Philippa Kaur

NEWS AND VIEWS
29 October 2025

As the giants of the animal kingdom dwindle in numbers, a new way to assess ecosystem function sheds light on animals’ changing ecological contributions. More

In September, a firework display on the ecologically delicate Tibetan Plateau was widely criticized for the pollution and environmental damage that might result. In addition to the noise that fireworks generate and the metal-containing particulates and gases they release, governments must consider the harm caused by the plastics in the devices.
Competing Interests
The authors declare no competing interests. More

Elkhorn coral off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. Credit: Sam Hodge/AlamyTwo years after a record-setting heatwave, scientists have confirmed that two iconic corals that have flourished across Florida’s 560-kilometre-long reef for more than 10,000 years are now ‘functionally extinct’ off the state’s southern coast.Both the elkhorn coral (Acropora Palmata) and staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) survive in tanks and scattered locations across Florida’s reefs, but a study published today in Science suggests that their long-standing role as the primary reef builders off the coast of Florida has come to an end: so few remain that they can no longer play a functional part in the ecosystem1.“This ecosystem is forever transformed,” says lead author Ross Cunning, a coral biologist at the John G. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Illinois. That does not mean scientists are giving up hope on either species, he says, but what scientists and conservationists do from now on “needs to fundamentally change”.Boiling oceanOver the past few decades Florida’s corals have been hit repeatedly by bleaching events, which occur when rising water temperatures cause corals to expel the symbiotic algae that provide them with nutrients and colour. But the 2023 heatwave, which coincided with record temperatures that drove bleaching across the globe, hit Florida earlier, faster and harder than anything scientists had seen before.Coral die-off marks Earth’s first climate ‘tipping point’, scientists sayOcean temperatures registered above 31 °C for nearly 41 days — up to four degrees above normal in places. This created heat exposures on the reef that were 2–4 times higher than previous records. Although many corals survived the event, mortality among Acropora corals ranged from 98–100% across much of the reef, from Dry Tortugas National Park in the west through the Florida Keys to the east. In the area off the coast of Miami, and further north, more than 60% of the corals survived.The 2023 heatwave was the nail in the coffin not just for Acropora corals, but also for more than two decades of conservation work that has focused primarily on raising these corals in labs and then planting them back in the ocean, says Ken Nedimyer, technical director at Reef Renewal, a conservation organisation based in Tampa, Florida. Most of the corals that the organisation raised and planted over the past two decades are now dead, so Nedimyer says their efforts are now shifting towards other types of corals that have survived the bleaching events, such as brain and star corals, while also working to preserve genetic diversity of Acropora corals and breed those relatively rare individuals that survived.“We still have some great [Acropora] corals to work with,” Nedimyer says, and there is already evidence that such breeding efforts can help the corals adapt and withstand future heatwaves. “We just haven’t done it at a big scale yet.”

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RESEARCH BRIEFINGS
22 October 2025

Climate change is threatening coral reefs worldwide. A comprehensive tree-like representation of evolutionary relationships between stony coral species captures the group’s spectrum of traits. It shows that shallow-water species that have mutually beneficial relationships with microalgae have been more vulnerable and less resilient than their deep-water counterparts across past adverse environmental events. More

The proposal for the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) , which Brazil is set to launch at the COP30 climate meeting in Belém next month, will offer countries financial incentives to halt deforestation across more than one billion hectares of tropical forests. But the low payment rate of US$4 per hectare risks undervaluing such lands. The reliance on simplistic metrics for tree cover might enable bad actors to meet standards while harming forests. And the scheme could disempower local communities, for example if farmers are punished because well-managed agroforests are not classed as forest.
Competing Interests
The authors declare no competing interests. More

The rapid development of electric vehicles is fuelling a geopolitical scramble for minerals in the deep sea. In April, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to expedite sea-bed exploration. China has tightened export controls for rare-earth elements, reinforcing the importance of these minerals.
Competing Interests
The authors declare no competing interests. More

As the host of the COP30 climate talks in November, Brazil has the opportunity to make a major contribution to protecting the planet. It could expand forested areas protected by law in the Amazon from about 230 million hectares to over 300 million, according to my calculations.
Competing Interests
The authors declare no competing interests. More

The relationship between sounds in words and their meaning is thought to be mostly arbitrary. Some linguists and behavioural ecologists, however, argue that the instinctive vocal responses that humans and animals make — a cry or laugh, for instance — served as the foundation on which language evolved, as new meanings became associated with them. Feeney and colleagues explore learnt sound–meaning associations in birds (W. E. Feeney et al. Nature Ecol. Evol. https://doi.org/p78m; 2025).
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The author declares no competing interests. More