The study represents Vellore’s road system as a graph, with intersections modeled as nodes and roadways as linking edges. Selected urban sectors—including public administration, retail, healthcare and education—are assigned specific time slots according to their operating schedules. A sector-level routing layer then produces a circulation sequence based on a Hamiltonian cycle over the modeled sectors and assigns feasible shortest-path routes across the physical road network to individual commuters.

Researchers compared two modeled scenarios. Scenario A used conventional operating hours and shortest-path routing. Scenario B combined modified, sector-specific timings with Hamiltonian Circuit optimization. Performance was evaluated using end-to-end delay and agent queue count, both of which were lower in Scenario B than in Scenario A over the active-agent ratios examined in the abstract. The results therefore describe the performance of the integrated temporal-spatial routing framework within the simulation model.

The available evidence is limited to the article abstract, highlights and study summary; it does not provide the full methods, model validation, underlying observations or details of the active-agent ratios. The research concerns a modeled traffic system for Vellore and does not establish that the approach has been implemented at city scale or produced the reported reductions in real traffic. The abstract characterizes the combined framework as promising and potentially workable, scalable and affordable, but those broader conclusions remain tied to the simulated setting described here.

Subject of Research: Graph-theoretic simulation of staggered sector schedules and Hamiltonian-inspired routing for urban traffic in Vellore.

Article Title: Graph theoretic simulation based approach for urban traffic optimization using Hamiltonian inspired routing and sector based time staggering in Vellore

Article References: S, P., & A, P. (2026). Graph theoretic simulation based approach for urban traffic optimization using Hamiltonian inspired routing and sector based time staggering in Vellore. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04962-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04962-4

Keywords: Vellore, traffic simulation, graph theory, Hamiltonian routing, sector timing, shortest-path routing, end-to-end delay, agent queue count, Graph, theoretic, simulation, based

For the analysis, the authors harmonized Landsat 8/9 land surface temperature, Dynamic World land-cover probabilities, JRC surface water, WorldPop population, and Global Human Settlement Layer morphology on a 500 m equal-area grid. They combined residentially weighted indicators, sensitivity tests, an exact-count 3 km spatial block null, and spatially validated gradient boosting. ERA5-Land was used only for city-level summaries of broad climate context and was excluded from grid-level prediction. The abstract reports that the highest population-density decile was 4.19–5.23 °C warmer than the lowest decile, with the same direction observed under alternative population and boundary specifications. Gradients involving older adults varied among the four cities.

Primary spatial cross-validation produced coefficients of determination of 0.632–0.896 for the city models and 0.880 for the pooled model. Built form, Landsat spectral variables, and pooled city indicators were the dominant predictors. Blue-green variables made smaller conditional contributions to prediction, and transfer to fully held-out years or cities was limited. These results describe predictive associations within the analyzed grids; they do not establish that population density or blue-green cover causes the observed temperature differences.

Because the supplied material consists of the abstract and a subscription preview rather than the full article, the reported methods, numerical results, and limitations above are limited to information stated in the abstract. The authors describe the framework as a repeatable way to identify persistent residential surface-heat and blue-green-resource mismatches for targeted follow-up, while the limited temporal and cross-city transfer constrains how broadly its predictions can be applied.

Subject of Research: Satellite-based assessment of residential surface heat and blue-green resource mismatch in four Chinese cities

Article Title: Satellite monitoring of population-weighted surface heat and blue-green resource mismatch across four Chinese cities

Article References: Pu, W., Li, G., Tan, X., & Li, Z. (2026). Satellite monitoring of population-weighted surface heat and blue-green resource mismatch across four Chinese cities. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 198(11), Article 1212. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-026-16084-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10661-026-16084-5

Keywords: urban heat, satellite monitoring, blue-green space, population density, land surface temperature, spatial modeling, gradient boosting, Harbin, Beijing, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Satellite

The research team conducted floristic surveys on 20 quartz islands between February and March 2024, using systematic walk-through observations to ensure comprehensive species detection. The surveys yielded a complete species list per island and recorded 220 vascular plant species across the archipelago. Roughly one third of the species belonged to just three families: Asteraceae, Aizoaceae, and Poaceae.

Species richness varied dramatically among islands, ranging from 23 to 105 species, a difference of 82 species between the poorest and richest islands. Beyond counting species, the researchers measured functional traits for 134 perennial species, representing more than 80 percent of all perennial species recorded across the islands. Nine traits were quantified following standardized protocols: plant height, specific leaf area, leaf water content, relative leaf phosphorus content, stem succulence, and the presence or absence of epidermal trichomes, prickles, wax coating, and glands.

Each trait captures a different ecological strategy, from drought tolerance to defense against herbivory. From these measurements the team calculated functional dispersion, defined as the mean distance of individual species to the centroid of the community in trait space. This metric is considered robust to outliers and largely independent of species richness, and the authors confirmed that their estimates showed no significant correlation with species counts.

To capture the evolutionary dimension of diversity, the team reconstructed a phylogeny for all recorded species using a megatree backbone and calculated the mean pairwise distance, which measures the average branch distance between all species pairs in a community. This metric is conceptually similar to functional dispersion but reflects deeper lineage history rather than trait values. Island geography was quantified through remote sensing.

