Ecology

Great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) are threatened by hunting and poaching.Credit: Education Images/Universal Images Group via GettyFifty years ago today, cinema-goers were scared out of their seats — as well as the ocean, and even swimming pools — with the US release of the film Jaws. Director Steven Spielberg’s creation entertained and terrified in equal measure, and brought about an enduring change in how we perceive sharks.David Shiffman is a marine conservation biologist based in Washington DC, and the author of Why Sharks Matter (2022). He spoke to Nature about how Jaws influenced the public perception of sharks and the importance of protecting marine life.How did Jaws affect the public’s opinion of sharks?There are some people who were afraid to even go into ankle-deep ocean water the summer Jaws came out. My mom says she didn’t want to go swimming at a pool. Around the same time, Star Wars came out, and no one was afraid that the Death Star was going to blow up Earth.A colleague of mine coined the ‘Jaws effect’, which is now used in public-policy literature to explain how fictional portrayals of real-world issues impact what voters want leaders to do about those issues.Has public opinion changed in the 50 years since Jaws was released?More people now love sharks, are aware of shark conservation and want to help sharks than ever before. But there’s still widespread fear, and in some cases it’s quite pseudoscientific in nature.How do these negative perceptions influence shark conservation?Sharks were swimming in the ocean before there were trees on land and before Saturn had its rings. And in the past 50 years, they’ve experienced some of the worst population declines in their 400-million-year-plus history.Unsustainable fishing practices are the largest threat to marine biodiversity. To save the ocean as a whole, including but not limited to sharks, we need to do more sustainable fisheries management. Scientists and environmental advocates in many cases know what we should do, but we’re not the ones in charge. We need to convince policymakers to make changes to conservation policy, and that requires public support.When fear and panic aren’t ruling our emotions, it’s clear that we should be trying to protect these animals, not trying to eradicate them.The film Jaws was released in the United States on 20 June 1975.Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Why is shark conservation so important?Humans depend on the oceans, which provide billions of people with a major source of food and tens of millions with employment and job security. To have a healthy food chain, you need to have a healthy top of the food chain. When we lose predators, the whole system can unravel.How can we change public opinion on sharks?Part of the problem is that most people hear about sharks only in the context of inflammatory media coverage or pseudoscientific nonsense.Yearly, more people are bitten by other people on the New York City subway system than are bitten by sharks in the whole world.The media and popular press definitely have a role to play. It would be great if they would educate about real things or at the very least stop saying nonsense.

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Download the Nature Podcast 18 June 2025We’d like to learn more about our listeners, please help us out by filling in this short survey.In this episode:00:45 The tiny moths that use the stars to navigateBogong moths use the stars to help them navigate during their enormous migration across Australia, according to new research. Every year, billions of these nocturnal moths travel up to 1,000 km to cool caves in the Australian Alps, despite having never been there before. By placing moths in a flight-simulator that also acted as a planetarium, the team behind the work showed that moths could use the bright Milky Way to help them fly in the correct direction.Research article: Dreyer et al.News: These moths use the stars to navigate on an epic migration10:17 Research HighlightsNigeria’s pangolins are under threat because their meat is delicious, and how the gravitational pull of other galaxies may prevent the Milky Way colliding with Andromeda.Research Highlight: Why pangolins are poached: they’re the tastiest animal aroundResearch Highlight: A long-predicted cosmic collision might not happen after all12:37 How humans expanded their habitats before migrating out of AfricaNew research suggests that shortly before modern humans successfully migrated out of Africa, they massively expanded the range of ecosystems they lived in. By combining climate modelling with data from archaeological sites across the African continent, researchers put forward evidence that 70,000 years ago, humans expanded the ecosystems they lived in to include diverse habitat types from forests to deserts. The authors suggest this ability to live in different places may have helped the later humans that migrated out of the continent around 50,000 years ago.Research article: Hallet et al.21:59 Briefing ChatBlowing bubble-rings could be humpback whales’ way of trying to communicate with humans, and the research suggesting that everyone’s breathing pattern is unique.Science Alert: Humpback Whale Bubble Rings May Be an Attempt to Communicate With UsNature: How you breathe is like a fingerprint that can identify youSubscribe 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

