Just a few species can drive a plant community's response to warming temperatures
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 7-May-2026 19:16 ET (7-May-2026 23:16 GMT/UTC)
A major new report published today warns that nature loss is not just an environmental issue, it is already disrupting our food system, threatening catastrophic impacts on our economy and society. The report has been produced by the UK’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and Anglia Ruskin University.
Researchers have developed a new way to understand how cells survive heat stress by tracking how genes shift under changing temperatures. Studying skin fibroblasts from humans and heat-adapted one-humped camels, they created models of gene interactions using small datasets by measuring the magnitude of gene changes rather than simple on/off responses. Findings reveal that camels exhibit stronger cellular resilience than humans, offering new insight into heat adaptation and a powerful tool for studying environmental stress biology and ecological responses to environmental change.
30 April 2026 / Kiel / Mindelo. Tomorrow, fourteen Master’s students in the West African Master’s programme ‘Climate Change and Marine Sciences’ will begin their two-week training and research voyage aboard the research vessel POLARSTERN. Travelling from Mindelo in Cabo Verde to Bremerhaven, Germany, they will carry out physical, biogeochemical and biological measurements together with ten experienced scientists. This is the fourth time that the Floating University is taking place under the leadership of GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. This initiative significantly contributes to the goals of the UN Decade of Ocean Science and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) as part of the WASCAL programme (West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use).
Fruit volume in Chinese flowering plants is largely shaped by evolutionary relationships, but warmer climates weaken this phylogenetic constraint, highlighting the context‑dependent role of evolutionary history in plant reproductive traits.
Snow cover in the mountains of Greece – an important water source for communities, agriculture and natural ecosystems during the dry summer months – has more than halved over the past four decades, a study has found.
The World Stroke Organization is warning that climate change poses an escalating threat to brain health, with extreme heat in particular increasing the risk of having a stroke and of patients dying from stroke.
A synthesis of six assessments of first generation of carbon credit projects designed to reduce deforestation has found that although their climate benefits were often oversold tenfold, many played an important role in reducing forest loss.
Researchers suggest improved valuation methods, that better reflect real reductions in deforestation over time, would increase confidence in the critically important market for these credits.