year analysis of British Columbia's commercial salmon fisheries shows that the stabilising portfolio effect of biodiversity extends from fish populations through catches, prices and revenues, though synchronised Chinook declines reveal hidden vulnerabilities.

A field study of two poplar clones across five planting densities shows that wider spacing simultaneously boosts tree volume, understory plant diversity and soil quality, with machine learning and structural equation modeling pinpointing understory richness and soil water content as key drivers of productivity.

For decades, European policymakers have poured billions of euros into two very different strategies for making agriculture greener: paying farmers to take land out of production for wildflower strips, and supporting a wholesale conversion to organic farming. Both approaches are

Deep in the Apennine mountains of central Italy, European beech forests that were carefully reshaped by conservationists a decade ago are now offering one of the most detailed portraits yet of how forest management can steer biodiversity. A large team of Italian researchers has published an open dataset that simultaneously documents forest structure and the […]

As the 2026 El Niño intensifies across the Amazon basin, a landmark study published in Science has delivered one of the most rigorous answers yet to a question that has long divided conservation science: when money is limited, is it better to protect the forests that still stand, or to replant the ones that have […]

Leaders of $100 million effort will use automated detection methods and computer models to monitor species’ trends

University of Melbourne researchers have found that planting native gardens on suburban nature strips can boost urban biodiversity, with insect numbers increasing sevenfold and the number of species approximately doubling.

Forests provide timber as well as many other ecosystem services. An important question is how measures to conserve biodiversity affect the profitability of forest operations focused on wood production. Researchers from Wageningen University & Research and the University of Freiburg reviewed studies worldwide that compared forest management with biodiversity conservation measures against business-as-usual management without those measures. The work is published in the journal Current Forestry Reports.

A large Amazon study suggests the most powerful conservation move may be protecting the forests that are already standing. Preventing damage from wildfires and logging delivered the greatest biodiversity benefits and nearly matched deforestation prevention for protecting carbon. Restoration remains important, particularly where forests have already been heavily cleared, but it was more expensive and less effective on its own.

This week in the United States, a Trump administration rule took effect that narrows the meaning of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act by abandoning a long-standing interpretation that recognized substantial habitat destruction as a way of injuring ...

As the 2026 El Niño intensifies across the Amazon, new research highlights the urgent need to better protect the region's remaining forests from disturbances.

By evaluating the health of waterways across the U.S., researchers have identified a network encompassing about one-third of rivers and streams that, if conserved and restored, could sustain the nation's freshwater biodiversity in the face of habitat degradation and climate change. Mark Anderson of The Nature Conservancy, U.S., led the new study, published Sept. 16, 2026, in the journal PLOS One.

If you want to drum up support for environmental action, putting climate change front and center may not always be the best strategy. A new study by Aya Takagi and Ryosuke Nakadai of Yokohama National University suggests that support for policies that emphasize biodiversity conservation, including conservation measures that also contribute to climate goals, may be less divided along cultural lines than measures explicitly associated with climate change.

Wars harm species and ecosystems and erode biodiversity conservation institutions and support. Given that environmental protection is essential for long-term peace and security, biodiversity conservation should not be abandoned in times of crisis. Scientists and the international community should work to monitor ecological damage and incorporate conservation into diplomatic resolutions to conflicts.

What makes more sense when farming wheat—strips of wildflowers along fields or organic farming? Both options provide financial support via the European Union as environmentally friendly and sustainable farming practices. An international research team, including researchers from the University of Göttingen, has compared the ecological and economic benefits of these two farming methods in fields planted with winter wheat.

Deep within the dense canopy of Gwangneung Forest, centuries-old trees have long served as a quiet refuge for native flora and fauna. Now, the historic woodland and four national recreational forests across Korea have secured international recognition, not just as scenic escapes, but as crucial players in the global fight to reverse biodiversity loss. The Korea Forest Service and the National Arboretum said Wednesday that Gwangneung Forest, located northeast of Seoul, alongside four national recreational forests — Sin Sido, Sinbulsan, Unmunsan and Hwangjeongsan — have been officially listed in the World Database on Protected and Conserved Areas. They earned the designation of "Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures," or OECMs. Unlike traditional national parks or legally designated nature reserves, OECMs refer to territories managed primarily for other purposes, such as public recreation or forestry, that nonetheless deliver long-term and effective biodiversity protection.

An environmental DNA study by a multi-institutional research collaboration has revealed distinct regions of extraordinary marine biodiversity that can help inform management of a proposed marine park in Western Australia's Exmouth Gulf.

Farmers and foresters manage around 80% of Germany's land area. They are therefore key agents of change in protecting biodiversity—and are often accused of not doing enough to protect it.

We share our planet with millions of plants and animals. This variety of life is known as biodiversity, a term encompassing everything from microscopic genes to entire ecosystems, such as deserts and vibrant coral reefs.

