The research team, led by scientists at the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Changchun, together with senior author Zhibin Zhang of the School of Ecology at Hainan University, set out to answer a question that has long lingered in rangeland ecology. Small herbivores such as pikas, voles, prairie dogs, and pocket gophers are both consumers and ecosystem engineers in grasslands worldwide. Through feeding, clipping vegetation, and digging burrows, they profoundly alter plant communities and soil properties. But while population outbreaks clearly harm livestock interests, almost nothing was known about what happens when their numbers sit at lower, non-outbreak levels. Co-first author Zhiwei Zhong, Professor of Ecology at the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, framed the stakes in stark terms: livestock grazing currently occupies around 77 percent of global agricultural land and sustains billions of people, making a critical assessment of small mammals’ impacts on livestock production urgently needed for both production and biodiversity conservation.

The study focused on a specific ecological mechanism. The team hypothesised that at moderate densities — defined in the study as approximately 200 active burrows per hectare — pikas would benefit yaks by suppressing tall poisonous plants known as Stellera, a genus of forbs that thrives in degraded alpine grasslands and is toxic to livestock. If pikas cut back Stellera, the reasoning went, palatable grasses and sedges would gain space, light, and nutrients, raising both the abundance and the protein content of the forage available to yaks during the growing season from June to August.

To test this idea, the researchers combined observational and experimental approaches. First, they conducted two field surveys to establish how the diets of pikas and yaks differ, and to examine the associations among pika density, Stellera abundance, and yak grazing activity across the landscape. Then they moved to a manipulative field experiment, using fenced enclosures measuring 150 by 150 metres on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau, to isolate the interactive effects of pikas and Stellera on yak body growth and to uncover the mechanisms driving those effects. This two-pronged design allowed the team to move beyond correlation and demonstrate causation in a realistic grazing context.

The surveys revealed a striking dietary asymmetry. Pikas and yaks, despite sharing the same meadows, barely overlap in what they actually eat. Pikas very frequently clipped Stellera plants but did not eat them, feeding mostly on other forbs instead. Yaks, as expected, consumed far greater proportions of grasses and sedges. In other words, the supposed competition between the two herbivores was largely an illusion: the pikas were not eating the yak’s lunch, they were weeding the yak’s garden. By selectively clipping the tall poisonous forbs, pikas reduced Stellera cover by two-thirds, which in turn increased the availability and protein content of the grasses and sedges that yaks depend on.

The consequences for the yaks themselves were measurable and substantial. Co-first author Bingbo Ni, an environmental researcher at the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, explained that by improving the composition of the vegetation, the moderate presence of pikas facilitated weight gains in yaks. In livestock production, where body condition directly determines meat, milk, and economic returns, a natural mechanism that boosts weight gain without any human intervention carries obvious significance for herding communities across the plateau and beyond.

Perhaps even more compelling were the findings on foraging efficiency. The researchers tracked two behavioural metrics: bite rate, the number of bites taken on plants per hour, and the bites–step ratio, the number of bites per step taken while moving through the sward. During the manipulative experiment, when pikas were absent, the yaks’ sedge bite rate and sedge bites per step fell by 32 percent and 46 percent respectively, compared with conditions when pikas were present. Grass bite rate and grass bites per step similarly declined by 29 percent and 43 percent. The team attributed these drops directly to the resurgence of poisonous Stellera in the pikas’ absence, which forced yaks to spend more time and movement searching for acceptable forage among the toxic plants.

Zhong noted that the study is the first to show that maintaining a moderate density of pikas can substantially enhance livestock growth by suppressing Stellera, reconciling long-running debates about the effects of pikas on yak production through changes in vegetation properties. He added that the observations shed light on how small and large mammalian herbivores co-exist in complex ways. The findings carry a broader ecological message: interactions between animals of very different body sizes in shared ecosystems are rarely one-dimensional, and management policies built on the assumption of simple competition may destroy beneficial relationships that were never measured in the first place.

The authors are careful to delineate the limits of their conclusions, and those limits chart a research agenda. Their work examined pika–yak interactions only during the summer, when food resources are most abundant; whether the facilitation weakens or even flips into competition under more stressful conditions, such as autumn or winter when forage becomes limited, remains untested. The study site also sat at approximately 3,200 metres elevation, relatively low by Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau standards, so it is unknown whether similar facilitation occurs at higher elevations where other unpalatable species replace Stellera as the problematic plant. Finally, whether the same relationship holds between pikas and other livestock in the region, such as domestic sheep and goats, has yet to be determined.

Even with those caveats, the implications for rangeland management are far-reaching. Senior author Zhibin Zhang emphasised that because the conclusions rest on both experimental and observational evidence across realistic contexts, they are applicable beyond the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau to rangeland management elsewhere, and the team hopes the insights will inform conversations and future studies concerning biodiversity and ecosystem functioning worldwide. For a species long targeted as a pest, the pika’s rehabilitation carries a cautionary lesson for land managers everywhere: culling programs aimed at small mammals may quietly remove an ecological service — natural weed suppression that fattens livestock — and the true costs of such interventions are only now coming into focus. In the alpine meadows of the world’s highest rangelands, the smallest grazers may be among the livestock industry’s most valuable, and least appreciated, partners.

