PLOS Ecosystems publishes its first issue

New open access journal PLOS Ecosystems publishes its first papers on September 8, 2026. The first issue includes research and writing on a range of key topics focused on ecosystems, the environment, biodiversity, and policy. 

Earth is experiencing rapid ecosystem changes and biodiversity loss. Though the problems these issues trigger are deeply interconnected, the scientific community has lacked a multidisciplinary, global journal to meet this moment. PLOS Ecosystems seeks to create a space for scientists working across fields to publish work addressing the biodiversity crisis, the environmental challenges affecting society and the natural world, and more – and to reach researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers. 

The journal's Editor-in-Chief, Henrique M. Pereira, is the Professor of Biodiversity Conservation at iDiv, the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research, leads the General Zoology department at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, and is an Invited Professor at BIOPOLIS/InBio, Universidade do Porto. In an Editorial accompanying the journal’s first issue, he notes that PLOS Ecosystems, includes sections dedicated to key topics of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services, including pollution, climate, biodiversity, terrestrial and freshwater/marine ecosystems, social-ecological interactions, and nature contributions to people. Each journal section is overseen by a diverse group of academic editors drawn from across all six inhabited continents

In this first issue of PLOS Ecosystems, papers include: 

• "What science does biodiversity action still need? Lessons from a decade of IPBES": An Opinion piece on the state of biodiversity research and the role PLOS Ecosystems has to play from Anne Larigauderie, the Former Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)
• "Ambiguous data licences undermine global ecosystem mapping efforts": One-third of the 343 datasets in the Global Ecosystems Atlas Data Catalogue lack license information entirely; fewer than half are shared using Creative Commons Licenses; and 1 in 5 have custom data licenses (which are lengthy and difficult to interpret). The authors recommend ecosystems researchers include explicit data license information; use standard licensing where possible; and in cases where data must be restricted, provide clear information about how to legally obtain access to the data. 
• "A protocol for biodiversity-informed wildlife disease surveillance": Integrating data on host biodiversity alongside sampling priorities for wildlife disease surveillance based on host species distribution models and pathogen prevalence data (if available) will provide a possibility of making adaptive sampling recommendations for researchers in the field.  
• "Self-organized vegetation patterns promote persistence of plant–pollinator mutualisms under environmental stress": Spatial self-organization may stabilize mutualistic communities via spatial patterns, potentially driving plant-pollinator persistence in stressed environments, including arid ecosystems.
• "Urban herbicide use threatens a non-target butterfly (Hypolimnas misippus) through direct toxicity and host plant stress in Ghana": Increasing use of urban herbicides in Ghana threatens the native mimic butterfly (Hypolimnas misippus) via direct toxicity as well as impacts on its host plants. 
• "Climate change and planetary microbiome: Are we overlooking free-living amoebae in climate-microbiome dynamics?": While free-living amoebae are often overlooked in discussions of ecosystems, especially as it relates to the global microbiome, an international group encourages recognition of the importance of these single-celled organisms to our planet. 
• "Combining branching processes and Allee effects into an integral projection model to assess invasion risk": A new model to assess invasion risks for potentially invasive species is trialled using silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix), an invasive species in the Upper Mississippi River system at risk of expanding into the Great Lakes. 

For Pereira, the need for a journal like PLOS Ecosystems comes from a growing gap between the complexity of environmental challenges and the way research is often published: “There are already a lot of journals in this field broadly, but they are too specialized - they only cover parts of the challenges that we have in ecosystem research or they are not affordable and they are too expensive for scientists to publish.”

Pereira adds: “What motivated me to join PLOS as Editor-in-Chief for PLOS Ecosystems is that I feel that there is a need for a truly transdisciplinary journal that integrates all scientists that are working to address ecosystem change, biodiversity loss, and all the other associated environmental problems…the biggest challenge is to uncover what parts of this complexity we can pinpoint to find solutions for policies and management approaches that can be used by practitioners to lead us towards a positive path for nature and people."

He concludes: “My vision is of a forum to publish not only the best research in ecosystem and biodiversity science, but also to publish research that is societally relevant…and that is read by practitioners and decision-makers around the world, so that we accelerate the speed at which research in this field is uptaken.”

 

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Ecosystems: https://plos.io/46oLny5

Citation: Pereira HM (2026) PLOS Ecosystems: An interdisciplinary journal for ecosystem and biodiversity sciences. PLOS Ecosyst 1(1): e0000031. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pesy.0000031

Author Countries: Germany, Portugal

Funding: There was no funding for this Editorial.

 

Also in the first issue of PLOS Ecosystems, publishing September 8:

• What science does biodiversity action still need? Lessons from a decade of IPBES
  • In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Ecosystems: https://plos.io/4iIRbJQ 
• Ambiguous data licences undermine global ecosystem mapping efforts
  • In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Ecosystems: https://plos.io/460YaXh 
• A protocol for biodiversity-informed wildlife disease surveillance
  • In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Ecosystems: https://plos.io/4gObjYq 
• Self-organized vegetation patterns promote persistence of plant–pollinator mutualisms under environmental stress
  • In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Ecosystems: https://plos.io/4cpfOHH 
• Urban herbicide use threatens a non-target butterfly (Hypolimnas misippus) through direct toxicity and host plant stress in Ghana
  • In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Ecosystems: https://plos.io/46BPoiv
• Climate change and planetary microbiome: Are we overlooking free-living amoebae in climate-microbiome dynamics?"
  • In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Ecosystems: https://plos.io/4yfJak9 
• Combining branching processes and Allee effects into an integral projection model to assess invasion risk
  • In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Ecosystems: https://plos.io/4qYx38Y 

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