Chikungunya virus, a debilitating tropical disease caused by infected mosquito bites, poses a greater health threat in Europe than previously thought because it can be spread when air temperatures are as low as 13 degrees Celsius. That is the finding of researchers at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology who have investigated the ability of the Asian tiger mosquito to spread the virus, which is rarely fatal but can cause long-term chronic joint pain.

How will a warming Arctic affect plant growth on Svalbard? Researchers encased plant plots in a thick layer of ice during the winter and used little greenhouses to heat up those plots in the summer. The surprise? The plants that got the harshest treatment did just fine.

Birds currently inhabiting many territories across Africa, Latin America and Asia are, on average, considerably smaller than those that predominated in 1940. This is the conclusion of an international study led by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), which documents—drawing on the collective ecological memory of ten Indigenous Peoples and local communities—a reduction of up to 72% in the mean body mass of the bird species present in their territories between 1940 and 2020.

After nearly five years of collaborative work, the European Horizon 2020 REST-COAST project convened for its final consortium meeting in Barcelona in early February. On the agenda were the main results that demonstrate how nature-based solutions (NbS), operational tools, business plans and policy insights can support evidence-based decision-making across Europe to reduce coastal risks, restore ecosystems and biodiversity, while improving the well-being of citizens.

For more than a century, researchers have suspected that glacier fronts serve as important feeding hotspots for marine predators with no direct evidence. To address this, researchers have examined the stomach contents of ringed seals harvested through Inuit subsistence hunting in Greenland and compared their diet with capture location. The findings show that seals near the glaciers had eaten more than those farther away, highlighting climate-driven glacier retreat may threaten foraging grounds and marine ecosystems.

The United States government is rolling back conservation policies in a way that demonstrably risks accelerating already at-risk coral reefs around its island territory Guam in the Pacific Ocean. Part of the issue is the way the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is defined. Researchers from the University of Tokyo, University of Guam, University of Technology Sydney and Cornell University strongly suggest broadening key species categories such that reefs are more generally protected. At present, overly specific terminology means anything outside key categories doesn't fall under the ESA and is therefore open to further human interference. 

A 40-year study using field data from Projeto Lontra reveals that Neotropical otters act as "living sensors" of ecosystem degradation, with 66% testing positive for land-based pathogens like Toxoplasma gondii carried by runoff. This research, published in Estuarine Management and Technologies, led to the creation of the Otter Health Index (OHI), a low-cost toolkit designed for muncipalities and NGOs to better monitor estuarine health through simple metrics.

In the longest-running field warming experiment of its kind, researchers have documented dramatic shifts in high-elevation mountain meadows, revealing that changes in climate alter not only the plants we can see above ground, but the invisible world of fungi and microbes in the soil below.

Species are disappearing at an alarming rate worldwide – accelerated by climate change, habitat loss and invasive species. Little-studied groups, including many marine worms, are particularly affected: species are threatened with extinction before they have even been scientifically described. Researchers from the University of Göttingen, the Leibniz Institute for Biodiversity Change Analysis (LIB) and the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research will build a comprehensive dataset on European “marine annelids” – segmented sea worms – and make it openly accessible for international research. This should advance the discovery of new species and the knowledge of biological diversity worldwide. The project “EuroWorm: Accelerating Global Marine Annelid Biodiversity Research with Open Genomic Data for European Species” is led by the LIB and funded by the Leibniz Association.