Jun 2025

TrendsTalk

• 

  Disability in ecology and evolution

  • Kelsey J.R.P. Byers,
  • Denis Meuthen,
  • Hella Péter

  In this TrendsTalk series ‘Disability in ecology and evolution’ in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, we will be hearing from people about their experiences being disabled in ecology and evolution. We are asking ecologists and evolutionary biologists with disabilities what the community could do to make our field more inclusive – these changes can be very practical things (e.g., large fonts), they could be institutional, or involve people’s attitudes and beliefs. If you identify as disabled, or have a chronic condition and would like to share your thoughts, please get in touch – [email protected] , we would love to hear from you.

Science & Society

• 

  Evidence-based urban greening: a missing piece in biodiversity conservation

  • Johan Kjellberg Jensen,
  • Marcus Hedblom,
  • Anna S. Persson

  Open Access

  With calls for increased greenery in cities to safeguard biodiversity and its associated benefits to humans, urban vegetation must be managed carefully and efficiently. It is time to change paths from current spurious attempts to manufacture resilience and instead usher in evidence-based urban greening to secure ecosystems for the future.

Letters

• The biophilia hypothesis revisited: back to basics, moving forward

  • Yuya Fukano,
  • Masashi Soga

  Joye and De Block [1] raise important issues regarding one of the most well-known hypotheses in biology: the biophilia hypothesis [2,3]. They argue that empirical evidence supporting the idea that our positive emotions toward nature are innate remains limited and instead propose that these positive emotions have primarily shaped by cultural evolution. We believe that Joye and De Block’s paper provides a timely opportunity to reconsider the validity, foundations, and implications of Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis in several ways.
• Biophilia without teeth: revisiting what we have already lost

  • Andreas De Block,
  • Yannick Joye

  We are grateful to Fukano and Soga [1] for their thoughtful engagement with our critique of biophilia recently published in TREE [2]. Their letter highlights important themes and opens avenues for productive dialog between evolutionary biologists, environmental psychologists, and scholars working on cultural evolution. Here, we identify both areas of agreement and aspects that, we believe, warrant further scrutiny.

Spotlights

• 

  What can we learn from the loss of sharks?

  • Haojie Su,
  • Libin Zhou,
  • Ping Xie

  The decline of apex predators has cascading effects on ecosystem structure and function. Hammerschlag et al. reveal how the loss of white sharks in False Bay, South Africa triggered an increase in mesopredators and a decline in prey, underscoring the critical process of trophic cascades in shaping marine community structure.
• 

  Fossil bamboos unlock paleoenvironmental and evolutionary secrets

  • Eduardo Ruiz-Sanchez

  The early Miocene bamboo fossil Ventriculmus neyvelinensis described by Bhatia et al. represents the oldest evidence of Arundinarieae’s historical distribution in India. As a member of the Bambusoideae subfamily (Indomalayan origin, ~54 Ma), this fossil documents the extinction of temperate bamboo in southern India during Miocene climate shifts.
• 

  New twist to a fantastical distribution: Fiji–Tonga iguanas

  • Jason R. Ali,
  • Uwe Fritz

  Open Access

  Over-water ‘rafting’ accounts for much of the biota on the ‘oceanic’ islands. Arguably, the most spectacular example concerns the iguanas on Fiji and Tonga. Scarpetta et al. have recently provided compelling evidence for them originating in western North America, with their trans-oceanic dispersal occurring within the past 33 million years.

Opinions

• 

  Towards an integrative mechanistic framework for biodiversity–consumer relationships

  • Fletcher W. Halliday,
  • Susan E. Everingham,
  • Maximilian Bröcher,
  • Anne Ebeling,
  • Anne Kempel,
  • Fabiane M. Mundim,
  • Alexander T. Strauss,
  • Zoe A. Xirocostas,
  • Mayank Kohli

  Terrestrial plant diversity plays a pivotal role in influencing the abundance, diversity, and impacts of herbivores and pathogens (collectively, plant consumers). However, it is unclear whether the relationships between biodiversity and herbivory reflect the same underlying ecological mechanisms as the relationships between biodiversity and disease. This uncertainty results in part from decades of independent, siloed research on each consumer group. We propose that, across herbivores and pathogens, plant diversity–consumer relationships arise from five fundamental factors: (1) density of a focal plant, (2) total plant biomass, (3) plant neighborhood quality, (4) resource diversity, and (5) structural complexity. By matching established hypotheses to these five fundamental factors, we highlight opportunities for growth in the rapidly developing field of plant–consumer interactions.
• 

  How do big brains evolve?

