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    When legislation to protect wildlife becomes a problem

    Most legislation to protect wildlife currently focuses on prohibiting deliberate destruction and excessive exploitation of resources. However, that approach fails to address emerging threats such as climate change. Many species will go extinct long before emissions-reduction schemes are realized.
    Competing Interests
    The authors declare no competing interests. More

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    Breaking the bias: how to deliver gender equity in conservation

    In many conservation projects, women are alone on all-male teams.Credit: Getty

    My career in conservation spans more than 20 countries, and workplaces ranging from universities, governments and consultancies to community-based and global non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Currently, I work as the Asia-Pacific director of gender and equity at The Nature Conservancy, one of the largest global conservation NGOs: it has more than 4,000 staff members and is active in more than 80 countries. I am responsible for ensuring that all our endeavours across the Asia-Pacific to address biodiversity loss and the climate crisis are inclusive and equitable.My career has been incredibly diverse: from monitoring saltwater crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus) in northern Australia to working with women on gender-based violence in Papua New Guinea to speaking at international climate meetings. But one theme has remained a constant: gender-based discrimination, which not only holds women back, but holds the world back from addressing the crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.Discrimination is by no means an experience unique to me or just a few women. A review of 230 peer-reviewed articles1, of which I was the lead author, confirmed a sobering truth: women everywhere are excluded from decisions about conservation and natural resources, from small and remote communities in biodiversity hotspots to large conservation organizations themselves. In every country, and in almost every setting and organization, women are routinely disadvantaged in conservation just because they are women.
    Collection: Fieldwork
    Unconscious bias is normal and natural, and all of us have it: it is how our brains make sense of the world. But when unexamined bias or deliberate discrimination influences decision-making, perpetuates stereotypes and keeps women from reaching their potential, they create rippling negative impacts on society and the future of our planet. Whether gender stereotypes are overtly hostile (such as ‘women are too emotional to lead fieldwork’) or seemingly benign (‘women are naturally good at organizing and supporting the team’ or ‘we need a strong, decisive leader’ — that is, a man), they hold women back in their conservation careers.An uneven playing fieldConservation has historically been a male-dominated profession. Just 3–11% of wildlife rangers are women2, and only 11% of the top-publishing authors in conservation and ecology are women3. A strong masculine culture is often associated with the profession, which can intimidate women. Many women in the sector experience sexual harassment and anxiety about their personal safety — particularly when they are the only woman on a project, which is often the case.Furthermore, women usually pay a heavy price for calling out cultures that are not inclusive. From surveying conservation professionals, I found that nearly 20% of women fear reprisal when speaking out against bias4. Their fears are warranted; many are sidelined or branded as ‘difficult’ or ‘frustrating’ if they draw attention to discrimination or poor behaviour, or try to slow down the decision-making process if it is not inclusive.In my career, I have been told that I wouldn’t be considered for an exciting project because it would be too physically demanding, be unsafe for a woman to be alone in a remote setting or require too much time away from my young family. Decisions that are made on your behalf are infuriating — and can come at both a career cost and a financial cost. Conversely, I have been offered opportunities because I have a masculine, gender-neutral name, and the people in charge assumed that I was a man before they had met me. I was then met with surprise and scepticism when I turned up and they realized that ‘Robyn James’ is a woman. I have always held my own in these situations, but the constant pressure to prove I belonged was exhausting and came at a personal cost5,6.My experiences are those of someone who holds deep and unearned privilege: I am a white cis woman with sufficient income to support my family, and I can speak and write English (the primary language of science) well. These factors increase my opportunities to contribute. Many conservationists and scientists who are women do not have those privileges. Some are also discriminated against owing to racism in a world that favours whiteness, and those who live in places where the cost of education and health care is high, wages are low and basic services such as power and Internet are intermittent face further disadvantages.As an ally and sponsor for women in conservation and science, I am determined to leverage my position to change this. I’m focused on breaking down walls and smashing the glass ceiling for women across the sector.Here are a few ways I am using the power I have to make conservation and science more inclusive. Hopefully these ideas will help others to share their solutions or to be better allies to women.Women are needed as leadersWomen who are conservation and environmental-science graduate students or are at early career stages often tell me that they don’t often see women at senior levels7, and that leaders don’t make them feel included. I am part of an informal group of women in senior positions in conservation, representing several organizations, who attend events for undergraduates and early-career professionals. We aim to share our journeys and to be visible to women who are just starting out. We model diverse leadership styles to show alternatives to masculine ‘command and control’ leadership, which these women might have more often experienced.Women routinely undersell themselves and do not apply for promotions, so we actively encourage our younger peers to apply for positions and support them by providing feedback on CVs and sharing interview techniques, for example. I am also part of a formal mentoring and sponsorship programme to support women — especially those in the lower-income countries — to navigate and excel in systems that are not designed with their success in mind. We work through issues to do with self-esteem and confidence: some women have understandably taken biased attitudes on board, and do not realize that they are worthy of progressing in their careers. I work with them to help them to understand how incredible they really are.