“I work for a sanctuary in Zambia that rehabilitates pangolins saved from illegal trade. The exact location is secret, and I’m staying anonymous for this interview. The poachers, who are usually armed, could target me or follow me to the sanctuary. Only my parents know what I do.Pangolins are worth a lot of money on the black market for their scales, which are believed to bring luck and are used in traditional medicine in Africa and Asia. The poachers use sharp tools, and some of the animals are missing legs or their tails. Others are very young and have to be hand-reared.There are two types of pangolin in Zambia, the ground pangolin (Smutsia temminckii) and the tree pangolin (Phataginus tricuspis). In the picture, taken in March this year, I’m holding a ground pangolin; it’s less than two years old and was in poor condition when it arrived.I’ve been doing this job for two years, living in the sanctuary for seven days at a time with a few days’ rest in between. Pangolins in captivity will often starve themselves if they’re in pain or stressed. They’re picky eaters, so I have to work out what each individual likes. I need to monitor that they’re putting on weight. It’s hard work.

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Then COVID-19 came. There were no assignments on conservation photography for me to work on. I had never done conventional news journalism before, but I started photographing impacts of the pandemic in Thailand. And a friend whose non-governmental organization worked closely with the human-rights group Amnesty International asked me to help cover anti-government protests in Thailand in 2020.
Because I didn’t have any other source of income, I took photos every single day. When I covered the protests in Bangkok, I was running around and getting shot at with rubber bullets and tear gas — but the time I spent during that period helped to sharpen my journalism skills. After that, I was recruited for more news coverage, and I still do that: in April, I was in Bangkok covering the earthquake that struck Myanmar on 28 March.
However, my speciality is marine stories, particularly those involving underwater photography. I got my scuba certification before I finished university, and by then I had completed many dives. To learn about underwater photography, I did a lot of online reading and, if I saw other people doing it, I would ask questions. More

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When food is scarce, tiny roundworms climb on top of each other and form towers, allowing them to search for nutrients by hitching rides on larger animals1.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-01803-8

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RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT
13 June 2025

Trafficking of scales for traditional medicine plays a relatively small part in the hunting of pangolins in Nigeria. More

Job Title: Associate or Senior Editor (Nature Structural & Molecular Biology and Nature Communications)  Location: New York, Shanghai, Beijing, Mad…
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Religious monuments in China have provided a refuge for ancient trees for thousands of years, including dozens of endangered species and some that are extinct in the wild, a study of nearly 50,000 trees has found.The findings, published on 4 June in Current Biology1, highlight how cultural and religious traditions can preserve biodiversity and could help scientists to develop strategies for conserving rare species.It is an example of “where ecological and spiritual values converge”, says study co-author Yongchuan Yang, a conservation researcher at the College of Environment and Ecology at Chongqing University in China. Several species, including Ginkgo Biloba, are sacred in Buddhism and Taoism, and have been protected from human activities that have led to a decline in tree numbers outside temple walls.Sacred sanctuariesYang and his colleagues used national inventories to compile a database of 46,966 trees that are more than a century old and are present in human-dominated landscapes, including 5,125 Buddhist and 1,420 Taoist temples. Of the 534 species represented, 61 are classed as threatened — these threatened species accounted for nearly 6,000 trees on the list. Moreover, eight tree species were found only on temple grounds.Buildings surround a majestic gold-leaved Ginkgo Biloba at the Gu Guanyin Buddhist Temple in China’s Zhongnan Mountains.Credit: Imaginechina Limited/Alamy The researchers found that the density of ancient trees inside the temples was more than 7,000 times higher than those outside temples and in the wild. Trees at temple sites are also older than those outside them, with a mean age of 261 years compared with 203 years. Some of the trees growing on temple grounds had been there for 2,000 years. These trees have important ecological roles, the scientists say: they contribute to nutrient recycling, provide habitats for animals and insects and increase biodiversity.

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