Subject of Research: Facilitative interactions between plateau pikas and grazing yaks in alpine grassland ecosystems

Article Title: Plateau pikas, long considered pests, can help livestock eat well

Article References: Plateau pikas, long considered pests, can help livestock eat well. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: plateau pika, yak, Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau, rangeland management, Stellera, livestock grazing, ecosystem engineers, foraging efficiency, grassland ecology, small mammals, vegetation composition, eLife

The research team, led by Rojen Singh Thounaojam of Manipur University, spent the entirety of 2018 sampling earthworms and soils at two contrasting forest sites in the Imphal region. Site I was a reserved mixed forest in Imphal West district, while Site II was a community-protected mixed forest in Imphal East. Both sit within a subtropical monsoon climate that delivers an average annual rainfall of 1325.7 millimeters, with a wet season from June to October, a hot summer from March to May, and a cool, dry winter from November to February. The soils at both sites were sandy loam, and the vegetation included familiar subtropical trees such as Lithocarpus dealbatus, Gmelina arborea, Pinus kesiya, and Schima wallichii.

The sampling protocol was deliberately rigorous. Each month, the researchers demarcated six random plots of one square meter at each site, and within each plot they excavated four soil monoliths measuring 25 by 25 by 30 centimeters. Over the year, this yielded 72 quadrats per site, with earthworms extracted by digging and hand-sorting following the standard Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility method. Specimens were preserved in formalin and identified under stereo zoom microscopes using established taxonomic keys. Alongside the biological sampling, the team recorded soil temperature in situ each month, measured pH in soil-water suspensions, and determined moisture content gravimetrically.

What emerged from this year-long effort was a community profile that surprised the researchers. Site I harbored seven earthworm species belonging to six genera and four families, while Site II supported five species in four families. The Megascolecidae family dominated the species lists at both sites. Shannon diversity indices of 1.29 at Site I and 1.17 at Site II indicated modestly higher diversity at the reserved forest. But the headline result concerned the exotic component of the community: at Site I, exotic species made up more than 74 percent of the earthworm community, with P. corethrurus alone accounting for 62.37 percent. At Site II, the single exotic species present, P. corethrurus, constituted 38.65 percent of the community, second only to the native Drawida nepalensis at 45.89 percent.

The ecology of P. corethrurus helps explain its success. First described in 1857 by the German naturalist Fritz Müller from Santa Catarina State in Brazil, and believed to have originated in the Guiana Shield region of South America, the species is now one of the most widely distributed tropical earthworms on Earth. According to the Drilobase database, as of July 2025 it had been recorded in tropical, subtropical, and Mediterranean zones across dozens of countries on four continents. In India, it was first reported from Kerala in 1910, likely introduced through human activity associated with cassava or rubber plantations. It has since spread to nine of India’s fifteen agro-climatic zones and to eight states in Northeast India alone.

Several biological traits make this worm a formidable invader. It tolerates an exceptionally broad range of soil conditions and climates, reproduces continuously with high fecundity and hatching success, develops quickly, and can even reproduce by parthenogenesis, meaning a single individual can found a population without a mate. In the Manipur forests, the species showed remarkable spatial and temporal versatility: it was found throughout the year, in every season, and at soil depths of up to 30 centimeters, whereas most other species were confined to the upper 10 centimeters of soil and many appeared only during the rainy season. Notably, the researchers recorded P. corethrurus active at soil temperatures as low as 15 degrees Celsius, below the previously reported minimum of 17 degrees for other parts of Northeast India.

The statistical analysis reinforced the importance of climate in structuring these communities. Soil moisture and soil temperature showed significant positive correlations with every recorded species at both sites, with correlation coefficients generally ranging from about 0.69 to 0.86, while soil pH was negatively correlated with earthworm abundance. Earthworm populations peaked during the rainy season, when elevated moisture and moderate temperatures create ideal conditions for activity and reproduction. Earthworms breathe through their skin, so moisture is a critical constraint on their distribution, and the optimal soil temperature for the species recorded in this study fell between 20.21 and 24.26 degrees Celsius, within the broader 20 to 30 degree range reported for tropical and subtropical earthworms.

Why does the dominance of an exotic worm in an undisturbed forest matter? Earthworms are ecosystem engineers, and established populations of P. corethrurus have been shown elsewhere to alter soil physical structure, modify biogeochemical processes, and reshape plant and microbial communities. By accelerating leaf litter decomposition and mixing soil in the upper layers, invasive earthworms can strip away the litter layer, increase soil bulk density, and reduce soil carbon content, carbon-to-nitrogen ratios, and cation exchange capacity, ultimately degrading forest soil fertility. The density of P. corethrurus is often inversely correlated with the density of other earthworm species, and previous studies have documented the displacement of native earthworms following the establishment of exotic populations. The Manipur findings suggest a real risk that native species at these sites could decline over time.

Yet the story is not one of inevitable defeat for the natives. The native Drawida nepalensis maintained high population densities even in communities dominated by exotics, and it was the most abundant species at Site II, where natives predominated. A parallel pattern has been reported in pineapple plantations in West Tripura, where the native Drawida assamensis outcompeted P. corethrurus, apparently thanks to superior survival and competitive ability. Endogeic earthworms, which live within the soil rather than on its surface, are also known to be the most resistant ecological group to disturbance. These observations hint that some native lineages may possess the competitive arsenal to coexist with, or even resist, the invader, although the researchers caution that long-term coexistence may ultimately depend on how much habitat modification the exotic species causes.