The researchers mapped quartz islands by supervised classification of Sentinel-2 multispectral imagery at 10-meter resolution, using a Maximum Entropy Presence Prediction tool and, at two sites, a one-class Support Vector Machine. Model accuracy was evaluated against withheld ground-truth points. From the resulting island polygons and a digital elevation model, the team derived eleven biogeographic parameters grouped into three categories: island shape (area, perimeter, shape index), isolation (nearest neighbour distance, neighbour index, proximity index, and area-based isolation metrics), and habitat diversity (habitat Shannon diversity, habitat richness, and related indices based on slope, aspect, convexity, and surface texture).

Statistical analysis revealed strikingly divergent responses across the three diversity facets. For species richness, the best-supported model contained four parameters and reduced deviance by about 80 percent relative to the null model. Island area emerged as the strongest predictor, exerting a highly significant positive effect consistent with classical island biogeographic theory.

Larger islands offer more resources and space, reduce the risk of population extinction, and enhance the chance of colonization by erratic dispersal. The shape index showed a significant negative effect, indicating that more irregular island outlines flatten the species-area relationship. Partitioning of explained deviance showed that island shape accounted for more than 80 percent of the variation in species richness, while habitat diversity and isolation jointly contributed roughly 15 percent.

Functional dispersion told a different story. The best model explained 70 percent of the variation, but island connectivity, quantified by the neighbour index, was the strongest positive predictor, while nearest neighbour distance and habitat Shannon diversity were significantly negatively related. Variance partitioning revealed that isolation and connectivity metrics accounted for roughly 60 percent of the explained variation, with habitat diversity contributing the remainder.

Notably, island area showed no detectable effect on functional dispersion. The authors attribute this to trait redundancy in species-rich communities: additional species on larger islands likely occupy similar trait combinations rather than expanding the occupied trait space, so functional diversity becomes decoupled from species richness. The narrow range of functional dispersion values across islands, from 0.1187 to 0.1564, further points to strong environmental filtering and broadly similar functional composition among communities.

Phylogenetic diversity responded to yet another parameter. After excluding one highly influential observation identified through diagnostic checks, the best-supported model retained only the area of the nearest neighbour island as a significant positive predictor, explaining about one third of the variance in mean pairwise distance. This suggests that phylogenetic diversity is primarily shaped by the immediate size of the closest potential source area rather than by broader network connectivity.

The absence of stronger isolation signals aligns with studies on other habitat island systems showing weak or random relationships between phylogenetic diversity and insularity. The divergent responses across taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic facets carry important implications for conservation. Quartz islands occur largely on privately owned land, where threats such as poaching of rare and endemic dwarf succulents persist.

The findings suggest that conservation should safeguard both large islands, given the strong area effect on species richness, and well-connected networks of intact islands, which appear crucial for maintaining functional diversity. Maintaining connectivity is also likely to support dispersal and gene flow among islands, enhancing the adaptive potential of quartz island floras under ongoing global change. More broadly, the study underscores the need for multidimensional biodiversity assessments in habitat islands.

Focusing solely on species richness would have missed the connectivity effects on functional diversity and the area-based isolation effects on phylogenetic diversity. Because quartz islands occur across multiple archipelagos along a wide bioclimatic gradient in South Africa and southern Namibia, they offer an exceptional natural system for comparative habitat island biogeography. Future research extending taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic analyses across regions at larger scales could identify the main drivers of diversity patterns and determine how climate shapes functional trait space and island-biogeographic relationships in otherwise comparable edaphic environments.

Subject of Research: Biogeographic drivers of taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic plant diversity on quartz habitat islands in southern Africa

Article Title: Diverging responses of taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic plant diversity to biogeographic parameters in arid habitat islands of southern Africa

Article References: Bürger, A. M., Meyer, K., Eibes, P. M., Lauel, C., Oldeland, J., Schmiedel, U., & Irl, S. D. H. (2026). Diverging responses of taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic plant diversity to biogeographic parameters in arid habitat islands of southern Africa. Frontiers of Biogeography, 19, Article e167957. https://doi.org/10.21425/fob.19.167957

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.21425/fob.19.167957

Keywords: quartz islands, habitat islands, island biogeography, plant diversity, functional diversity, phylogenetic diversity, species richness, South Africa, Nama-Karoo, environmental filtering, conservation, remote sensing

The Eemian, which occurred approximately 130,000–120,000 years before present, was about 2–4 °C warmer than the Holocene and had sea level approximately 8–10 m above present. Higher sea-surface temperatures were associated with weakened coastal upwelling, and Senegalese marine molluscs, including Nerita senegalensis, Saccostrea cucullata, Tethystrombus coronatus and T. virleti, were present in the Canarian littoral zone. The perspective notes an important difference in greenhouse-gas concentrations: atmospheric carbon dioxide did not exceed 300 ppm during the Eemian, whereas it has reached 423 ppm, up from an estimated 278 ppm around 1750, while methane reached 1,912 ppb in 2022, 2.6 times its estimated pre-industrial value.

