BioSciencePub Date : 2025-04-09eCollection Date: 2025-04-01DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biaf014
Sean Denny, Lauren Coad, Sorrel Jones, Daniel J Ingram
{"title":"Snaring and wildlife wastage in Africa: drivers, scale, impacts, and paths to sustainability.","authors":"Sean Denny, Lauren Coad, Sorrel Jones, Daniel J Ingram","doi":"10.1093/biosci/biaf014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf014","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Snaring is considered to be the most common form of hunting in Africa. Although snaring can provide hunters with valuable food and income, it can also devastate wildlife populations when practiced unsustainably and has significant animal welfare implications. Snaring can also be wasteful, both when animals escape with fatal injuries and when catch is discarded. In the present article, we argue that snaring is a regional-scale threat to wildlife and to the sustainable use of biodiversity in Africa. We show that snaring in Africa is geographically widespread and locally intense, that tens of millions of snares are likely set across the continent annually, and that at least 100 million kilograms of wild meat is probably wasted in Africa every year because of snaring. We discuss opportunities to address these impacts through changes to governance and enforcement and by reducing demand for wild meat in cities.</p>","PeriodicalId":9003,"journal":{"name":"BioScience","volume":"75 4","pages":"284-297"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12016803/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143963048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BioSciencePub Date : 2025-02-19eCollection Date: 2025-04-01DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biae132
Genuar Nunez-Vega, Lorenz Christian Reimer, Jörg Overmann, Amber Hartman Scholz
{"title":"A new indicator for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework: Capturing non-monetary benefit data from access and benefit-sharing agreements.","authors":"Genuar Nunez-Vega, Lorenz Christian Reimer, Jörg Overmann, Amber Hartman Scholz","doi":"10.1093/biosci/biae132","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biae132","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) moves international efforts to conserve biodiversity into a quantitative era. Fair and equitable benefit-sharing is one of the three objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which means that to achieve the KMGBF, its parties will need to begin quantifying the benefits received from access and benefit-sharing (ABS). This mandate represents a big challenge as countries will need to begin to measure both monetary and non-monetary benefits from ABS agreements. Non-monetary benefits, in particular, can be more difficult to measure than monetary benefits, resulting in lower scientific understanding and integration of scientific results into national policy choices. In the present article, we propose a new methodology to deliver data to the KMGBF on non-monetary benefit-sharing indicators using scientific publications that cite ABS permits and put forth recommendations for improving the visibility of non-monetary benefits.</p>","PeriodicalId":9003,"journal":{"name":"BioScience","volume":"75 4","pages":"298-306"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12016788/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143962941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BioSciencePub Date : 2025-02-14eCollection Date: 2025-04-01DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biaf010
Anthony J Barley, Charles J Cole
{"title":"Speciation by hybridization: the mind-boggling nature, educational, and research value of the largest group of unisexual vertebrates.","authors":"Anthony J Barley, Charles J Cole","doi":"10.1093/biosci/biaf010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf010","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Thirteen species of North American lizards are remarkable because only females exist, which reproduce by cloning unfertilized eggs. Their closest relatives reproduce sexually, with eggs fertilized by sperm from males, as in most vertebrates. The unisexual species originated through hybridization, dispensing with sex and males in a single generation. These lizards hold tremendous potential in science education as a fascinating model for learning about fundamental biological concepts, and in research for developing knowledge with medical applications for reproductive biology, embryonic development, and genetic interactions. These lizards maintain genome integrity in a hybrid state in which recombination is absent, but do not suffer from conditions or disorders such as Down's Syndrome or cancer that are caused by aneuploidy in humans. The multifarious impacts of hybridization on the diversity of species in this group present an exceptional opportunity to deepen understanding of the complicated process of evolutionary diversification.</p>","PeriodicalId":9003,"journal":{"name":"BioScience","volume":"75 4","pages":"331-341"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12016801/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143953641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BioSciencePub Date : 2025-02-04eCollection Date: 2025-04-01DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biae133