    Conservation scientist Robyn James works with women on the Solomon Islands.Credit: Madlyn Ero

    At The Nature Conservancy, we have developed a network of more than 50 women who can share their experiences and challenges in a safe supportive environment. We ensure that we work with women to address practical challenges they encounter. These efforts range from dedicated sessions on how to address gender bias in their teams and workplaces, to working through examples of how to make progress on gender equity in the field of conservation, where speaking up might clash with cultural norms or put women at risk of retaliation.Making work more inclusiveMy research with The Nature Conservancy on gender and conservation science publishing has shown that women are vastly under-represented8: less than 2% of authors were women in lower-income countries. The organization subsequently enlisted an experienced, well-published conservation scientist to work with women across the Asia-Pacific and support them in the publishing process, from developing research ideas to submitting final publications. I ensure my own published research includes authors with diverse perspectives. For example, for the three publications that were part of my PhD research1,4,8, 86% (19) of the authors are women, of which 68% (13) are first-time authors, 47% (9) are women of colour and 5 (26%) are in lower-income countries. This demonstrates that intentional efforts make a difference.Even the wording of job descriptions can exclude women. Language inherently has gendered associations, so including words such as confident, decisive, strong and outspoken in job postings has been found to attract men and deter women from applying. Many of my colleagues have felt intimidated by the tone of conservation job advertisements, which seem to be written for men. At The Nature Conservancy, we check our job descriptions and organizational plans and strategies for gendered language using a gender decoder, a tool that assesses text for masculine-coded language that could unconsciously discourage women from applying or keep women from feeling engaged with a work programme or strategy. (You can see what the decoder finds in this article here).Wherever patriarchy is deeply entrenched, men are often favoured for higher education and technical training — and women miss out. Many conservation roles have standard and mandatory educational and technical qualifications, so women are often automatically excluded from even being able to apply for a role they could otherwise be suited for.Changes in the fieldMy leadership team and I have worked to address some of the systems and processes that might inadvertently disadvantage women. For example, in the Solomon Islands, an archipelago in the south Pacific, marine conservation and research roles that require a scuba licence immediately exclude many women in the country from applying, because almost none have access to scuba training given that men are generally prioritized for training and development opportunities. In most places where The Nature Conservancy works, our employees will only ever need a mask and snorkel. Therefore, a small change in the job description means that many more women can apply. Adjusting our standard mandatory requirements has led to some fantastic women successfully applying and becoming high-performing members of our conservation teams. We now carefully omit any technical requirements that are not essential to a role or that can be easily obtained through on-the-job training.We ensure women are included in the teams that develop and implement workplace health and safety protocols, and have broadened our definition of workplace health and safety to include psychological safety and protection from gender-based violence (including sexual harassment). We worked with experienced professionals in this area to develop organization-wide guidance for our staff and partners. We also develop tailored plans depending on the country we are in to specifically address safety for women. For example, in Papua New Guinea, some women on our teams made it clear that it was unsafe for them to travel home after dark on public transport. In this country, more than two-thirds of women have experienced violence. We commissioned an official work vehicle to take staff home after hours.We ensure women have basic field equipment that is suitable for them. We provide women’s sizes in all protective gear: everything from gloves for fire protection to life jackets. This is organized before a trip or fieldwork takes place.We are also implementing protocols to ensure our conservation teams are diverse and that women are not on their own among all-male research groups. This is not only safer for women, but has repeatedly led to better conservation outcomes: the women notice things that have previously been missed. For example, in Mongolia, women in herding communities are often unable to attend important research meetings about grassland management because there is no access to toilets or because training sessions are held at times when they have caring obligations. The women on the project noticed this, and worked with the herders to ensure the infrastructure was adequate and the schedule was adjusted so that they could participate and share their unique perspectives on improving grassland conservation.Women benefit from more women being in the sector. From early-career to senior positions, representation matters. But this alone is not enough. Historically male-dominated sectors, such as conservation, that now have a relatively equal gender balance in undergraduate courses need to push for cultural change as well. This is the most difficult part of my role: challenging male leaders and systems that are not designed for women to succeed.Although we need to listen and respond to the needs of women, this is never something that should be the burden of women alone to fix. Strong leadership across our sector that prioritizes gender equity and inclusion in conservation, and provides resources to achieve it, is crucial.Women will thrive in conservation science if we keep pushing to move from equality to inclusion. Inclusion means not only that women are present, but that workplaces and programmes are designed and tailored with and for them. We shouldn’t be surprised or blame women when they don’t succeed in conservation and science workplaces and programmes that are still not actively including them. Women make up more than 50% of the population; we need to have a say in the future of our planet! More