Sea-level records provide one of the clearest regional indicators. Tide-gauge records from the Lanzarote Geosciences Laboratory show a long-term rise of 0.33 ± 0.06 cm per year between July 2005 and May 2023, while satellite altimetry indicates a comparable trend across the Canary Current system during recent decades. Regional analyses cited by the authors report a marked increase in the rate of sea-level rise during 1993–2019 relative to earlier decades. Thermal expansion of seawater accounts for 56% of measured sea-level rise, with cryospheric processes accounting for the remainder.

The paper links this sea-level response to the strong inertia of cryospheric processes, which can persist over centuries to millennia through feedbacks involving temperature, albedo reduction and ice dynamics. As a result, sea-level rise is delayed relative to atmospheric warming and is not a simple linear response to temperature; it may continue even if global temperatures stabilize. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections cited in the perspective place end-of-century mean annual temperature increases at 1.4–5.7 °C and sea-level rise at 0.4–0.8 m above present levels, depending on scenario. These projections remain well below the Eemian sea level.

On land, the authors identify warming, changing moisture patterns and biological redistribution across Tenerife, Gran Canaria and the wider archipelago. Mean annual temperatures are increasing, as are the numbers of nights above 25 °C and 30 °C. Summit temperatures rose by an average of 0.3 °C per decade over the past half century. A comparison with upper range limits recorded for 23 vascular plants at the beginning of the nineteenth century found an average upward shift of 36.4 m per decade on Tenerife’s summit. The perspective also cites milder winters that are associated with lower winter mortality among invasive European rabbits, higher spring densities and increased browsing pressure on the endemic shrub Spartocytisus supranubius.

Fire conditions are also changing. The cited research projects that high fire-risk conditions will begin earlier and persist later under future warming scenarios. Historical fire statistics show that major wildfires in recent decades have increasingly occurred in June and July, whereas they were more frequent in late summer in earlier records. At the same time, the inversion layer that supports the trade-wind cloud sea has lowered in altitude, increasing exposure of laurel forests to dry conditions and drought stress. The Canary Islands’ total affected wildfire area is reported as 745,000 hectares across the period examined, with larger areas affected more recently, particularly over the last six years.

Marine observations show a parallel set of changes. Sea-surface temperature around the islands increased at about 0.1 °C per decade from 1958, while the surrounding ocean acidified at approximately 0.02 pH units per year between 1995 and 2013. During 150 years of tropical-storm monitoring before 2005, no storms passed close to the Canaries, but Delta and Vince occurred in 2005, Otto in 2010, Gordon and Nadine in 2012, and Leslie in 2018. The ichthyofauna is becoming more tropicalized: the Whale Shark has been a regular summer visitor since 1993, the Ocean Triggerfish has been recorded since 1990, and the Tropical Crab first appeared in 2016. These species are associated mainly with El Hierro and La Palma, where waters are warmer.

Other marine changes include the eastward redistribution of temperate organisms, including Gongolaria abies-marina macroalgae forests and Cymodocea nodosa seagrass prairies, toward the cooler waters around Lanzarote and Fuerteventura affected by the Canarian Upwelling System. Blooms of the microalga Trichodesmium erythraeum, associated with Saharan dust input and high sea-surface temperatures, occurred in 2004 and reappeared in 2011 and 2017. The perspective also reports that ciguatera, described in the source as a tropical fish disease affecting humans, was unknown in the Canaries until 2004 but has since reappeared almost annually in connection with consumption of large fish containing ciguatoxin, including Greater Amberjack.

Recent short-lived events have included sea-surface temperatures above 25 °C and land-air temperatures above 40 °C, conditions described as resembling those inferred for the Eemian and coinciding with weakened coastal upwelling. The authors present the Canary Islands as a natural laboratory in which warming, sea-level rise, altered rainfall, species redistribution and marine tropicalization can be observed together. Their perspective is bounded by the heterogeneous evidence assembled from different studies, periods and regions: the “eemification” framing is an interpretation of converging observations, not a demonstration that the archipelago has entered a distinct Eemian state. The authors nevertheless conclude that the direction of change is already evident and that the consequences of ice-sheet inertia and ocean feedbacks can persist for millennia.

Subject of Research: A perspective on human-driven Eemian-like climate signals in the Canary Islands

Article Title: Towards the human-induced “eemification” of the recent Holocene: a perspective from the Canary Islands

Article References: Fernández-Palacios, J. M., Martín-Esquivel, J. L., & Fernández-Palacios, E. (2026). Towards the human-induced “eemification” of the recent Holocene: a perspective from the Canary Islands. Frontiers of Biogeography, 19, Article e176249. https://doi.org/10.21425/fob.19.176249

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.21425/fob.19.176249

Keywords: Canary Islands, Holocene, Eemian, climate change, sea-level rise, species redistribution, marine tropicalization, wildfire season, ocean acidification, perspective article, Towards, human-induced

Researchers used Infomap Bioregions v2.7.1 to group 116 grid cells, each approximately 15.625 km across, by Plectostoma species composition. The cells were aggregated into 33 bioregion areas representing clusters of limestone hills with similar assemblages. This approach did not automatically treat every hill as an isolated island, because areas that are now separate limestone outcrops may once have been connected before karstification and subsequent incision and alluvial deposition created barriers.