How the worm reached these protected forests remains a question of pathways rather than capability. Earthworms disperse on their own less than 10 to 15 meters per year, so human-mediated transport is almost certainly responsible. Cocoons and worms can hitchhike in soil on vehicle tires, in potted plants, in streams and surface water, or on birds and mammals. In Manipur specifically, the authors point to a worrying and largely unregulated trend: the booming use of exotic earthworms, particularly Eisenia andrei and Eisenia fetida, for vermicomposting, with little ecological oversight or public awareness of the risks of escape and establishment. The team calls for immediate policy formulation, monitoring protocols, and public education to protect native soil biodiversity. As the invasion of P. corethrurus proceeds even in undisturbed forests, the study stands as a warning that no ecosystem, however pristine, is automatically safe from a determined, parthenogenetic, climate-tolerant invader moving quietly beneath our feet.

Subject of Research: Invasion of protected subtropical forests in Northeast India by the exotic earthworm Pontoscolex corethrurus

Article Title: Assessment of Pontoscolex corethrurus, an exotic earthworm, in contrasting protected subtropical forest habitats in North-East India

Article References: Thounaojam, R. S., Singh, K. B., Singh, T. B., Keisham, S., & Singh, T. B. (2025). Assessment of Pontoscolex corethrurus, an exotic earthworm, in contrasting protected subtropical forest habitats in North-East India. Discover Ecology, 1(1), Article 10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44396-025-00010-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44396-025-00010-z

Keywords: Pontoscolex corethrurus, invasive species, earthworms, soil biodiversity, Manipur, Northeast India, Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot, subtropical forest, soil ecology, ecosystem engineers, vermicomposting, species invasion

The research team set out to fill a gap in what is known about elephant sensory ecology. Earlier work had shown that African elephants can use olfactory cues to assess food, and that they may also respond to leaf colour as an indicator of food quality when choosing between individual plants and patches. What remained unclear was whether elephants rely on visual information about food quantity, such as the size of a tree canopy or the density of its leaves, when making foraging decisions. Answering this required a carefully controlled experimental setup in which every cue except the one being tested could be eliminated.

Peinke and Shrader worked with four semi-tame adult African elephants at a South African facility, conducting a series of visual choice experiments designed to test foraging decisions at two very different spatial scales. Rather than presenting the animals with real vegetation, which would have introduced odours, textures, and nutritional signals that could confound the results, the researchers used abstract visual stimuli. Solid black circles were printed on canvases in two sizes, one metre and 0.7 metres in diameter, to represent differences in the apparent size of a food source, analogous to a larger or smaller tree canopy.

To simulate differences in leaf density, the team created a second set of stimuli: black and white circles printed on canvases that differed in the proportion of black shading, at 25 percent, 50 percent, and 100 percent. A canvas that was fully black would appear denser, much like a tree with thick foliage, while a sparsely shaded canvas would resemble a tree with thinner leaf cover. Before the actual experiments began, the elephants were trained to associate the larger circle and the greater densities with a reward, ensuring that each animal understood the task before any formal testing took place.

Once training was complete, the elephants faced paired choices between canvases that differed in size or in density. The critical variable was distance. The researchers tested the animals at a series of increasing distances: 5 metres, 10 metres, 20 metres, 40 metres, and finally 80 metres from the paired stimuli. This gradient allowed the team to pinpoint exactly how far away an elephant can still extract meaningful visual information about the quantity of food in front of it, a question that had never been experimentally resolved for this species.

The results were striking in their clarity. The elephants successfully discriminated between circles of different sizes and between canvases of different densities, but only up to a distance of 5 metres. Beyond that threshold, at 10, 20, 40, and 80 metres, their performance no longer indicated that they could reliably tell the more abundant option from the less abundant one. In other words, the visual world of a foraging elephant, at least with respect to judging food quantity, effectively ends at about five metres, roughly the length of two adult elephants standing nose to tail.

This five-metre boundary has important implications for how scientists interpret elephant foraging behaviour at different scales. Within a patch of vegetation, where individual trees and shrubs sit close together, an elephant moving through the area can visually assess the size of a canopy and the density of its leaves before committing to feed. At this fine scale, the study suggests, foraging decisions are likely shaped by a combination of visual and olfactory cues working together. An elephant might see that one bush is larger and denser while simultaneously smelling whether its leaves are palatable, integrating both channels of information to choose the best meal.

Between patches, however, the picture changes dramatically. When an elephant stands at one feeding site and contemplates travelling to another tens or hundreds of metres away, visual information about food quantity is simply unavailable. A distant tree canopy cannot be reliably judged by eye at those ranges, according to the experimental results. This means that long-distance foraging decisions, the choices that determine where elephants travel across a landscape and which areas they impact most heavily, must depend primarily on other senses, with smell being the leading candidate given previous findings on elephant olfactory abilities.

The ecological consequences of this sensory split could be substantial. African elephants are widely described as ecosystem engineers because their feeding behaviour transforms habitats, opening woodlands, dispersing seeds, and creating pathways used by other species. If visual assessment of food quantity operates only within patches, then the fine-grained pattern of which individual trees an elephant strips or pushes over may reflect a blend of sight and smell, while the broader pattern of landscape use reflects olfactory navigation over much longer distances. Understanding this division of sensory labour helps explain both the spatial and temporal dimensions of elephant impact on savanna ecosystems.