  • Cristián Gutiérrez-Ibáñez,
  • Pavel Němec,
  • Martin Paré,
  • Douglas R. Wylie,
  • Louis Lefebvre

  In both birds and mammals, variation in brain size predominantly reflects variation in mass or volume of the pallium (neocortex) and, to a lesser extent, of the cerebellum, suggesting convergent coevolution of brains and cognition. When brain measures are based on neuron counts, however, a surprisingly different picture emerges: The number of neurons in the cerebellum surpasses those in the pallium of all mammals (including humans and other primates) and in many but not all birds studied to date. In particular, parrots and corvids, clades known for cognitive abilities that match those of primates, have brains that contain more pallial than cerebellar neurons. Birds and mammals may thus have followed different evolutionary routes of pallial–cerebellar coordination behind enhanced cognitive complexity.
• 

  Typology of the ecological impacts of biological invasions

  • Laís Carneiro,
  • Boris Leroy,
  • César Capinha,
  • Corey J.A. Bradshaw,
  • Sandro Bertolino,
  • Jane A. Catford,
  • Morelia Camacho-Cervantes,
  • Jamie Bojko,
  • Gabriel Klippel,
  • Sabrina Kumschick,
  • Daniel Pincheira-Donoso,
  • Jonathan D. Tonkin,
  • Brian D. Fath,
  • Josie South,
  • Eléna Manfrini,
  • Tad Dallas,
  • Franck Courchamp

  Biological invasions alter ecosystems by disrupting ecological processes that can degrade biodiversity, harm human health, and cause massive economic burdens. Existing frameworks to classify the ecological impacts either miss many types of impact or conflate mechanisms (causes) with the impacts themselves (consequences). We propose a comprehensive typology of 19 types of ecological impact across six levels of ecological organisation. This allows more accurate diagnosis of the cause of impact and can help triage management options to tackle each impact–mechanism combination. We integrated the typology with broad ecological concepts such as energy, mass, and information flow and storage. By highlighting cascading effects across multiple levels, this typology provides a clearer framework for documenting, and communicating invasion impacts, thereby improving management and research.
• Harmonizing nature’s timescales in ecosystem models

  • Vivienne P. Groner,
  • Jacob Cook,
  • C. David L. Orme,
  • Priyanga Amarasekare,
  • Edward Comyn-Platt,
  • Taran Rallings,
  • Jaideep Joshi,
  • Robert M. Ewers

  Open Access

  Modeling complex, nonlinear ecosystem processes across different timescales presents a significant challenge. We identify two key issues: selecting a representative timestep that captures interconnected processes across various timescales, and simulating these processes in an appropriate sequence. By synthesizing existing ecosystem frameworks, we find shared compromises between biological realism and computational performance. For the representative timestep, these include ‘selective elimination of timescales’, ‘biting the bullet’, ‘each in their own time’, and ‘capture the unseen’. For processing order, we identify hierarchical, logical, iterative, and random approaches. Similar challenges exist in other disciplines, and we show how transferring methods from multiple fields, along with smarter computing, can improve timescale integration. Overcoming these challenges requires innovative transdisciplinary solutions, and we outline directions for future research.
• 

  The biocontrol paradox

  • Stephen P. Bonser,
  • Violaine Gabriel,
  • Karen Zeng,
  • Angela T. Moles

  Biocontrol agents can significantly reduce the growth and performance of individual invasive plants but often have limited success in controlling invasions. Here, we suggest that some biocontrol failures may be understood by distinguishing between individual plant performance and the performance of groups growing in monoculture. The success of a group growing in monoculture can be maximised if individual plants limit their allocation of limited resources to competition. However, individual performance can be maximised by acquiring resources at the expense of neighbouring plants. Enemies such as herbivores can reduce the dominance of individual plants and limit resource allocation to competition. Thus, biocontrol could have the unexpected effect of increasing the performance of groups of invaders.
• Featured Article
  

  Explicit value trade-offs in conservation: integrating animal welfare

  • Kate E. Lynch,
  • Benjamin L. Allen,
  • Oded Berger-Tal,
  • Fiona Fidler,
  • Georgia E. Garrard,
  • Jordan O. Hampton,
  • Christopher H. Lean,
  • Kirsten M. Parris,
  • Sally L. Sherwen,
  • Thomas E. White,
  • Bob B.M. Wong,
  • Daniel T. Blumstein

  Conservation is an evolving discipline, with its values changing over time. Animal welfare is gaining attention, but can conflict with other conservation values. We illustrate how different management decisions arise from prioritizing different values, and show how these conflicts can depend on value prioritization, as well as how values such as animal welfare are defined. This includes the limits (type of welfare states), scope (range of species), and timescales considered. Since small changes in value articulation and prioritization can lead to major changes in management decisions, we argue for making values and trade-offs explicit. An established structured decision-making (SDM) framework can enhance transparency, reducing misunderstanding in conservation controversies and helping maintain public trust in science.

Review

• 

  The importance of biome in shaping urban biodiversity

  • Eleanor S. Diamant,
  • Krista N. Oswald,
  • Adewale G. Awoyemi,
  • Kevin J. Gaston,
  • Ian MacGregor-Fors,
  • Oded Berger-Tal,
  • Uri Roll

  Open Access

  Humanity is urbanizing, with vast implications on natural systems. To date, most research on urban biodiversity has centered on temperate biomes. Conversely, drylands, collectively the largest terrestrial global biome, remain understudied. Here, we synthesize key mechanistic differences of urbanization’s impacts on biodiversity across these biomes. Irrigation shapes dryland urban ecology, and can lead to greener, sometimes more biodiverse, landscapes than local wildlands. These green urban patches in drylands often have a different species composition, including many non-native and human-commensal species. Socioeconomic factors – locally and globally – can mediate how biomes shape urban biodiversity patterns through the effects of irrigation, greening, and invasive species. We advocate for more research in low-income dryland cities, and for implementing biome-specific, scientifically grounded management and policies.

• Subscription and Copyright Information