The spatial analysis found that bioregion boundaries did not consistently follow geographical distance alone. Instead, they were associated with uplands above 250 m, drainage divides, river networks and catchment areas. In the Centre of the Malay Peninsula, the Lipis-Gua Musang-Kuala Krai limestone cluster contained three bioregions: BA2 and BA15 in the Kelantan River basin and BA3 in the upper Pahang River basin. Elsewhere, limestone clusters separated by at least 20 km and not connected by drainage commonly formed distinct areas, whereas clusters linked by adjacent river networks sometimes formed one area.

These spatial associations supported the authors’ interpretation that rivers may act as corridors for passive dispersal, potentially through floodwaters, while topography can restrict movement between drainage systems. The study did not directly measure snail dispersal, and occasional transport by wind or mobile animals could not be excluded. The authors also proposed that some wide-ranging species may have dispersed across formerly continuous limestone during earlier stages of karstification. This remains a historical explanation inferred from distribution patterns rather than a directly demonstrated mechanism.

The distribution data showed substantial endemism among the 84 Plectostoma species represented in the results. Seventy-three species occurred in only one bioregion, and 47 were classified as short-range endemics, with maximum distribution ranges below 10 km or records confined to a single outcrop. Ten species occurred in multiple bioregions. Borneo contained 52 species, compared with 28 on the Malay Peninsula, while three occurred in southern Thailand, one in Sumatra and three in southern Vietnam. The highest richness was in BA1 in the Bau-Padawan-Serian limestone cluster of western Sarawak, where 17 species were recorded.

A MaxEnt model estimated climatic suitability from nine selected bioclimatic variables using 100 bootstrap replicates. Its mean area under the curve was 0.906, with a standard deviation of 0.007. Precipitation of the coldest quarter had the highest estimated importance at 29.3%, followed by isothermality at 14.7% and precipitation seasonality at 12.8%. The model predicted relatively high suitability in parts of the central and eastern Malay Peninsula, western Borneo and Sabah. It also predicted low suitability in some occupied areas, including parts of northern Sarawak and eastern Sabah, showing that broad-scale climatic estimates did not fully account for local occurrences. The study did not establish that any apparently suitable unoccupied limestone landscape supported the genus.

Generalised linear mixed models produced different results at two spatial scales. For 24 Malaysian bioregion areas with detailed limestone maps, climate suitability and climate variability were significant in a climate-only model, while total limestone area was significant in an island-biogeography model. In the integrated model, total limestone area was the only statistically significant predictor of species richness, with a coefficient of 0.251 and p = 0.0493. Hill number and hill isolation were not significant in the thematic island-biogeography model. At the cell scale, none of the three habitat variables was independently significant, while the random effect of bioregion identity accounted for much of the explained variation, indicating an important role for spatial autocorrelation or unmeasured area-level characteristics.

Canonical correspondence analysis also associated endemism composition with habitat characteristics. At the bioregion-area scale, the ordination explained 44.1% of total variance, and the number of limestone hills and total limestone area were individually significant predictors, with p = 0.002 and p = 0.004, respectively. Hill isolation, mean climate suitability and climate variability were not individually significant at that scale. The cell-scale ordination explained 25.8% of variance; isolation, total limestone area and mean climate suitability were significant in that analysis. These results are associations, not experimental evidence that the measured variables caused the observed diversity patterns.

The study had several limitations. It relied on compiled occurrence records and uneven sampling, including unpublished inventories from 52 Malay Peninsula limestone hills collected in 2018 and 2019. Detailed habitat metrics were available only for Malaysia, and the area-scale statistical analysis included 24 of 33 bioregions. Climate suitability was estimated from interpolated environmental data that may not represent the microclimates of topographically complex limestone outcrops. The study also did not include phylogenetic or phylogeographic analyses, so the proposed links among geological history, past limestone connectivity, dispersal and present-day endemism remain hypotheses requiring further testing.

Subject of Research: Biogeographical patterns and endemism of limestone-dwelling Plectostoma snails in Sundaland

Article Title: Biogeographical patterns of the genus Plectostoma H. Adams, 1865 ( Mollusca , Gastropoda ) in Sundaland’s limestone ecosystems

Article References: Liew, T.-S., Nurinsiyah, A. S., Marzuki, M. E., Fletcher, W. K., Foon, J.-K., Bian, N. A., Chen, Y., Khalik, M. Z., Vermeulen, J. J., & Schilthuizen, M. (2026). Biogeographical patterns of the genus Plectostoma H. Adams, 1865 (Mollusca, Gastropoda) in Sundaland’s limestone ecosystems. Frontiers of Biogeography, 19, Article e155940. https://doi.org/10.21425/fob.19.155940

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.21425/fob.19.155940

Keywords: Plectostoma snails, Sundaland, limestone ecosystems, karst biogeography, species endemism, species richness, landscape connectivity, climate suitability, drainage networks, island biogeography, Biogeographical, patterns

The year a species was described, the authors argue, often tells us almost nothing about when it was actually accepted as a species, and that mismatch systematically underestimates how much unknown biodiversity remains on Earth. The problem hinges on a technical distinction that most people never think about: the difference between an authority year and an acceptance year. Under the zoological naming rules governed by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, the publication year of a name never changes, even when the taxonomic status of the animal does.