Ágnes Vári, Andrew Gonzalez, Elena M Bennett
{"title":"Monitor social-ecological systems to achieve global goals for biodiversity and nature's contributions to people.","authors":"Ágnes Vári, Andrew Gonzalez, Elena M Bennett","doi":"10.1093/biosci/biae133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biae133","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9003,"journal":{"name":"BioScience","volume":"75 4","pages":"276-280"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12016793/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143975275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BioSciencePub Date : 2025-01-17eCollection Date: 2025-03-01DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biae124
Amy Hinsley, Alice C Hughes, Johan van Valkenburg, Tariq Stark, Jeroen van Delft, William Sutherland, Silviu O Petrovan
{"title":"Understanding the environmental and social risks from the international trade in ornamental plants.","authors":"Amy Hinsley, Alice C Hughes, Johan van Valkenburg, Tariq Stark, Jeroen van Delft, William Sutherland, Silviu O Petrovan","doi":"10.1093/biosci/biae124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biae124","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The multibillion dollar ornamental plant trade benefits economies worldwide, but shifting and rapidly expanding globalized supply chains have exacerbated complex environmental, sustainability, and biosecurity risks. We review the environmental and social risks of this international trade, complementing it with analyses of illegal trade seizures and plant contaminant interception data from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. We show global increases in ornamental plant trade, with supply expansions in East Africa and South America, and highlight risks and impacts including biodiversity loss, aquifer depletion, pollution, undermined access and benefit sharing, and food security. Despite risk mitigation efforts, the interception data showed considerable volumes of contaminants in ornamental plant shipments, but taxonomic identification was not always possible, highlighting uncertainties in assessing biosecurity risks. With high-volume and fast-moving transit of ornamental plants around the world, it is essential that production standards are improved and that data on specific risks from trade are collected and shared to allow for mitigation.</p>","PeriodicalId":9003,"journal":{"name":"BioScience","volume":"75 3","pages":"222-239"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11987086/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143971982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BioSciencePub Date : 2025-01-09eCollection Date: 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biae120
Tamara K Harms, Heili Lowman, Joanna Blaszczak, Ashley Cale, Xiaoli Dong, Stevan Earl, Leah Gaines-Sewell, Julia Grabow, Erin Hanan, Marina Lauck, John Melack, Ann Marie Reinhold, Betsy M Summers, Alex J Webster, Nancy B Grimm
{"title":"Fire influence on land-water interactions in aridland catchments.","authors":"Tamara K Harms, Heili Lowman, Joanna Blaszczak, Ashley Cale, Xiaoli Dong, Stevan Earl, Leah Gaines-Sewell, Julia Grabow, Erin Hanan, Marina Lauck, John Melack, Ann Marie Reinhold, Betsy M Summers, Alex J Webster, Nancy B Grimm","doi":"10.1093/biosci/biae120","DOIUrl":"10.1093/biosci/biae120","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Wildfires have increased in size, frequency, and intensity in arid regions of the western United States because of human activity, changing land use, and rising temperature. Fire can degrade water quality, reshape aquatic habitat, and increase the risk of high discharge and erosion. Drawing from patterns in montane dry forest, chaparral, and desert ecosystems, we developed a conceptual framework describing how interactions and feedbacks among material accumulation, combustion of fuels, and hydrologic transport influence the effects of fire on streams. Accumulation and flammability of fuels shift in opposition along gradients of aridity, influencing the materials available for transport. Hydrologic transport of combustion products and materials accumulated after fire can propagate the effects of fire to unburned stream-riparian corridors, and episodic precipitation characteristic of arid lands can cause lags, spatial heterogeneity, and feedbacks in response. Resolving uncertainty in fire effects on arid catchments will require monitoring across hydroclimatic gradients and episodic precipitation.</p>","PeriodicalId":9003,"journal":{"name":"BioScience","volume":"75 1","pages":"30-46"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11791530/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143254561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BioSciencePub Date : 2024-12-13eCollection Date: 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biae126