The study also demonstrates the value of abstract experimental stimuli in animal cognition research. By replacing real food with printed canvases, Peinke and Shrader isolated the visual variable with a precision that would be impossible in a natural setting, where smell, taste, and prior experience all compete for the animal’s attention. The work, which was funded by the National Research Foundation of South Africa and the Rory Hensman Conservation Research Unit and approved by the University of Pretoria’s Animal Ethics committee, adds a quantitative edge to a growing body of research on how large herbivores perceive their world. For an animal whose decisions can redraw the map of an entire ecosystem, knowing that its visual assessment of food quantity reaches only five metres is a small detail with large consequences.

Subject of Research: Visual assessment of food quantity in African elephant foraging decisions

Article Title: Do African elephants use visual cues of food quantity when making foraging decisions?

Article References: Peinke, C. L., & Shrader, A. M. (2026). Do African elephants use visual cues of food quantity when making foraging decisions?. Animal Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-026-02111-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10071-026-02111-y

Keywords: African elephants, Loxodonta africana, foraging decisions, animal cognition, visual cues, olfactory cues, leaf density, canopy size, choice experiments, herbivory, ecosystem engineers, sensory ecology

Indicator species have long been a cornerstone of applied ecology. Lichens betray air quality, dragonflies grade the health of wetlands, and butterflies track the structural integrity of meadows. In temperate forests, woodpeckers are the gold standard: their presence reflects dead wood, old trees and the overall naturalness of a stand. What remained untested until now was whether this diagnostic power survives outside the forest, in the scattered, human-planted groves that punctuate farmland. Jerzy and Monika Michalczuk of the University of Rzeszów set out to answer that question with a rigorous field campaign conducted during the spring of 2018.

The parks themselves tell a story of rural heritage. Thirty-seven of the 71 sites were historic manor parks whose tree stands exceed one hundred years of age, averaging 3.19 hectares of woodland each. The remaining 34 were younger non-manor parks established roughly 50 to 70 years ago, with wooded areas averaging just 0.87 hectares. Lime, Norway maple, sycamore maple and European ash dominated the canopies, while oaks, alders, birches and horse chestnuts appeared less frequently. Many parks now serve public functions, hosting schools, health centres or cultural facilities, yet their ageing trees retain the decaying wood and complex structure that vanish from the surrounding farmland.

Detecting woodpeckers in these fragments demanded patience and acoustic trickery. Each park was visited four times between early March and the end of April, the peak of territorial activity. The researchers broadcast recorded territorial calls and drumming of the Lesser Spotted, Middle Spotted, Syrian, Green and Black woodpeckers from playback points spaced 200 to 350 metres apart. Notably, they deliberately excluded vocalisations of the Great Spotted Woodpecker and Grey-headed Woodpecker, because these species reliably respond to the calls of their close relatives, the Syrian and Green woodpeckers respectively. A park was considered occupied when a nesting cavity was found or territorial birds were observed on at least two of four visits.

Six woodpecker species were recorded across the network, with woodpeckers present in 58 percent of the parks. The Great Spotted Woodpecker proved the most widespread, occupying 35 percent of sites, followed by the Syrian Woodpecker at 27 percent. Most parks hosted a single woodpecker species, and only one site could boast four. Separately, the team ran standardised ten-minute point counts in the most densely wooded core of each park, repeated twice during the breeding season, and documented 52 breeding or probably breeding bird species. The Chaffinch appeared in every single park, while blackbirds, great tits, blackcaps, goldfinches and icterine warblers graced more than 70 percent of the sites.

The statistical verdict was unambiguous. Parks with woodpeckers held significantly richer bird assemblages across every ecological group tested: all species, tree-associated species, forest species, cavity nesters and forest cavity nesters. Total richness averaged 14.1 species in woodpecker parks against 11.8 in woodpecker-free ones. Even more striking, the presence of the Great Spotted Woodpecker alone pushed mean total richness to 15.7 species, compared with just 11.7 where it was absent, with cavity-nesting and forest cavity-nesting birds showing particularly sharp gains. The Syrian Woodpecker, by contrast, showed no significant association with avian richness, suggesting it marks something quite different: highly transformed, synanthropic habitats rather than ecological quality.

Generalised linear models with a Poisson distribution quantified the signal with precision. Each additional woodpecker species in a park was associated with a 12 percent increase in total bird species richness, a 14 percent increase for tree-stand birds and 13 percent for forest birds. For cavity nesters the effect jumped to 28 percent, and for forest cavity nesters to 34 percent, an incidence rate ratio of 1.34 that underscores the woodpecker’s role as an ecosystem engineer. By excavating nesting cavities, woodpeckers create housing that secondary cavity-nesters such as tits, nuthatches and flycatchers cannot make for themselves, a service that becomes critical in young stands where natural holes are scarce.

The community composition shifted alongside the richness numbers. Five species occurred significantly more often in woodpecker-occupied parks, including the Eurasian nuthatch and Song Thrush, both tied to mature, minimally altered tree stands. Only the Eurasian Collared Dove, a classic synanthropic species of open and built-up habitats, was more frequent in woodpecker-free parks, revealing that parks without these birds skew toward eurytopic and human-tolerant species. Manor parks outperformed younger non-manor parks on every richness measure, hosting means of 14.7 versus 11.4 total species, likely because their larger, older stands provide more dead wood, larger trunks and the vertical complexity that forest specialists demand, although the authors caution that park size and type could not be fully disentangled.