A population that spent a century listed as a subspecies, or buried as a synonym of another species, keeps the old description year when it is finally elevated to full species rank. Species accumulation curves built on description years therefore measure the age of scientific names, not the timing of their general acceptance as species — and the two can be separated by decades. The scale of this mismatch is striking.

In birds, only 32 of the 1,221 species added to the accepted list over an 11-year period represented genuinely new discoveries. The remaining 1,189 were previously known subspecies and populations whose taxonomic status changed. The authors illustrate the issue with the Californian climbing salamanders of the Aneides flavipunctatus complex.

Aneides flavipunctatus was described in 1870. Aneides iecanus was described in 1883 but treated as a synonym from 1925 until 2019. Aneides niger was described as a subspecies in 1948 but only recognized as a distinct species in 2019.

Aneides klamathensis was only accepted as a species in 2019, yet its correct authority year is 1948. A discovery curve would place all of these salamanders deep in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when in fact three of the four were only accepted within the last decade. To test whether this mismatch biases diversity estimates, the researchers compared two taxonomic snapshots taken roughly a decade apart for birds, amphibians, and mammals.

For birds, they used two versions of the BirdLife International checklist, from 2012 and 2022. For mammals and amphibians, they used the 2010 and 2023 versions of the IUCN Red List. These groups were chosen deliberately: they are among the best-studied organisms on Earth, with the vast majority of species already described, so methods based on discovery patterns should work best for them.

If the method were reliable, estimates based on the older taxonomy should closely match those based on the newer one. Instead, the researchers consistently found lower estimates of total diversity when relying on the older snapshot. The results were remarkably consistent.

For birds, the analysis of the 10,054 species in the old taxonomy suggested that a further 493 species could eventually be described. The new taxonomy contained 11,178 species — 1,124 more than the old one. At the order level, 15 of the 17 orders analyzed showed lower estimated diversity under the old taxonomy, a pattern that would be expected by chance only rarely (p = 0.0024 based on a binomial test).

The median increase in estimated total diversity across those 15 orders was 10 percent, with a range of 3 to 25 percent. For birds, mammals, and amphibians as whole classes, estimated diversity increased by 7, 10, and 11 percent respectively when comparing the old and new taxonomies. The researchers also ran a series of simulations to confirm that the bias behaves as expected.

Starting from the amphibian dataset, which showed the highest number of estimated undescribed species, they artificially increased the gap between authority year and acceptance year by subtracting random amounts from the empirical distribution of discovery intervals. The more biased the input data became, the fewer undescribed species the model predicted. In the empirical amphibian dataset, 13 percent of species remain undescribed based on the new taxonomy, but under the highest simulated biases, this dropped to 0.1 percent.

The drop was highly predictable, with consistently fewer undescribed species estimated as the magnitude of the bias increased. This confirms that the underestimation is not a quirk of the particular datasets but a direct consequence of the mismatch between description year and acceptance year. The geographic analysis revealed an even more troubling pattern.

The researchers looked at the authority years of all species added between the old and new taxonomies, reasoning that if authority year were informative of when species are considered full species, nearly all of these should have authority dates more recent than about 2005. Instead, they found that species added with centroids in Europe had a mean authority year of 1902, while those from Africa, Tropical Asia, North America, Oceania, and South America had mean authority years around 1951 to 1954. For mammals, authority years of the species added to Europe were significantly older than anywhere else.

For birds, nearly all pairwise comparisons were significant, with Europe having the oldest authority years followed by North America. This means the bias is most severe in the well-studied regions — precisely where previous analyses based on discovery curves have predicted the fewest undescribed species. This geographic pattern calls into question analyses that use species discovery years to infer spatial patterns in undescribed species richness, such as those presented by Moura and Jetz (2021) or Ondo et al. (2024).

These analyses predict a higher number of undescribed species in regions where the year of discovery is closer to the year of acceptance, and a lower number in regions with a larger difference between the two. The new study shows that these analyses will mainly underestimate the number of undescribed species in the regions where they predict the fewest — the well-studied temperate zones — while the tropical regions where they predict the most may be somewhat more accurate. The overarching conclusions of those studies, such as the claim that tropical Asia likely harbors many undescribed species, remain plausible, the authors note.

But the discovery curves provide little additional support for such conclusions beyond what expert biological knowledge already suggests. The authors are careful to note that the problem is not that all models are useless. As George Box famously said, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

The models examined here generally only work on very well-studied groups and may not converge to finite values unless the majority of species in a group is already known. In cases where approximate conclusions are already known a priori, the built-in bias of accumulation curves may not matter. A recent imprecise estimate of the number of birds that went extinct due to humans but did not leave any fossils, for example, used accumulation curves as a lower bound of the number of unknown extinct species — and the fact that the method is known to be an underestimate arguably makes it more suitable for this limited use.