Garth Herring, Ashley L Whipple, Cameron L Aldridge, Bryce A Pulver, Collin A Eagles-Smith, Rich D Inman, Elliott L Matchett, Adrian P Monroe, Elizabeth K Orning, Benjamin S Robb, Jessica E Shyvers, Bryan C Tarbox, Nathan D Van Schmidt, Cassandra D Smith, Matthew J Holloran, Cory T Overton, David R O'Leary, Michael L Casazza, Rebecca J Frus
{"title":"Imperiled Great Basin terminal lakes: Synthesizing ecological and hydrological science gaps and research needs for waterbird conservation.","authors":"Garth Herring, Ashley L Whipple, Cameron L Aldridge, Bryce A Pulver, Collin A Eagles-Smith, Rich D Inman, Elliott L Matchett, Adrian P Monroe, Elizabeth K Orning, Benjamin S Robb, Jessica E Shyvers, Bryan C Tarbox, Nathan D Van Schmidt, Cassandra D Smith, Matthew J Holloran, Cory T Overton, David R O'Leary, Michael L Casazza, Rebecca J Frus","doi":"10.1093/biosci/biae126","DOIUrl":"10.1093/biosci/biae126","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Terminal lakes are declining globally because of human water demands, drought, and climate change. Through literature synthesis and feedback from the resource and conservation community, we review the state of research for terminal lakes in the Great Basin of the United States, which support millions of waterbirds annually, to prioritize ecological and hydrologic information needs. From an ecological perspective, research priorities include measuring the underlying differences in waterbird resource selection and distribution, migratory connectivity, abiotic factors that interact with prey densities to affect prey availability, and waterbird fitness or demography. Integrated links between water availability, water quality, and food webs are lacking in the literature. Scarce water availability data hinder the current knowledge of water extraction and evapotranspiration rates. Research that can address these priorities would help advance our understanding of how the Great Basin terminal lakes function as an interrelated system and support conservation efforts to reverse the decline of these critical lakes.</p>","PeriodicalId":9003,"journal":{"name":"BioScience","volume":"75 2","pages":"112-126"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11884798/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143584509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BioSciencePub Date : 2024-11-30eCollection Date: 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biae114
Taylor Lightner, Simone Soso, Candice M Etson, Robin McC Greenler, Mercy Mugo, Verónica A Segarra
{"title":"Leveraging collective impact to characterize and identify solutions to cultural challenges within scientific societies.","authors":"Taylor Lightner, Simone Soso, Candice M Etson, Robin McC Greenler, Mercy Mugo, Verónica A Segarra","doi":"10.1093/biosci/biae114","DOIUrl":"10.1093/biosci/biae114","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A consortium of scientific societies recently identified challenges to inclusivity within the biology communities they represent. Specifically, societies encounter difficulties collecting member demographic data effectively, integrating scientists at transitional career stages, and diversifying their leadership. In response, the Leveraging, Enhancing, and Developing Biology (LED-BIO) research coordination network (NSF 2134725) organized two meetings at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA to gather stakeholders and employ top-down and bottom-up organizational approaches to address these challenges. These meetings included Town Hall and Think Tank events to facilitate open dialogue and gather feedback on policies and programs from national organizations in attendance. These discussions provided valuable insights into the barriers societies face and the available resources and interventions societies use to promote inclusivity. This article uses the LED-BIO research coordination network as a case study to discuss the Town Hall-Think Tank-Consensus Building (TTC) methodology for advancing inclusive excellence in scientific communities.</p>","PeriodicalId":9003,"journal":{"name":"BioScience","volume":"75 2","pages":"104-111"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11884808/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143584510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BioSciencePub Date : 2024-11-26eCollection Date: 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biae110
David S Mason, Mark E Bell, Kenneth F Kellner, Abigail Bennett, Tom Weston, Joseph Presgrove, Jerrold L Belant
{"title":"Wild harvests could aid food insecurity and reduce wildlife hyperabundance.","authors":"David S Mason, Mark E Bell, Kenneth F Kellner, Abigail Bennett, Tom Weston, Joseph Presgrove, Jerrold L Belant","doi":"10.1093/biosci/biae110","DOIUrl":"10.1093/biosci/biae110","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9003,"journal":{"name":"BioScience","volume":"75 1","pages":"9-14"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11791521/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143254567","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}