Trends in Ecology & Evolution

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Featured articles from Kerstin Johannesson et al, Kevin Gaston & Nathalie Pettorelli and Liesje Mommer et al.

Articles by Finn Danielsen et al, Yorick Lambreghts et al, Pierre-Louis Rey et al and Bohao Fang & Scott Edwards

Spotlight from Hong Huang and colleagues.

We hope you enjoy it!

March issue of TREE out online now!
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Cover article is by Justine Nakintu and colleagues discussing the use of aeDNA from tropical regions

Our TREE paper is now out in its final published form! Well done @yoricklambreghts.com for leading this and doing the heavy lifting! DM him for a PDF. @cellpress.bsky.social

Nonnative forestry plantations: invasion epicenters?
@cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social

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Nonnative forestry plantations: invasion epicenters? Nonnative plantations offer economic benefits but increase the risk of biological invasions worldwide. This risk is primarily driven by frequent anthropogenic disturbances and autocatalytic processes that can lead to an invasion meltdown, creating hotspots that amplify ecological impacts. This underscores the urgent need to balance economic benefits with ecosystem sustainability.

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Unveiling hidden impacts of global change via ecosystem synchrony Global change research has traditionally focused on mean ecosystem states, often overlooking their temporal dynamics and intersystem coordination. Vagnon et al. demonstrate experimentally that eutrophication, warming, and overexploitation disrupt ecosystem synchrony in oxygen dynamics, generating complex, timescale-dependent effects. This establishes a synchrony-based framework for predicting ecosystem responses to environmental change.

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Articles from Bravo & Morgan, Spanbauer et al, Shoot et al, Suárez-Castro et al and Klimešová et al

February issue out online now!
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Cover is from Dan Zhu and colleagues on the use of repeat photography to assess environmental change

Featured articles from Rothberg et al, Cardillo et al and Wainwright et al,

Forecasting extinction risk for future-proof conservation decisions Conservation prioritisation emphasises currently threatened species, but there are strong arguments for complementary, more proactive approaches based on forecasting future extinction risk for unthrea...

Forecasting extinction risk for future-proof conservation decisions: Trends Ecol & Evolution www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

Should conservation focus on threatened species? Or should we be proactive and protect species before they become threatened? This paper explores how to get the balance right.

Taxonomic uncertainty: causes, consequences, and metrics Taxonomic uncertainty is prevalent across many biological groups. Yet, it remains overlooked in ecology, evolution, and conservation, leading to potential misinterpretations of biodiversity patterns. Here, we argue that this uncertainty emerges from the interaction between biological processes shaping natural lineages and human efforts to name and classify them. Based on this, we propose a set of metrics to quantify confidence in species boundaries and to track the history of taxonomic change and stability. We show how these metrics can be embedded into biodiversity analyses, from mapping uncertainty across taxa and geographic regions to assigning weights to species and deriving more realistic error ranges in ecological models. Making taxonomic uncertainty explicit advances biodiversity science and strengthens conservation decisions.

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Bridging knowledge systems to guide natural resource decision-making International agreements call for inclusion of Indigenous and local knowledge in resource management, yet practical approaches remain underdeveloped. We argue that knowledge co-assessment offers a feasible pathway. Drawing on examples from practice in the Arctic, we provide guidance for equitable engagement, communication, and scaling, enhancing legitimacy, inclusivity, and actionable governance.

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Cow Tools!

We have lived alongside cows for nearly 10,000 years.
We breed them and exploit them

It is now, only now, that we have discovered THEY CAN USE TOOLS

Here I describe our study

(paper) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... in @currentbiology.bsky.social
with @auersperga.bsky.social

Advancing species-based predictions of Nature’s contributions to people Nature’s contributions to people (NCP) are essential for human wellbeing, yet most assessments still rely on land-cover indicators that overlook how b…

🆕New paper: Advancing species-based predictions of Nature’s contributions to people by Pierre-Louis Rey et al. in @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social. Authors introduce Species' Contributions to People (SCP), clarifying how individual species support different NCPs. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

📢 Huge congrats to David Storch & colleagues! Their paper is featured on the cover of Trends Ecol. Evol. (@cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social), proposing a unifying theory of global biodiversity dynamics – and what it means for the future!

📖 doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...

🌍 #Biodiversity #Ecology #Evolution

Hums in the humus: opportunities and challenges for soil ecoacoustics Soil ecoacoustics is an emerging field and suite of tools that use sound and vibration to detect belowground biological activity. It offers a minimally invasive way to assess soil communities and ecosystem processes. Across biomes, we found that soil ecoacoustics is being used to detect organisms, quantify animal behaviour, monitor soil health, and assess restoration interventions. In this review, we show that ecoacoustic metrics reflect changes in soil fauna activity, disturbance impacts, and recovery trajectories. However, major challenges remain, including inconsistent terminology, limited understanding of sound propagation across soil types, difficulty separating biotic from abiotic signals, and a lack of standardised methods. Thus, we propose foundational standard operating procedures (SOPs) and identify how soil ecoacoustics could be integrated into global biodiversity monitoring frameworks.