Similarly, a study stressing that the discovery rate of fungi is still accelerating stands even though its use of authority year means it underestimates the size of the acceleration. The problem only extends to studies whose conclusions rest on a face-value reading of the results. The fix, at least in principle, is straightforward.

The problem should largely disappear if authority year in all analyses is replaced by the year a species was raised to species status, when it was formerly treated as a subspecies or synonym. The researchers therefore advocate that taxonomic databases and monographs should include additional information on the taxonomic history of each taxon, including when it was raised to species level — a call that many other researchers have also made. Until such data are available, the authors hope that less problematic methods for inferring undescribed diversity will be used instead of analyses of patterns in authority year.

The broader lesson for biodiversity science is sobering: a good statistical fit to the data does not necessarily imply that a model is informative. This study provides a real-world example of how a seemingly plausible model can yield misleading insights when its underlying assumptions are violated — a caution that extends far beyond the counting of species.

Subject of Research: Limitations of using species description years to estimate undescribed global species diversity

Article Title: Global patterns in species description year cannot reliably estimate undescribed diversity

Article References: Faurby, S., & Farooq, H. (2026). Global patterns in species description year cannot reliably estimate undescribed diversity. Frontiers of Biogeography, 19, Article e171197. https://doi.org/10.21425/fob.19.171197

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.21425/fob.19.171197

Keywords: biodiversity, species description, taxonomic inflation, Linnean shortfall, species accumulation curves, authority year, undescribed species, biogeography, conservation, taxonomy, birds, amphibians

The authors compiled records from published catalogues, Red Lists, other literature, Palaearctic catalogues, GBIF and additional online databases. They also examined arthropod holdings at the Natural History Museum of Crete, the Laboratory of Forest Entomology collection at the Forest Research Institute, and a private collection. Existing European and Mediterranean assessments guided the initial selection of species, after which the saproxylic status of Greek members of genera containing saproxylic species was checked separately. The synthesis was a review and national catalogue rather than a new field survey, so its totals reflect the evidence available to the authors across historical and modern sources.

Saproxylic beetles are defined here as species dependent on dead or dying wood, wood-rotting fungi or other organisms associated with decaying wood. The authors assigned broad trophic categories principally from the framework used in the Italian Red List, with some simplifications. Where published information was unavailable, a category was inferred from the typical ecology of the relevant genus, an approach that introduces uncertainty for some poorly studied species. Endemic species were assigned to nine broad Greek regions, with those restricted to one administrative division treated as local endemics and those recorded in two or more divisions treated as more widely distributed endemics.

Xylophagous species formed the largest trophic group, with 632 species, followed by saproxylophagous species with 254, mycetophagous species with 246 and predatory species with 231. Seventy species had no trophic assignment, while 84 were classified as having trophic flexibility across more than one category. The paper notes that trophic classification within saproxylic beetles is debated and that assignments for some species remain uncertain.

Endemism was concentrated in southern Greece. The checklist identifies 112 endemic species, representing 7.2% of the 1,548 recorded species, with Cerambycidae and Ptinidae containing the largest numbers, at 21 endemic species each. Crete contained 32 endemic species and the Peloponnese 36, including 26 endemics restricted to Crete and 22 to the Peloponnese. The authors associate Crete’s distinctive fauna with the island’s long-term isolation, dating back approximately 5.5 million years. They identify Pleistocene glacial refugia, mountain isolation and habitat specialisation as possible contributors to the Peloponnesian pattern, but the underlying ecological mechanisms remain uncertain.

Conservation assessments remain incomplete. Of the 1,548 species, 867 had not been assessed in either the European or Greek Red Lists. Among 681 assessed species, 42 were classified as threatened: one Critically Endangered species, 24 Endangered and 17 Vulnerable. Another 457 were Least Concern, 62 Near Threatened and 119 Data Deficient. After invasive and Data Deficient species were excluded, the threatened proportion was 7.5%, compared with 17.9% for Europe. The authors caution that the Greek assessment included many common, widespread and mobile species in families such as Buprestidae and Curculionidae, which can lower the overall proportion classified as threatened.

Endemic species had a less favourable assessed profile. Of 45 assessed endemics, 64%, after correction for Data Deficient species, were classified as threatened, compared with 36.6% in the European assessment and 53% in the Mediterranean assessment. The authors note that many endemics are known from only a few localities or their type locality, so assessments based heavily on distribution data may overestimate their risk. More broadly, the scarcity of taxonomic, distributional and ecological information limits interpretation for both endemic and unassessed species.

Land-use change was the main group of pressures identified in the Greek Red List assessments. These included housing and urban development, roads and railways, crop production, livestock farming, logging, tourism and recreational activities, fire, renewable-energy development, tree plantations, invasive organisms, climate change and pesticide or herbicide use. Species can be associated with more than one pressure, so totals for individual threat categories exceed the number of threatened species. The loss of old trees and dead wood was a particular concern, including the documented association between carob trees and the endangered endemic longhorn beetle Trichoferus bergeri. National data on dead-wood volume remain sparse.