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    Human footprint is associated with shifts in the assemblages of major vector-borne diseases

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    Abiotic selection of microbial genome size in the global ocean

    Non-prokaryotic metagenomic sequences confound average genome size estimationsIn this work, we employed MicrobeCensus22 for de novo estimation of the average genome size (AGS) of microorganisms captured in shotgun metagenome sequences (Fig. 1a; Supplementary Data 1). Briefly, MicrobeCensus optimally aligns metagenomic reads to a set of 30 conserved single-copy gene (CSCG) families found in prokaryotes 22. Based on these mappings, the relative abundance of each CSCG is then computed and used to estimate AGS based on the proportionality principle—that is, the AGS of the community is inversely proportional to the relative abundance of each marker genes22. Finally, a weighted average AGS is calculated that excludes outliers to obtain a robust AGS estimate for a given metagenomic sample22.Fig. 1: Eukaryotic and viral metagenomic reads bias AGS estimates in marine microbial metagenomes.a Schematic workflow of procedures used for estimating AGS in metagenomic samples. AGS is estimated based directly on preprocessed high-quality metagenomic reads (AGS1) and after three iterative steps to remove potential eukaryotic reads (AGS2) and viral reads detected based on the RefSeq viral genome database (AGS3) or de novo (AGS4). See the “Methods” section for more details. b Relationship between depth and proportion of total putative eukaryotic and viral sequences in marine metagenomic collections. The blue line indicates the fitted one-tailed Spearman correlation (r), with the corresponding 95% confidence intervals for the curve indicated by grey bands. The density distribution of the estimated proportion of contaminants is shown in green, with the corresponding median values (µ) highlighted. Values in parenthesis denote the filter size range of sampled metagenomes. c The fraction of ‘contaminating’ reads is highest in the epipelagic ocean relative to other ocean depth layers. EPI Epipelagic (~3–200 m), MES Mesopelagic (200–1000 m), BAT Bathypelagic (1000–4000 m). Values in parenthesis indicate the number of metagenomes. Only the results from the Malaspina Vertical Profiles (MProfile) metagenomes are shown as they cover greater depths of the global ocean (mean 1114 m; Supplementary Data 1). d Eukaryotic and viral metagenomic sequences significantly increase AGS estimates for prokaryotic plankton in marine metagenomes. Values in parenthesis show number of metagenomes for AGS1 and AGS2. e AGS estimates decreased in most metagenomic samples (85%; n = 220) after decontamination compared to predictions directly from preprocessed metagenomes by 1–19% (n = 39). Boxplots (c–e) show the median as middle horizontal (c, d) or vertical (e) lines and interquartile ranges as boxes (whiskers extend no further than 1.5 times the interquartile ranges). Data are shown as circular symbols, while mean values are shown as white colored diamonds. Values at the top (c, d) indicate the adjusted significant P-values of the unpaired (c) and paired (d) two-sided Wilcoxon test with Benjamini-Hochberg correction. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.Full size imageOf note, the AGS of complete prokaryotic genomes increases with the cumulative number of associated phages and other mobile genetic elements37. Similarly, AGS estimates derived from metagenomic sequences of uncultured “free-living” microbes (captured in 0.1–3 µm-size filters) may also be affected by putative phage and eukaryotic microbiomes sequenced concurrently in fractionated seawater samples (see,8,22). To evaluate this possibility in our AGS predictions, we compared AGS estimates obtained directly from quality-controlled metagenomes with estimates from the same metagenomes iteratively subjected to three (de novo) decontamination procedures to filter out potential eukaryotic and viral sequence reads (Fig. 1a; see details in the “Methods” section). Overall, putatively ‘contaminating’ viral and eukaryotic reads accounted for 1% to 20% (average 7.5%) of the high-quality trimmed sequences in the four microbial metagenome collections (Fig. 1b; Supplementary Data 1). As expected, the average proportion of contaminating sequences in metagenomes from large (0.2–3.0 µm) and small (0.1–1.2 µm) size fraction filters were the highest (~11%) and lowest (~5%), respectively (Fig. 1b). In addition, the proportion of contaminating reads was significantly dependent on the depth layer of the ocean (Kruskal-Wallis χ2 = 32.40, df = 2, p  200–1000 m), and bathypelagic (BAT,  > 1000–4000 m). c AGS estimates in the “free-living” (0.2–0.8 µm) and particle-associated (0.8–20 µm) bathypelagic microbiome sampled latitudinally at 4000 m depth during the Malaspina expedition. Boxplots show the median as middle horizontal line and interquartile ranges as boxes (whiskers extend no further than 1.5 times the interquartile ranges). Data are shown as circular symbols, while mean values are shown as white colored diamonds. Values at the top indicate the adjusted significant P-values of the unpaired (b) and paired (c) two-sided Wilcoxon test with Benjamini-Hochberg correction. The number of metagenomes analyzed is indicated in parentheses in all three panels. