More stories

  • in

    Microplastic pollution found in insect casing from 1971

    Half a century of caddisfly casings (Trichoptera) with microplastic from natural history collectionsTiny particles of plastic are everywhere today, but a discovery in a museum collection proves that this isn’t a new phenomenon. While combing through drawers of caddisfly specimens, researchers found evidence of microplastic particles being used as a building material by caddisfly larvae as far back as the 1970s and 1980s. This shows that microplastics were present in rural freshwater streams long before scientists started studying them in earnest.Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday. More

  • in

    Airborne microplastics enter plant leaves and end up in our food

    Zhu, L. et al. Sci. Total Environ. 915, 170004 (2024).Article 
    PubMed 

    Google Scholar 
    Ragusa, A. et al. Environ. Int. 146, 106274 (2021).Article 
    PubMed 

    Google Scholar 
    Nihart, A. J. et al. Nature Med. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-03453-1 (2025).Article 

    Google Scholar 
    Li, Y. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08831-4 (2025).Article 

    Google Scholar 
    Avellan, A. et al. Environ. Sci. Technol. 55, 13417–13431 (2021).Article 
    PubMed 

    Google Scholar 
    Luo, Y. et al. Nature Nanotechnol. 17, 424–431 (2022).Article 
    PubMed 

    Google Scholar 
    Xu, Y. et al. Environ. Sci. Technol. 57, 3114–3123 (2023).Article 
    PubMed 

    Google Scholar 
    Lombardi, G. et al. Eur. J. Public Health 32, ckac131.152 (2022).Article 

    Google Scholar  More

  • in

    Countries must consider their global footprint when using natural resources

    The article ‘Global biodiversity loss from outsourced deforestation’ (R. A. Wiebe and D. S. Wilcove Nature 639, 389–394; 2025) shows that the resource needs of rich nations are responsible for “much greater cumulative range loss to species outside their own borders than within them”.
    Competing Interests
    The author declares no competing interests. More

  • in

    Tiger turnaround as populations grow in India

    Pires, M. M. Ann. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 52, 133–158 (2024).Article 

    Google Scholar 
    Jhala, Y. V., Mungi, N. A., Gopal, R. & Qureshi, Q. Science 387, 505–510 (2025).Article 
    PubMed 

    Google Scholar 
    Sanderson, E. W. et al. Front. Conserv. Sci. 4, 1191280 (2023).Article 

    Google Scholar 
    Karanth, K. U., Nichols, J. D., Samba Kumar, N., Link, W. A. & Hines, J. E. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 101, 4854–4858 (2004).Article 
    PubMed 

    Google Scholar 
    Gray, T. N. E. et al. Front. Conserv. Sci. 4, 1124340 (2023).Article 

    Google Scholar 
    Walston, J. et al. PLoS Biol. 8, e1000485 (2010).Article 
    PubMed 

    Google Scholar 
    Malhi, Y. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 113, 838–846 (2016).Article 
    PubMed 

    Google Scholar 
    Greenspoon, L. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 120, e2204892120 (2023).Article 
    PubMed 

    Google Scholar 
    Khan, A. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 118, e2023018118 (2023).Article 

    Google Scholar 
    Phalan, B., Onial, M., Balmford, A. & Green, R. E. Science 333, 1289–1291 (2011).Article 
    PubMed 

    Google Scholar 
    Srivathsa, A. et al. Nature Sustain. 6, 568–577 (2023).Article 

    Google Scholar 
    Velho, N., Karanth, K. K. & Laurance, W. F. Biol. Conserv. 148, 210–215 (2012).Article 

    Google Scholar  More

  • in

    Studying seabirds with a cactus as a research assistant

    “This century-old cactus that stands on the uninhabited Isla Espíritu Santo, in the Gulf of California, Mexico, is like my very own field technician: the device that we’ve attached to it automatically collects data from tagged magnificent frigatebirds (Fregata magnificens) whenever they come within a 500-metre range. Every month, my team and I come by boat to retrieve the data, as I am doing in this picture with my student Joel Lopez (I’m on the right).In this project, we tagged 30 individual birds with GPS data-loggers, including 10 that live in the local mangrove trees, which host around 500 breeding pairs. Catching these birds is tricky, so we do it at night when they’re less active; we can dazzle an individual with a light and avoid disturbing others.The GPS tracking revealed that frigatebirds cross the Baja California Peninsula up to three times per day, an unusual behaviour for a seabird. On average, foraging trips last 14 hours and birds fly about 30 kilometres from the colony, with males venturing farther than females. One male even reached Clipperton Island in the Pacific Ocean, more than 1,500 km away, returning after a few days. Then he did it again exactly one year later.