The review identifies Crete, the Peloponnese, Pindos, Olympos and the Aegean as priorities for surveys, alongside work on less-studied beetle groups, species classified as Not Evaluated or Data Deficient, population genetics, species-distribution modelling and open databases. The authors also recommend measuring the effects of logging, wildfire, agricultural intensification and climate- or land-use-driven distribution shifts. Among 22 native species classified as threatened in the Greek Red List, 20 were reported within the Natura 2000 network, one was outside it and the distribution of the remaining species was insufficiently known.

Subject of Research: A review and first national checklist of saproxylic beetle diversity, endemism and conservation status in Greece

Article Title: Saproxylic beetles ( Insecta , Coleoptera ) of Greece: A synthesis of diversity, biogeography and conservation challenges, with the first national checklist

Article References: Bolanakis, G., Avtzis, D., Németh, T., Kundrata, R., Háva, J., Kaltsidis, A., Makris, C., Maroulis, L., & Trichas, A. (2026). Saproxylic beetles (Insecta, Coleoptera) of Greece: A synthesis of diversity, biogeography and conservation challenges, with the first national checklist. Frontiers of Biogeography, 19, Article e177299. https://doi.org/10.21425/fob.19.177299

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.21425/fob.19.177299

Keywords: saproxylic beetles, Greece, species checklist, biodiversity, endemism, conservation status, Red List, dead wood, trophic guilds, Natura 2000, Saproxylic, beetles

Observed LAeq,10-min values ranged from 20.00 to 88.58 dB(A), with a mean of 48.88 ± 13.36 dB(A) and a median of 47.98 dB(A). Of all observations, 43.10% were below 45 dB(A), while 33.24% were at or above 55 dB(A). Comparisons among predefined time windows did not show statistically significant differences (p = 0.169). These results describe measurements collected during the specified short monitoring period rather than annual conditions.

The study’s measurement-driven workflow combined inverse-distance-weighted interpolation, leave-one-out cross-validation, descriptive comparisons, study-defined screening bands contextualized with reference to World Health Organization environmental-noise guidance, and false-discovery-rate-corrected Getis–Ord Gi* analysis. For the selected IDW configuration, with p = 2 and k = 12, cross-validation showed minimal average bias but only moderate point-level predictive performance: RMSE was 11.79 dB(A), MAE was 8.55 dB(A), mean error was −0.08 dB(A), and r was 0.52. The Gi* analysis identified 100 cold-spot and 57 hot-spot locations among 276 coordinate-unique site means, conditional on the specified spatial-weighting configuration.

As summarized in the article abstract, the findings provide a sample-supported empirical framework for identifying relative spatial patterns and follow-up monitoring priorities at the studied campus. The authors caution that the results represent short-term outdoor conditions and should not be interpreted as annual exposure, formal WHO compliance, indoor exposure, or high-precision prediction. The study is therefore a campus noise-screening investigation based on field observations and spatial modeling, not a review, protocol, simulation, or animal or cell study.

Subject of Research: Short-term outdoor campus noise screening and GIS spatial analysis at Batman University

Article Title: Measurement-driven GIS mapping of short-term outdoor campus noise at Batman University, Türkiye: A WHO-informed screening approach

Article References: Durmus, B. (2026). Measurement-driven GIS mapping of short-term outdoor campus noise at Batman University, Türkiye: A WHO-informed screening approach. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 198(9), Article 1000. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-026-15835-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10661-026-15835-8

Keywords: Batman University, campus noise, environmental noise, GIS mapping, acoustic measurements, LAeq, spatial hotspots, WHO guidance, Measurement-driven, mapping, short-term, outdoor

The study was conducted between 2022 and 2024. Researchers used field surveys, drone imaging and plant-species identification to examine biodiversity in the selected urban green spaces. They applied the Shannon–Wiener diversity index, the Simpson diversity index and the Biodiversity-Friendly City Criteria to the Erzincan case. Of the 105 recorded plant taxa, 56% were classified as natural and 44% as exotic.

Kemaliye had the highest diversity index, while Çayirli had the lowest. The Shannon–Wiener results for Kemaliye included a high evenness value of E = 0.896, and the same pattern was supported by the Simpson diversity index. The recorded plants comprised 54% edible-leaf broadleaf trees, 19% conifers, with the remainder consisting of edible shrubs, small trees and vines. Although all seven settlements showed high biodiversity characteristics in the Bio-friendly Settlement analysis, the reported 90.7 points represented the average across the districts rather than a separate score for every settlement.

The authors said the findings support conservation measures intended to improve ecological sustainability and preserve biodiversity in Erzincan. They also identified potential in the province’s agricultural landscapes and tourism. The article was described as seeking strategies for biodiversity inventory, conservation and sustainable management in urban areas, as well as greater use of natural plant species in urban ecosystems. Because the supplied evidence consists of the article abstract and publisher page rather than the full text, details of sampling design, index calculations and the criteria used to score individual settlements are not available here.