The researchers are careful to frame the relationship honestly. A so-called habitat filter may explain much of the pattern: woodpeckers and other forest birds select similar structural features, so they co-occur without woodpeckers necessarily causing the richness. Yet even under this interpretation, the diagnostic value holds. And the practical implications reach well beyond birds, because woodpecker presence correlates with bats, saproxylic beetles and wood-inhabiting fungi that share the same cavity- and deadwood-rich microhabitats. A morning of woodpecker playback in a country park can thus substitute for weeks of intensive multi-taxon inventories, a decisive advantage in landscapes outside protected areas where ecological monitoring is rare.

The study’s conservation message is quietly radical. Small, anthropogenic groves that most land managers treat as ornamental amenities are in fact functioning as biodiversity microrefugia, and their importance is set to grow as farmland trees continue to disappear across Central Europe. The authors recommend embedding woodpecker monitoring into local and regional conservation strategies and rural green-space planning, with the Great Spotted Woodpecker serving as the single most informative reference species for rapid assessments. Preserving old trees, deadwood and continuity in these parks, they argue, may prove among the most cost-effective ways to sustain forest biodiversity in deforested agricultural regions, turning village parks into the last strongholds of woodland life.

Subject of Research: Woodpeckers as indicator species for bird richness in non-forest tree stands of rural parks in an agricultural landscape

Article Title: Woodpeckers as Indicators of Avian Richness in Non-forest Tree Stands: A Case Study of Rural Parks in the Agricultural Landscape of SE Poland

Article References: Michalczuk, J., & Michalczuk, M. (2026). Woodpeckers as Indicators of Avian Richness in Non-forest Tree Stands: A Case Study of Rural Parks in the Agricultural Landscape of SE Poland. Environmental Management, 76(10), Article 319. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-026-02597-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s00267-026-02597-9

Keywords: woodpeckers, indicator species, biodiversity, cavity-nesting birds, rural parks, agricultural landscape, species richness, bioindicators, conservation, Poland, ecosystem engineers, manor parks

The recognition arrives at a moment when soil ecology is moving from the margins of biology toward the center of conversations about climate, food security and biodiversity loss. Soils are among the most species-rich habitats on Earth, and the organisms that inhabit them drive processes on which nearly all terrestrial life depends. Ashwood’s book takes readers on a vertical descent through the soil profile, beginning at the surface with plant litter and ending in the deep subsoil, introducing along the way what he describes as some of the world’s strangest inhabitants and the essential roles they play in nutrient cycling, agriculture and carbon storage.

Ashwood is a soil scientist with a research background in earthworm ecology who quickly broadened his interests to encompass the full diversity of soil invertebrates. He is also a passionate macrophotographer, and that visual obsession with the hidden majority of life runs through his approach to writing. In response to the award, he said he really enjoys science communication, telling anyone who will listen about the wonders of life belowground, often with the help of his macrophotography, and that this strong desire to pass on his love of soil ecology to as broad an audience as possible is what ultimately led him to write the book.

The judging panel emphasized the book’s success in making an invisible world legible. Hefin Jones, one of the judges for the prize, described it as an engaging and accessible exploration of soil biodiversity and its importance to ecosystems and human society, noting that its major strength lies in Ashwood’s ability to communicate complex ecological processes through vivid descriptions of the largely unseen organisms that sustain soils. Fellow judge Ken Thompson said there are jaw-dropping facts on every page and that Ashwood’s narrative is greatly enlivened by his personal encounters with soil life, adventures that lend the text an immediacy and excitement making it an entertaining read.

Understanding why a popular book on soil deserves ecology’s book prize requires appreciating just how much is happening beneath a single step. A handful of grassland soil can contain billions of microorganisms and hundreds of invertebrate species spanning bacteria, fungi, protists, nematodes, mites, springtails, enchytraeids, earthworms and insect larvae. These organisms form a food web that decomposes organic matter, restructures mineral particles, regulates the flow of water and gases, and determines how much carbon is locked away versus released back to the atmosphere. Decomposition alone, the sequential breakdown of dead plant material by fungi, bacteria and their invertebrate grazers, is the process that returns nutrients locked in litter to forms that plant roots can absorb, effectively powering every forest and grassland on the planet.

The structural engineers of this underworld are the ecosystem engineers, a term most famously associated with earthworms, the group in which Ashwood began his research career. Earthworms ingest mineral soil and organic debris, mix them in their guts, and excrete casts that alter soil aggregation, porosity and microbial activity. Their burrows create macropores that channel rainfall into the profile, reducing surface runoff and erosion while giving roots low-resistance pathways to depth. Different ecological groups of earthworms occupy distinct niches, from litter-dwelling surface species to deep-burrowing anecic forms that pull organic matter down into permanent vertical burrows, and their combined activity can transform the physical architecture of an entire soil profile within years.

Below the reach of most earthworm activity lies the subsoil, the zone Ashwood’s book treats as its final destination. Subsoils are typically lower in organic matter and oxygen but enormously important as reservoirs of mineral nutrients, as sites of long-term carbon stabilization, and as habitats for specialized microbial communities adapted to scarcity. Carbon that reaches depth through leaching, root death or the transport of fine particulate organic matter can persist for centuries to millennia when protected on mineral surfaces or inside stable aggregates. The organisms that govern whether carbon is respired to carbon dioxide or stabilized in place are therefore directly implicated in one of the central feedbacks of the global climate system, which is a large part of why soil biodiversity has become a priority for researchers and policymakers alike.