    Enjoying our latest content?
    Login or create an account to continue

    Access the most recent journalism from Nature’s award-winning team
    Explore the latest features & opinion covering groundbreaking research

    Access through your institution

    or

    Sign in or create an account

    Continue with Google

    Continue with ORCiD More

  • in

    New lasso-shaped antibiotic kills drug-resistant bacteria

    Download the Nature Podcast 26 March 2025In this episode:00:46 Newly discovered molecule shows potent antibiotic activityResearchers have identified a new molecule with antibiotic activity against a range of disease-causing bacteria, including those resistant to existing drugs. The new molecule — isolated from soil samples taken from a laboratory technician’s garden — is called lariocidin due to its lasso-shaped structure. The team say that in addition to its potent antibiotic activity, the molecule also shows low toxicity towards human cells, making it a promising molecule in the fight against drug-resistant infections.Research Article: Jangra et al.Nature News: New antibiotic that kills drug-resistant bacteria discovered in technician’s garden09:36 Research HighlightsA reduction in ships’ sulfur emissions linked to a steep drop in thunderclouds, and the epic sea-voyage that let iguanas reach Fiji.Research Highlight: Ship-pollution cuts have an electrifying effect: less lightning at seaResearch Highlight: Iguanas reached Fiji by floating 8,000 kilometres across the sea13:54 Assessing the nuances of humans’ biodiversity impactsA huge study analysing data from thousands of research articles has shown that the human impacts on biodiversity are large but are in some cases context dependent. The new study reveals that at larger scales, communities of living things are becoming more similar due to human influence, but at the smaller scale they are becoming more different. “These are generally unwanted effects on biodiversity,” says study author Florian Altermatt, “this is one more very strong argument that stopping and reducing these pressures to halt and reverse biodiversity declines is needed.”Research article: Keck et al.21:45 Briefing ChatHow a proposed green-energy facility in Chile could increase light pollution at one of the world’s most powerful telescopes, and how a calving Antarctic iceberg revealed an unseen aquatic ecosystem.Nature: Light pollution threatens fleet of world-class telescopes in Atacama DesertScientific American: Stunning Antarctic Sea Creatures Discovered after Iceberg Breaks AwaySubscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.Never miss an episode. Subscribe to the Nature Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music or your favourite podcast app. An RSS feed for the Nature Podcast is available too. More

  • in

    Microbes can capture carbon and degrade plastic — why aren’t we using them more?

