Ecology

Qiushi Chair Professor; Qiushi Distinguished Scholar; ZJU 100 Young Researcher; Distinguished researcher
No. 3, Qingchun East Road, Hangzhou, Zhejiang (CN)
Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital Affiliated with Zhejiang University School of Medicine More

In 1961, conservationist Peter Scott warned that the black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) could be extinct in 30 years. His prediction nearly came true: in Kenya, numbers fell from about 20,000 in the 1970s to fewer than 400 by 1989. At the start of this year, Kenya’s eastern black rhino (D. b. michaeli) population had surpassed 1,000. The strategy behind this recovery holds lessons for conservation efforts.
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The authors declare no competing interests. More

This week, as world leaders gather in Belém, Brazil, for the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), once again it seems that there will be more rhetoric than real solutions for the countries that are most vulnerable to the effects of a changing climate.My native Belize — with its tropical rainforests, coastal wetlands and coral reefs — is one such country. Warming seas are killing our reefs. Hurricanes and wildfires are increasing in frequency and intensity.‘Almost utopian’: how protecting the environment is boosting the economy in BrazilAs a biologist with two decades of experience in academia and conservation, I have learnt that, to protect natural resources, local communities must bey empowered to steward these efforts — and that women are often best placed to drive them, at least in Latin America and the Caribbean, but probably everywhere.In many cultures, women are the de facto main carers and custodians of community knowledge. They are often in positions, paid or otherwise, to make their communities healthier, more prosperous and more peaceful — making them well-suited to lead climate action and conservation work.I am the managing director of the Belize Maya Forest Trust, a non-profit organization dedicated to conserving nearly 1,000 square kilometres of the country’s tropical forest. I also chair the board of directors of the Belize Network of NGOs, an umbrella organization for many of the more than 100 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the country. In Belize, many prominent conservation organizations are led by women. Take the Community Baboon Sanctuary, a globally recognized conservation effort that protects the habitat of the Yucatán black-howler monkey (Alouatta pigra). Today, the sanctuary is managed by the Community Baboon Sanctuary Women’s Conservation Group, which is directed by women from seven Belizean villages.And over the past five years, working with the government of Belize and The Nature Conservancy, a global environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, women in Belize have had key roles in the execution of game-changing sustainable-financing initiatives. One is Belize’s first large-scale project to reduce emissions by avoiding deforestation, which is helping to protect the Belize Maya Forest, an area that includes some of the world’s most biodiversity-rich lands. Another is Belize Blue Bonds — which, when the deal closed in November 2021, was the world’s largest debt-refinancing scheme for ocean conservation.The more I participate in advocacy and interact with civil-society organizations — both in Belize and internationally — the more I find myself in rooms full of women striving to protect the environment and defend human rights.But I have also noticed that women are not usually negotiating for funds, deciding whether to launch large initiatives or setting national priorities.Is it time to give up trying to save coral reefs? My research says noBelize is again a case in point. In any of the ten elections since Belize gained independence in 1981, at most four women have been elected to the 28–31-member House of Representatives, the most powerful arm of the country’s legislature. Other female parliamentarians have been appointed by the prime minister, but these positions tend to have much less authority than do those elected through popular vote. Also, female ministers are usually put in charge of human or rural-development issues, rather than the country’s economy, land, infrastructure or defence.For countries to build resilience and protect their biodiversity in the time needed, more women must be made equal partners in decision making.

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“The first time I saw a chamois, a mammal closely related to both goats and antelopes, was more than 40 years ago while I was hiking in Epirus, a mountainous region in western Greece. Chamois were rare then; the desire to learn about and protect them inspired me to become a biologist. Over the past 25 years, their population in my study area — the Northern Pindos National Park — has grown drastically, mainly thanks to a ‘human shield’ effect created by hikers visiting the upper parts of the Northern Pindos mountain range: their presence has made poaching more difficult.Now, I can easily see dozens of Balkan chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra balcanica) just a few hours from my village. In this picture, I’m counting them on the ledges of a cliff, one of their favourite habitats. We think that there are now around 1,000 individuals in the national park and nearby mountain ranges.Studying chamois requires the skills of a mountaineer and a scientist’s precision. My colleagues and I have built a habitat suitability model, based on elevation, vegetation, slope and human activity, and are testing it by checking for chamois presence in areas across northern and central Greece. We have discovered small populations in those areas and are in the process of defining wildlife corridors and identifying threats to those populations.

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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.
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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