Agriculture sits at the sharp end of these processes. Soil fauna and microbes underpin the fertility of farmland by mineralizing nitrogen and phosphorus, suppressing pathogens, improving water-holding capacity and building the aggregate structure that resists compaction. Intensive tillage, monoculture and agrochemical pressure can simplify belowground communities, and a growing body of research links that simplification to declining soil health. Books that translate this science for a general audience perform a function that technical literature cannot, building the public understanding and political will needed to treat soil as a living resource rather than an inert growing medium. The Marsh Ecology Book of the Year has a history of rewarding exactly this kind of influential communication, and the judges’ comments suggest Ashwood’s combination of rigorous content and personal narrative continues that tradition.

The prize itself reflects an unusual and durable model of partnership between a learned society and a charitable funder. The Marsh Charitable Trust supports a wide range of recognition schemes across conservation, culture and the arts, and 2026 marks the 30th anniversary of its collaboration with the British Ecological Society. Awarded to the book judged to have exerted the greatest influence on the science of ecology in any two-year period, the Marsh Ecology Book of the Year has become one of the most visible honors for ecological writing, and The World Beneath Our Feet is its 21st winner. Ashwood will receive the award in person during a ceremony at the BES Annual Meeting, which runs from 14 to 17 December 2026 in Birmingham and will bring together more than 1,500 ecologists to discuss the latest advances across the whole discipline.

For a field whose subject matter is literally underfoot, soil ecology has long struggled for visibility against charismatic megafauna and distant ecosystems, which makes this award more than a ceremonial pat on the back. It signals that the scientific community regards the communication of belowground biology as central to ecology’s public mission at a time when soils are being lost to erosion, degradation and sealing far faster than they can form. Ashwood’s descent from litter layer to subsoil offers readers a narrative structure for a world they will never see with the naked eye, populated by organisms whose quiet work cycles nutrients, feeds crops and stores carbon. If the judges are right that jaw-dropping facts crowd every page, the book may do for the soil what earlier classics of nature writing did for oceans and rainforests: make the invisible both vivid and worth fighting for. The World Beneath Our Feet is published by Hodder Press, with cover design by Holly Ovenden.

Subject of Research: Soil ecology and the recognition of popular science writing on soil biodiversity through the British Ecological Society's Marsh Ecology Book of the Year award

Article Title: The World Beneath Our Feet wins the British Ecological Society Book of the Year 2026

Article References: The World Beneath Our Feet wins the British Ecological Society Book of the Year 2026. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: soil ecology, soil biodiversity, British Ecological Society, Marsh Ecology Book of the Year, Frank Ashwood, earthworms, nutrient cycling, carbon storage, decomposition, ecosystem engineers, science communication, subsoil

The research, led by Britt van Zelst of Wageningen University & Research and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, together with colleagues from Wageningen, Radboud University, and NIOO-KNAW, responds to a stubborn problem in wildlife management. Human–wildlife conflicts are rarely just about animals. Instead, they reflect the diverse and often competing ways people perceive, value, and relate to nature. Some see beavers as intrinsically valuable creatures with a right to exist; others prize them as providers of flood control, water storage, and water purification; still others experience them primarily as burrowers undermining dikes or dammers flooding farm fields. Because these underlying values frequently go unspoken, disagreements harden into conflicts that damage both people and wildlife.

The Beaver Futures Framework draws directly on the Nature Futures Framework developed under the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, which distinguishes three positive value perspectives on nature: nature for nature, nature for society, and nature as culture. The BFF adapts these into four beaver-specific corners. ‘Beavers for Nature’ captures the intrinsic value of beavers, both for their own sake and as keystone ecosystem engineers whose dams, lodges, channels, and burrows create wetlands that shelter plants, amphibians, fish, birds, and mammals. ‘Beavers for Society’ emphasizes instrumental benefits such as flood mitigation, drought buffering, carbon storage, and improved water quality. ‘Beavers as Culture’ highlights relational values, the meaningful connections people forge through direct encounters with wildlife. Crucially, the fourth corner, ‘Beavers against Society,’ acknowledges the negative side: burrows destabilizing dikes, dams blocking culverts, and flooded croplands and timber stands.

Together these four perspectives form a diamond-shaped space defined by two axes. The polarisation axis runs between instrumental benefits and instrumental damages, revealing whether stakeholders see beavers as net assets, net liabilities, or something in between. The interaction axis runs between intrinsic and relational values, expressing how much direct engagement between people and beavers stakeholders actually want. The researchers emphasize that the corners represent extreme interpretations rather than mutually exclusive categories; the space between them allows for the nuance and overlap that characterize real human attitudes. This design makes the framework immediately usable in participatory settings, from workshops to surveys and focus groups, without requiring technical training in environmental valuation.

To test the framework, the team deployed it during a 45-minute workshop at the symposium ‘Burrowing in Dikes: Water Safety and Ecology,’ held on 28 June 2023 at Burgers’ Zoo in Arnhem. The event was organized by STOWA, the Foundation for Applied Water Research; Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management; and the Kenniscentrum Beaver. The 72 participants who joined the workshop represented precisely the professionals who design, execute, and regulate beaver management in the Netherlands: water authority staff, managers of dikes, roads, and railways, nature conservationists, policymakers, and licensing officials. Using the interactive tool Mentimeter, participants first recorded their spontaneous first association with beavers, then identified values for each framework perspective, positioned themselves within the diamond, and finally chose a preferred future from four extreme scenarios.