Universities and biodiversity institutes have hidden treasures: their collections of pressed plant specimens. These plants have been flattened, dried and mounted on special cardboard sheets. Some were collected centuries ago. They hold information about where species occur and how ecosystems have changed over time.

As part of its efforts to map out Europe's science-policy interface for biodiversity, a paper on the correlation between governance objectives for safeguarding the biosphere and on-the-ground realities for select species groups has been published. The work is in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Dung beetles could provide scientists with a new way to uncover the animals living in Singapore's forests, including elusive species that are difficult to spot with conventional wildlife surveys. NTU researchers found that DNA preserved in the insects' guts can reveal the mammals, birds and other vertebrates whose waste they have fed on.

Tropical mountain forests may be hiding a major biodiversity story several meters below the canopy. A study conducted in China’s Yunkai Mountain National Nature Reserve has revealed that the plants growing beneath the forest canopy do not follow the same biodiversity patterns as the trees above them. Instead, overstory and understory communities responded to elevation […]

As nations race to restore ecosystems and curb climate change, research has shown that letting nature do the work is a cost-effective, viable solution. A study from the University of Queensland and the University of Newcastle found that natural forest regeneration delivered substantial carbon and biodiversity benefits and could be up to 96% cheaper than traditional tree-planting programs. The work is published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

HomeScienceVol. 393, No. 6813Biodiversity monitoring misses behaviorBack To Vol. 393, No. 6813 Full accessLetter Share on Biodiversity monitoring misses behaviorPeter Mikula, Daniel T. Blumstein, and Piotr TryjanowskiAuthors Info & AffiliationsScience20 Aug 2026Vol 393, Issue 6813p. 767 PREVIOUS ARTICLELearning to love the machinePreviousNEXT ARTICLEDryland restoration needs shared evidenceNext …

A human, an octopus, and a coral may appear to belong to entirely different worlds, yet their chromosomes preserve traces of a shared genomic past. More than 600 million years after the last common ancestor of all living animals, researchers have found that many of the chromosome-scale structures found across the animal kingdom still reflect […]

Nature provides resources to society, and the diversity of species (think of pollinators, for example) is expected to underpin human economies. So why are the poorest countries also those richest in wildlife, containing a high number of different species? The reason, according to new research, is that colonial exploitation of that biodiversity by now-rich countries created poverty legacies that persist today.

Authors: Lur Epelde, Ninon Delcourt, Jérôme Cortet, Anders Lanzén, Carlos Garbisu, José Luis Lavín, Luigi P. D’Acqui, Sara Di Lonardo, Martina Grattacaso, Eliana L. Tassi, Fatima-Zahraa El Balghiti, Leila Benidire, Ali Boularbah, Ángeles Prieto-Fernández, Carmen Trasar-Cepeda, Sihem Soufi, Mohamed Allani, Taoufik Bettaieb, Ali Sahli, Ana S.S. Sousa, Sofia Pereira Journal: Soil Biology and Biochemistry DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2026.110284 […]

Biodiversity is enormously diverse, unevenly observed and constantly in motion across space and time. This makes it far harder to monitor than many other parts of the environment. As a result, managing biodiversity often depends on information that is incomplete, delayed or unevenly distributed. At the very moment when rapid change makes timely knowledge more valuable, systems for collecting, identifying, publishing and using biodiversity data often struggle to keep pace.

Hong Kong’s lush forests are teeming with more wildlife ranging from birds arriving from neighbouring regions to newly discovered reptile and insect species, experts have found, as they urge authorities to devise a conservation list to protect vulnerable local species. The call by the city’s conservationists to formulate a “red list” – a long-awaited measure since 2014 – coincided with National Ecology Day on Saturday. Gary Ades, head of fauna conservation at Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden...

The Seoul Metropolitan Government will be hosting BioBlitz Seoul 2026 at Mount Acha in eastern Seoul's Gwangjin District from Sept. 12-13, the city said Thursday, inviting citizens and experts to spend 24 hours discovering, observing and documenting local wildlife species. Located on the eastern edge of the capital along the border with Guri, Gyeonggi Province, Mount Acha serves as a critical ecological link connecting the urban core to the broader green belts of eastern Seoul, making its preservation vital for maintaining the city's biodiversity and wildlife corridors. Unlike last year's single-day schedule, this year's event returns to an intensive two-day, 24-hour format to deepen ecological exploration with specialized activities, including night insect tracking and early-morning bird watching. Featuring forests, streams, wetlands, and grasslands, the mountain offers a rich habitat for urban wildlife. Launched in 2015, the program operates out of the Achasan Ecological Park base

Authors: Lur Epelde, Ninon Delcourt, Jérôme Cortet, Anders Lanzén, Carlos Garbisu, José Luis Lavín, Luigi P. D’Acqui, Sara Di Lonardo, Martina Grattacaso, Eliana L. Tassi, Fatima-Zahraa El Balghiti, Leila Benidire, Ali Boularbah, Ángeles Prieto-Fernández, Carmen Trasar-Cepeda, Sihem Soufi, Mohamed Allani, Taoufik Bettaieb, Ali Sahli, Ana S.S. Sousa, Sofia Pereira Journal: Soil Biology and Biochemistry DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2026.110284 […]