Subject of Research: Field assessment of plant diversity and bio-friendly settlement characteristics in seven Erzincan settlements

Article Title: Ecological and environmental assessment of Erzincan Districts within the scope of the biodiversity-friendly city approach

Article References: Askan, G., & Yilmaz, H. (2026). Ecological and environmental assessment of Erzincan Districts within the scope of the biodiversity-friendly city approach. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 198(9), Article 1001. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-026-15839-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10661-026-15839-4

Keywords: Erzincan, urban biodiversity, plant diversity, green spaces, ecological assessment, Bio-friendly Settlement, Shannon–Wiener index, Simpson index, field surveys, conservation, Ecological, environmental

The review was based on a Scopus search conducted on 6 November 2025 using terms related to invasive species and acoustic monitoring while excluding the non-invasive term. The search returned 143 papers, from which the researchers screened 44 potentially relevant abstracts and assessed their full texts. They retained 26 studies that directly examined passive acoustic monitoring of invasive animals.

The earliest study in the retained dataset was published in 2012, and the number of publications increased in more recent years. Amphibians accounted for 11 studies, birds and fish for five each, arthropods for three, and mammals and reptiles for one each. Research was concentrated in the USA and Australia, with fewer studies from Europe, Asia and South America and none identified from Africa. The geographic pattern partly reflected repeated studies of cane toads in Australia and barred owls in the USA.

The literature showed that acoustic monitoring was moving from exploratory sound characterization toward automated detection, machine learning, long-term monitoring and large-scale networks. Automated or semi-automated detection appeared in 17 of the 26 studies, and manual or expert validation was reported in 18, with four more using behavioural, experimental, laboratory or methodological validation. In amphibian studies, distinctive and relatively stereotyped mating calls supported automated identification. Other examples included deep-learning classifiers for cane toads, real-time monitoring of barred owls, acoustic classification of invasive fish and a model developed from 3,500 field-recorded common brushtail possum vocalizations in New Zealand.

For the case study, the researchers deployed 20 AudioMoth recorders at 11 water bodies in the Upper Rhine region. The devices were placed less than five metres from shorelines and programmed to record for 55 seconds every minute from two hours before sunset until three hours after sunset at a sampling frequency of 48 kHz. Simultaneous recordings covered 16 days from 13 to 29 June 2025, corresponding with the regional peak of bullfrog vocal activity and breeding season. Visual shoreline surveys were also conducted where possible, and all available iNaturalist records in the study region were compiled.

The 1,600 recorded hours were analysed with BirdNET Analyzer V2.4, which produced 56,298 three-second snippets identified as containing bullfrog calls. The researchers randomly selected 500 segments spanning confidence scores from 0.25 to 1.00 and assessed spectrograms and audio. Of these, 485 were judged correct and 15 incorrect. Logistic regression estimated that identifications with confidence scores above 0.703 had a 99% probability of being correct, with a 95% confidence interval for the threshold of 0.602 to 0.932.

Applying a multi-step classification process, the study classified 10 of the 20 recorders as having detected bullfrogs and thereby confirmed presence at five of the 11 monitored lakes. Recorders with more than 100 detections above the threshold were classified directly. For lower counts, the researchers examined the 15 highest-scoring detections; these were classified as positive if all exceeded the upper limit of the confidence interval, while uncertain cases were checked manually by listening to the audio. Tadpoles were observed at five sites, which were also the only sites with available citizen-science bullfrog records in the region.

Two lakes with confirmed bullfrog presence were within one kilometre of the protected nature reserves Altrhein Kleiner Bodensee and Altrhein-Königsee. The case study nevertheless has bounded scope: it covered one 16-day recording period, 11 lakes and two confirmed presence locations, and failure to confirm calls at the other lakes did not establish that bullfrogs were absent. Detection also depended on animals vocalizing during the deployment period. Across the broader literature, suitability varied among taxa, with acoustic monitoring most applicable to species producing frequent, distinctive and predictable sounds and less comprehensive for weakly vocal or non-vocal animals.

The authors concluded that passive acoustic monitoring has strong potential to support repeated and scalable invasive-species surveillance, particularly when automated identification is paired with transparent validation, defined thresholds, manual checks and integration with visual surveys and citizen science. It can help confirm persistence at known sites, identify likely breeding activity through repeated mating calls and prioritize follow-up in areas with limited resources. The review did not establish a uniform detection rate across species or environments, and the case study demonstrates feasibility rather than a comprehensive estimate of monitoring accuracy across all invasive animals.

Subject of Research: Evaluation of passive acoustic monitoring for detecting invasive animal species through literature synthesis and an American bullfrog field case study.

Article Title: Passive acoustic monitoring as a tool for early detection of invasive animal species: a systematic review and a case study

Article References: Becker, D., Kasten, M. K., Weber, T., Grass, I., & Hiller, T. (2026). Passive acoustic monitoring as a tool for early detection of invasive animal species: a systematic review and a case study. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 198(9), Article 1003. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-026-15873-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10661-026-15873-2

Keywords: passive acoustic monitoring, invasive species, American bullfrog, automated species detection, BirdNET, AudioMoth, systematic review, early detection, biodiversity monitoring, Passive, acoustic, monitoring