The results yielded 288 beaver values, of which 166 were unique, spanning both positive and negative dimensions. Participants’ self-placements gravitated on average toward the ‘Beavers for Nature’ corner, suggesting a strong emphasis on beavers’ intrinsic worth among this professional community. On the polarisation axis, most clustered near the center, recognizing both benefits and drawbacks and struggling to weigh them against each other, a finding the authors say underscores the limits of conventional cost-benefit analysis for diffuse, long-term societal gains pitted against localized, immediate damages. When asked to select an ideal future, 65 percent chose local or regional zonation of beaver management, 28 percent preferred beavers everywhere, 7 percent wanted beavers confined to natural areas, and not a single participant chose a future without beavers.

The statistical analysis, corrected for scoring bias through a permutation-based approach with 9,999 permutations, revealed something subtler. While the overall distance between participants’ first associations and their self-placements was only marginally significant, the axis-specific test found a significant shift along the interaction axis, with self-placements indicating a preference for less interaction with beavers than initial associations suggested. The researchers interpret this convergence as evidence of mutual understanding developing in real time: as participants reflected on values expressed by others, their viewpoints gained nuance. The framework, in other words, did not merely collect opinions; it changed how people thought about the collective space of opinions, revealing shared ground and divergence alike.

The stakes in the Netherlands are unusually high. About one third of the country lies below sea level, and its flood defences are lifelines. Beavers digging burrows into dikes, levees, roads, and bridges pose a genuine public safety risk, while their dams obstruct drainage systems and complicate water management. Conflicts involving so-called problem-beavers have increased significantly over the past decade, and as natural habitats reach carrying capacity, beavers are settling in agricultural and even urban environments. Current management tends to be reactive and short-term, the authors note, because risks are hard to predict and measures are costly, leaving the debate locked in a repetitive argument over beaver pros and cons while the population continues to grow.

What makes the Beaver Futures Framework potentially transformative is its refusal to pick a side. By explicitly legitimizing negative associations alongside positive ones, it allows every stakeholder into the conversation, from flood-safety engineers to rewilding advocates, and prevents any single perspective from dominating. The authors stress that acknowledging damages does not undermine conservation; rather, it supports more realistic pathways of co-adaptation rather than conflict elimination. And because its structure is generic, the framework can be readily adapted to other contentious species, habitats, and ecosystems, from large carnivores returning to Europe’s crowded landscapes to any wildlife whose comeback forces societies to negotiate what living together actually means. In an era when conservation successes keep bringing wildlife back into human-dominated terrain, tools that make plural values visible may prove as important as the ecology itself. The Dutch beaver, once extinct and now divisive, has become the test case for that proposition.

Subject of Research: Stakeholder value perspectives on future human–beaver coexistence in the Netherlands

Article Title: The Beaver Futures Framework: Stakeholder value perspectives on future human–beaver coexistence

Article References: The Beaver Futures Framework: Stakeholder value perspectives on future human–beaver coexistence. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-026-02476-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s13280-026-02476-x

Keywords: beavers, human–wildlife coexistence, Beaver Futures Framework, Nature Futures Framework, ecosystem engineers, human–wildlife conflict, nature valuation, Netherlands, stakeholder participation, ecosystem services and disservices, rewilding, conservation

Mesophotic ecosystems occupy the dimly lit zone of the ocean, roughly between 30 and 150 meters in many subtropical regions, where light is too scarce for most photosynthetic reef builders but where life still flourishes in remarkable abundance. In many oceanic archipelagos, these communities are dominated by black corals of the order Antipatharia, a group of more than 300 species characterized by proteinaceous skeletons, an almost universal lack of symbiotic algae, slow growth and long lifespans. Whip black corals are a distinctive form within this group: they grow as a single unbranched stem that can extend several meters in length, spiraling and swaying in areas of strong current. Where they aggregate in high densities, they form what ecologists call Marine Animal Forests, three-dimensional structures built by suspension-feeding animals that alter water flow, trap sediments, generate shade and create an architectural complexity comparable to that of terrestrial forests.

These animal forests are far more than scenic curiosities. Scientists regard them as biodiversity hotspots, nursery grounds and refugia for a vast array of associated species, from crustaceans to fish, and as key regulators of biogeochemical cycling in the sediments beneath their canopies. Yet because mesophotic depths require expensive equipment to explore, black coral forests remain among the least studied and least protected ecosystems on the planet. The new research, conducted as part of the Ocean Citizen project, a marine restoration initiative funded through Horizon Europe, set out to map benthic habitats along a stretch of Tenerife’s rocky coastline between La Arena and the southern end of San Juan Beach, and in doing so captured an unexpected ecological relationship on camera.

Between June 16 and 25, 2024, the research team, which included scientists from the University of Salento in Italy and the non-profit organization Oceana, deployed a remotely operated vehicle to survey the seabed. The vehicle, a Sibiu Pro model from Nido Robotics rated to 300 meters, was equipped with 4K cameras, LED lights and eight thrusters. It crawled along the bottom at an average speed of just 0.2 to 0.3 knots, its camera field of view spanning roughly 185 centimeters. Of 61 planned dives, 55 were completed, covering a total surveyed area of 31,217 square meters at depths ranging from 7 to 157 meters. The resulting footage was cut into 1,502 one-minute sample units, yielding 26 hours of analyzable video from which the team identified 169 distinct taxa.