    Microorganisms have shaped Earth for almost four billion years. At least a trillion microbial species sustain the biosphere — for instance, by producing oxygen or sequestering carbon1. Microbes thrive in extreme environments and use diverse energy sources, from methane to metals. And they can catalyse complex reactions under ambient temperatures and pressures with remarkable efficiency.The potential to exploit these microbial abilities to substantially reduce the impact of human activities on the planet has been recognized by many2. And bacteria or fungi are already being used to produce materials, fuels and fertilizers in ways that reduce energy consumption and the use of fossil-fuel feedstocks, as well as to clean up waste water and contaminants3.Despite their wide-ranging potential, however, microbe-based technologies remain largely overlooked in international plans to combat climate change or reduce the loss of biodiversity4. For example, discussions about the role of microbial technologies in achieving fossil-free alternatives to current products and processes were minimal or absent at the United Nations conferences of the parties (COPs) in 2023 and 2024 on climate change, and on biodiversity in 2022 and 2024 (see Nature 636, 17–18; 2024).Is the COP29 climate deal a historic breakthrough or letdown? Researchers reactTo better leverage microbiology in addressing climate change and other sustainability challenges, the International Union of Microbiological Societies and the American Society for Microbiology brought us (the authors) together in December 2023 — as a group of microbiologists, public-health scientists and economists with expertise in health, energy, greenhouse gases, agriculture, soil and water. In a series of meetings, we have assessed whether certain microbe-based technologies that are already on the market could contribute to sustainable solutions that are scalable, ethical and economically viable. We have identified cases in which the technical feasibility of an approach has already been demonstrated and in which solutions could become competitive with today’s fossil-based approaches in 5–15 years.This work has convinced us that microbe-based interventions offer considerable promise as technological solutions for addressing climate change and — by reducing pollution and global warming — biodiversity loss. Here, we explain why they could be so important5 and highlight some of the issues that we think microbiologists, climate scientists, ecologists and public-health scientists, along with corporations, economists and policymakers, will need to consider to deploy such solutions at scale6.Microbial possibilitiesThe use of genomics, bioengineering tools and advances in artificial intelligence are greatly enhancing researchers’ abilities to design proteins, microbes or microbial communities. Using these and other approaches, microbiologists could help to tackle three key problems.First, many products manufactured from fossil fuels (energy, other fuels and chemicals) could be produced by ‘feeding’ microbes with waste plastics, carbon dioxide, methane or organic matter such as sugar cane or wood chips.Microbes that grow underneath artificial floating islands can transform lakes from net methane sources into carbon sinks.Credit: WaterClean TechnologiesAmong the many companies applying microbe-based solutions to address climate change, LanzaTech, a carbon-upcycling company in Skokie, Illinois, is working on producing aviation fuel on a commercial scale from the ethanol produced when microbes metabolize industrial waste gases or sugar cane. Meanwhile, the firm NatureWorks in Plymouth, Minnesota, is producing polymers, fibres and bioplastics using the microbial fermentation of feedstocks, such as cassava, sugar cane and beets. Second, microbes could be used to clean up pollution — from greenhouse gases, crude oil, plastics and pesticides to pharmaceuticals.For instance, a start-up firm called Carbios, based in Clermont-Ferrand, France, has developed a modified bacterial enzyme that breaks down and recycles polyethylene terephthalate (PET), one of the most common single-use plastics. Another company — Oil Spill Eater International in Dallas, Texas — uses microbes to clean up oil spills, and large waste-management corporations in North America are using bacteria called methanotrophs to convert the methane produced from landfill (a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2) into ethanol, biofuels, polymers, biodegradable plastics and industrial chemicals.Drill, baby drill? Trump policies will hurt climate ― but US green transition is underwayThe company Floating Island International in Shepherd, Montana, is even building artificial floating islands on lakes and reservoirs that have been polluted by excessive nutrient run-off, so that methane-metabolizing microbes (which colonize the underside of the islands) can remove methane originating from lake sediments. The goal in this case is to transform inland lakes and reservoirs from net methane sources into carbon sinks.Finally, microbes could be used to make food production less reliant on chemical fertilizers and so more sustainable.The chemical process needed to produce ammonia for fertilizer involves burning fossil fuels to obtain the high temperatures and pressures needed (up to 500 °C and 200 atmospheric pressures), releasing 450 megatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year (1.5% of all CO2 emissions)7. Furthermore, excess chemical fertilizers that flow into rivers, lakes and oceans cause algal blooms, which enhance the emission of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that is more potent than either CO2 or methane.Many bacteria and archaea can be used to produce nitrogen fertilizer with much lower greenhouse-gas emissions than synthetic fertilizers. This is because the microbes fix nitrogen at room temperature and at sea-level atmospheric pressure using enzymes known as nitrogenases that convert atmospheric nitrogen (N2) into ammonia (NH3).Several companies are now selling biofertilizers, which are formulations containing bacteria called rhizobia or other microbes that can increase the availability of nutrients to plants (see ‘Towards a bioeconomy’ and go.nature.com/3fs2xqf). A growing number of microbial biopesticides are also offering food producers a way to control crop pests without harming human or animal health or releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere8.Source: https://www.precedenceresearch.com/fertilizer-marketKeeping it safeAs more microbe-based solutions enter the market — whether bioengineered or naturally existing — biosafety considerations will become increasingly important.Many solutions, such as using bacteria to degrade crude oil or plastics, have been shown to be effective and safe in a laboratory setting9. Yet scaling up their use to the levels needed to reduce global emissions or global biodiversity loss could lead to unforeseen complications.Bacteria are being designed to break down plastic waste.Credit: Carbios–AgenceSkotchProd Certain safeguards — designing bacteria that can persist in an ecosystem for only a short time or that can exist under only specific environmental conditions — are already being developed and applied4. And, in a similar way to phased clinical trials in biomedical research, laboratory experiments could be followed by contained tests in the outdoor environment, which could then be followed by larger-scale field testing. Investigators will also need to monitor systems over time, which could involve the sequencing of environmental DNA from waste water and other approaches that are used in infectious-disease surveillance.Ultimately, the effective deployment, containment and monitoring of large-scale microbe-based solutions will require scientific communities, governments and corporations to collaboratively develop evidence-based policies and engage in clear and transparent communication about the enormous opportunities and the potential risks.Making it pay

    Enjoying our latest content?
    Login or create an account to continue

    Access the most recent journalism from Nature’s award-winning team
    Explore the latest features & opinion covering groundbreaking research

    Access through your institution

    or

    Sign in or create an account

    Continue with Google

    Continue with ORCiD More