A new global analysis has revealed that the world’s food system is driving a concentrated, interconnected crisis for both climate protection and biodiversity. By mapping long-term carbon storage and biodiversity loss at unusually high spatial and product resolution, researchers have traced how agricultural land use connects farms, trade routes and consumer demand across the planet. […]

Mediterranean olive farming is entering a climate era unlike any in its long agricultural history. Rising temperatures, longer droughts, intense rainfall, soil degradation and declining biodiversity are converging across one of the world’s most important olive-producing regions. A new analysis published in npj Sustainable Agriculture argues that protecting the future of olive production will require […]

Biodiversity loss has been among the central topics in public, policy and scientific debate for several decades. While its accelerating pace and impacts are well recognized, translating the vast amounts of biodiversity data into reliable indicators that can inform policy remains a challenge, requiring considerable time and technical effort. To help address this, the EU project B-Cubed developed automated and interoperable data pipelines that were tested via case studies. The B-Cubed Legacy Booklet is available on Zenodo.

Biodiversity data are accumulating at an extraordinary rate, yet the information needed to understand ecological change often remains fragmented, inconsistent, and difficult to convert into policy. Researchers can now access millions of records describing where species have been observed, when they were recorded, and under what environmental conditions. However, transforming these observations into reliable measurements […]

The descriptions of the two new additions to the European snail fauna, named Cochlostoma komarnica and Cochlostoma dobrido, have been published in the open-access Biodiversity Data Journal.

Two newly described land-snail species have expanded Europe’s known Cochlostoma fauna, according to a new open-access study published in Biodiversity Data Journal. The species—Cochlostoma komarnica and Cochlostoma dobrido—are tiny, conical snails about 6 mm long, living on limestone rock faces where they graze algae and lichens. Unlike most terrestrial snails, these species position their eyes […]

A new study led by Japanese researchers from Tohoku University and the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) reveals that some of the minerals most essential for green technologies may have a significant negative impact on biodiversity. Using remote sensing and machine learning, the scientists produced an unprecedented global map of mined commodities.

Biological invasions pose serious threats to biodiversity, ecosystem function, economies, and human health (1). Live seafood trading is a major pathway for the introduction of non-native and invasive species (2–5). Although existing local and global frameworks align with international treaties, regulations are often outdated, weakly enforced, and inconsistent across countries (6–9). To address these gaps, a more robust and coordinated approach is needed to reinforce existing biosecurity protocols.

A new study reveals that human activities have fundamentally reshaped biodiversity patterns on islands across the globe, with important implications for how scientists understand ecology, evolution and conservation.

A new study identifying the ecological conditions needed for biodiversity offsetting to achieve conservation goals could provide important guidance for governments and industries as they expand biodiversity net gain (BNG) and nature restoration policies. The research is published in the journal Conservation Biology.

Wildlife protection frameworks in both the EU and the UK need stronger and more consistent implementation—and must recognize animals as "individuals capable of experiencing suffering," rather than mere ecological assets.

Biodiversity doesn’t boost ecosystem productivity in the same way everywhere when climate extremes hit. A new global synthesis draws on 75 long-term biodiversity experiments and finds that the payoff for having more species depends strongly on where—or how—drought intensifies. The strongest benefits emerge in more-arid grasslands during years of extreme drought. Under these conditions, diverse […]

When extreme drought strikes, drier grasslands receive the greatest productivity benefit from biodiversity. By contrast, forests did not show the same context-dependent pattern under drought, according to a new global synthesis of 75 biodiversity experiments. Researchers from Yokohama National University published their results in Nature Ecology & Evolution on July 15.

Agriculture and biodiversity restoration do not have to be at odds. A new study by the WILD research group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and UCLouvain, published in the journal Biological Conservation, demonstrates that agriwilding—a form of nature-inclusive farming—can successfully combine food production with biodiversity restoration.

Incheon Metropolitan City held the ‘EAAFP (East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership) 20th Anniversary Commemorative Event and International Forum’ at Gyeongwonjae by Walkerhill for two days starting on July 14.The event was attended by a large number of experts from domestic and foreign government

An environmental group is petitioning the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to uphold the Trump administration’s MAHA mandate and add cancer warning labels on all pesticides. CropLife America President and CEO Alexandra Dunn tells Brownfield she’s concerned that approach could dilute the impact of cancer statements. “It is almost always for something called a restricted-use pesticide, […] The post Center for Biological Diversity pushing EPA to require cancer labels on pesticides appeared first on Brownfield Ag News.

New research by the University of Oxford and the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University has revealed that most biodiversity commitments made by large, influential companies are not precise enough to enable society to evaluate whether they are making progress toward meeting their commitments. The results have been published in One Earth.