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.Full size imageThe median AGS estimate range of 2.2 to ~3.0 Mbp in the sampled free-living (0.1–3 µm in size) marine prokaryotic communities (n = 209 metagenomes) is consistent with other large-scale metagenome sequence-based estimates and the sizes of metagenome-assembled prokaryotic genomes (MAGs; in 0.22–3 µm filters) from the photic ocean (surface to mesopelagic) based on the Tara Oceans Expedition (1.5–2.3 Mbp)15,16. Overall, our metagenome sequence-based AGS estimates support the unimodal distribution of prokaryotic genome sizes recently demonstrated in environmental genomes in several biomes38 and on cultured isolates (including marine bacterioplankton)14,39. However, estimates from isolates are likely biased since current cultivation approaches tend to favor copiotrophs (see, ref. 3).We next tested whether the derived AGS estimates depended on microbial cell size by analyzing 25 paired bathypelagic metagenomes (MDeep; Supplementary Data 1) sampled during the global Malaspina Expedition40 in which both prokaryotic life strategies, free-living (0.2–0.8 µm size) and particle-associated (0.8–20 µm size), were sampled simultaneously35. The analyzed metagenomes (MDeep) were from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean provinces and cover a spatial distance of 9437 km with an average depth (± SD) of 3688 ± 526 m at the tropical and subtropical latitudes (–33.55°N to 32.0788°N). These microbial metagenomes were also screened for contaminating eukaryotic and viral sequences as indicated in Fig. 1a (see details in the “Methods” section and Supplementary Data 1). The genomes of bathypelagic prokaryotes associated with marine particles (5.6 ± 0.97 Mbp) were twice as large (paired two-sided Wilcoxon test, p  3 µm) prokaryotes, respectively (Supplementary Data 3). These estimates are also consistent with those of MAGs reconstructed from the same metagenomes in the Challenger Deep (Mariana Trench)43. Overall, this reinforces the patterns of larger AGS in particle-associated compared to free-living bathypelagic prokaryotes, and larger microbial genomes in the deep ocean compared to the upper ocean.AGS patterns are not geographically constrainedExamination of the geographic patterns of AGS estimates showed that AGS distribution was independent of geographic distance in both the regional (Red Sea, Mantel statistic r = 0.01824, p = 0.2971) and global (MProfile, r = –0.01413, p = 0.7924) ocean metagenomes. Furthermore, AGS estimates in the vertically profiled global Malaspina metagenomes (MProfile, n = 81) were significantly independent of the Longhurst biogeochemical province sampled (n = 9; Kruskal-Wallis χ2 = 1.0006, df = 8, p = 0.9982; Supplementary Data 1). The lack of covariance between the patterns of AGS estimates and geographic distance or Longhurst province sampled may reflect the high connectivity of microbial communities throughout the global ocean, particularly the redistributive effects of circulation by ocean currents and other transport processes, as well as the enormous population sizes of plankton that allow dispersal constraints to be overcome44,45. This is consistent with the relatively small differences in microbial assemblages recently found in different ocean basins23,46. Another possible explanation is the effect of seasonality, which can cause selection of different taxa, resulting in the succession of microbial communities and affecting their distribution (see, ref. 47), and thus influence AGS patterns.An assessment of the relationship between AGS and measured environmental variables (Supplementary Fig. S1; Data 1)—separately for the Red Sea metagenomes (regional scale) and Malaspina Vertical Profiles metagenomes (global scale), showed that the cumulative effect of temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, and depth on AGS patterns was significant at both the regional scale (n = 45; Mantel statistic r = 0.1944, p = 0.0057) and the global scale (n = 81; Mantel statistic r = 0.1779, p = 1 × 10–4). This result suggests that environmental conditions are a driving force behind predicted AGS patterns in the marine microbiome. While no significant interaction effect was evident between many environmental variables (i.e., salinity, depth, oxygen, nitrate, and phosphate) in controlling AGS patterns (one-way ANOVA, p  More

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    Global Protected Areas as refuges for amphibians and reptiles under climate change

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    Unexpected fishy microbiomes

    Authors and AffiliationsCenter for Evolutionary Hologenomics, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, DenmarkMorten T. Limborg & Jacob A. RasmussenSanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, UKPhysilia Y. S. ChuaAuthorsMorten T. LimborgPhysilia Y. S. ChuaJacob A. RasmussenCorresponding authorsCorrespondence to
    Morten T. Limborg or Physilia Y. S. Chua. More

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    Predicting metabolomic profiles from microbial composition through neural ordinary differential equations

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