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Ok, so since there's nothing coordinated anywhere, I've decided to make my own crowd-sourced list of ecology and conservation conferences here. If you know of a conference that fits, please add it to the list! Let's turn this into a useful resource for the community tinyurl.com/yb6e6mb2

Co-circulation and co-infection: parasite interactions across scales Parasite–parasite interactions occur both within and between hosts, but the two scales are rarely considered together. Consequently, there is a gap in our ability to predict the integrated effects of interactions occurring across scales, disentangle their relative contributions to key ecological outcomes, and accurately identify the drivers of host–parasite evolutionary responses. Here, we extend the standard susceptible–infected framework of theoretical epidemiology to explicitly incorporate parasite–parasite interactions across scales. We identify where – in each step of the transmission process – such interactions may occur, at the within- or between-host levels, providing empirical examples where possible. Thus, we demonstrate how integrating the two scales provides a more complete understanding of the evolutionary ecology of multi-parasite systems and suggest future avenues of investigation.

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Mechanical impacts of coral-associated invertebrates on tropical reefs Coral-associated invertebrates have a greater influence on reef ecosystems than is commonly appreciated. Their mechanical impacts can alter the shape of corals and contribute to both carbonate accretion and erosion processes. Their presence and abundance therefore warrant inclusion in modern reef assessments and increased attention in coral reef science.

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Spotlight from Braga & Vieira and Letter exchange between Zhao & Wang and Ren et al.

We hope you enjoy it!

Featured articles include Ribeiro et al and Gefaell & Uller. And Bill Sutherlands Annual Horizon Scan of conservation issues.

Other articles from Chappell & Shurin, Grimm et al, Cahill et al, Johnson et al, Pettorelli & Bridgewater and Blom et al.

First issue of 2026 out online now!
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Cover article by David Storch, Grace Ridder & Jordan Okie

How can natural history museums help nature recover? It is widely accepted that we face a biodiversity crisis due to human activities, and we need active conservation interventions to address it. Natural history museums have recently made public commitments to play a more active role in helping to address the biodiversity crisis. What role might they play in helping nature recover? To answer this question, we recognise a hierarchy of conservation interventions (species, community and whole systems) and illustrate the role that museums can play in these. We also discuss how museums enable people to engage with conservation science. While barriers remain, there are significant opportunities for the conservation community to better integrate collections into their research. We need museums to help enable this to happen.

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Thrilled to share our new review online with
@scottvedwards.bsky.social in @Trends Ecol & Evo! “pangenomics is rapidly transforming our ability to dissect the genetic basis of ecological and evolutionary change in natural systems.”

Advancing species-based predictions of Nature’s contributions to people Nature’s contributions to people (NCP) are essential for human wellbeing, yet most assessments still rely on land-cover indicators that overlook how biodiversity supports these contributions. We propose that species-level data, widely used in biodiversity mapping, can better inform direct NCP prediction through the development of species’ contributions to people (SCP). Linking species to NCP through relational SCP databases and combining these with species distribution models and global change scenarios can yield spatial NCP predictions that can be better rooted in species’ ecological characteristics. This approach fosters integrated biodiversity–NCP planning and supports conservation goals. We outline key methodological steps, identify research needs, and encourage collective progress to advance SCP knowledge for a transformative shift in how we assess and manage NCP.

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Pangenomes: new tools for ecological and evolutionary genomics Genomic structural variation is an important component of genetic variation in natural populations. By assembling and analyzing multiple high-quality genomes within a species or clade, pangenomes capture variation that can be missed by reference-based genomics at both the sequence and the genic levels. Although pangenomes are nascent tools for animals compared with other taxa, they have already unveiled novel insights into genome evolution, adaptation, the genomic basis of organismal traits, and conservation genomics. We highlight the rapid progress and unique ecological and evolutionary discoveries emerging from applying pangenome tools to diverse natural populations. We conclude that pangenomes are fundamentally shifting the field by revealing structural variants as a key source of adaptive potential and genomic diversity previously missed by single-reference methods.

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Revisiting decomposition theory through a macro-detritivore lens The established paradigm that terrestrial decomposition is driven mainly by substrate quality and climate relies heavily on studies of microbial decomposers in mesic environments. We argue that this strong regulation is mitigated by macrofaunal detritivores. Larger body size, lower sensitivity to desiccation, nutritional adaptations, and greater mobility allow macro-detritivores to decompose detrital resources when decomposition by smaller organisms is limited. Furthermore, macro-detritivores enhance microbial decomposition under stressful conditions through the fragmentation and translocation of recalcitrant detritus to nutrient-enriched and climate-buffered locations. Incorporating macro-detritivores into decomposition theory will generate a more comprehensive understanding of elemental cycling and reveal understudied pathways that could become influential in a warmer and drier world.

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Online now: The prenatal foundations of kin recognition