Soils store more carbon than the atmosphere and vegetation combined, with soil microorganisms playing the main role. As a result, the global soil carbon cycle—by which carbon enters, moves through, and leaves soils worldwide—exerts a significant impact on climate change feedback. Now an important study led by researchers from the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences sheds new light on this cycle by overturning assumptions about the relationship between microbial respiration and carbon storage.

A recent study led by Prof. ZHANG Xiaoming's team at the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with Prof. Ian T. Baldwin's group at the CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences, has uncovered a novel ecological strategy. Rather than passively "hitchhiking" within insect vectors, rice viruses actively manipulate plant defense pathways to protect their insect carriers. This discovery reshapes our understanding of plant–virus–insect–parasitoid interactions and provides new insights for sustainable pest and pathogen management.

A research team from the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IEECAS) developed a semi-automated microanalytical method to quantify atmospheric plastic particles and their cross-compartmental fluxes—airborne, dustfall, rain, snow, and dust resuspension—in two major Chinese megacities: Guangzhou and Xi'an.