The statistical analysis revealed a striking pattern. The bearded fireworm co-occurred with whip coral forests in 40 percent of the transects, appearing in the algae at the base of the black corals or in their immediate vicinity. Peak abundances of both the fireworm and the two whip coral species studied, Stichopathes gracilis and Stichopathes setacea, fell between 80 and 120 meters depth. Pearson correlation analysis confirmed that the association was not coincidental: the relationship between fireworm occurrence and S. gracilis produced a correlation coefficient of 0.895 with a p-value of 0.0027, a strong and statistically significant positive association, while the relationship with S. setacea yielded a coefficient of 0.715 with a p-value of 0.0464, also significant. All three species showed unimodal distributions across depth, peaking in the 80 to 100 meter range, with polynomial trendlines suggesting a partial overlap of their ecological niches.

Understanding why a fireworm would seek out a black coral forest requires appreciating the peculiar biology of both partners. Hermodice carunculata is a large amphinomid polychaete armed with brittle, venom-filled bristles that deliver painful stings to anything that handles it. It is an omnivorous, opportunistic feeder and scavenger, consuming decaying organic matter, and preying on corals, sea urchins, sponges and ascidians. It can also act as a reservoir for coral pathogens. Crucially, it is thermophilic and highly tolerant of environmental variation, coping with swings in temperature, salinity and oxygen. As ocean waters warm, the species has been expanding northward through the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, attacking fish caught in nets, degrading catch quality and injuring fishers, swimmers and divers. In shallow water it favors structurally complex habitats, hiding in rock cavities and algal canopies to evade predators and reduce exposure to current and light.

The whip corals, meanwhile, are ecosystem engineers of a very particular kind. Antipatharians require strong currents to feed, extending their polyp-covered stems into the flow to capture passing particles. Those same currents that sustain the forest also create a hostile hydrodynamic environment for a soft-bodied worm. The study’s authors propose a dual function for the forest: the whip corals are a product of strong currents, yet their dense stems and algal understory simultaneously provide shelter from the current’s sheer force. At the base of the corals, accumulated algae offer both refuge and a foraging ground rich in decaying organic matter, precisely the kind of organically enriched, microbially active habitat to which fireworms are known to be attracted. In essence, the fireworm appears to exploit a contradiction engineered by the corals themselves, benefiting from the very conditions that made the forest possible while escaping the conditions that make it formidable.

Perhaps the most consequential observation is what the researchers did not see. In all the analyzed video, fireworms were detected only at the base of the coral colonies, never climbing the stems. No feeding or predation behavior against the whip corals was recorded, and the coral populations appeared healthy, with no signs of damage or necrosis, despite their high density throughout the study area. This stands in contrast to recent reports of fireworms actively feeding on branching black coral colonies, concentrating on the colony tips. The evidence from Tenerife instead suggests a commensal or opportunistic relationship, in which the fireworm uses the forest as shelter and a feeding ground on associated algae and detritus rather than as prey, although the authors caution that the possibility of occasional coral consumption cannot be ruled out without further observation.

The finding carries implications well beyond the natural history of a single worm. The detection of H. carunculata at mesophotic depths extends its known vertical distribution, echoing a similar recent discovery in the same study area in which the green alga Caulerpa prolifera was recorded down to 80 meters, far deeper than previously acknowledged. As climate change pushes thermophilic, adaptable species into new depths and latitudes, understanding which habitats will harbor them, and whether vulnerable ecosystem engineers such as black corals will face new pressures, becomes a matter of urgency. Black corals are already listed in Appendix II of CITES, which regulates their international trade, and are used as indicator species for ecosystem vulnerability by regional fishery management organizations.

The authors argue that expanding knowledge of these deep, dim ecosystems is essential for conservation and for effective monitoring guidelines. Marine Animal Forests are among the most extensively distributed ecosystems on Earth, spanning from shallow mussel beds to deep cold-water coral habitats in both tropical and polar seas, yet the mesophotic black coral forests remain largely unmapped and unprotected. Determining the foraging advantages, potential risks and patterns of association between vagile species like the fireworm and the ecosystem engineers that structure these communities is, the study concludes, a necessary step toward safeguarding them. For now, the image of a venomous worm coiled in the algal shadows at the foot of a swaying black coral whip serves as a reminder that the ocean’s twilight zone is neither empty nor simple, and that its most surprising residents are only now coming into view.

Subject of Research: Co-occurrence of the bearded fireworm Hermodice carunculata with whip black coral forests in mesophotic ecosystems off Tenerife, Spain

Article Title: Co-occurrence of Hermodice carunculata (Polychaeta, Annelida) and Stichopathes spp. (Hexacorallia, Cnidaria) off Punta Blanca (SW Tenerife, Spain)

Article References: Fraissinet, S., Aguilar, R., Blanco, J., Arduini, D., Anglano, M., & Rossi, S. (2026). Co-occurrence of Hermodice carunculata (Polychaeta, Annelida) and Stichopathes spp. (Hexacorallia, Cnidaria) off Punta Blanca (SW Tenerife, Spain). Discover Conservation, 3(1), Article 23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44353-026-00092-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44353-026-00092-0

Keywords: Hermodice carunculata, bearded fireworm, Stichopathes, black corals, mesophotic ecosystems, Marine Animal Forests, Tenerife, Canary Islands, ROV survey, biodiversity hotspots, ecosystem engineers, climate change

The headline finding is a stark contrast between scale and knowledge. Mauritius commands an Exclusive Economic Zone of roughly 2.3 million square kilometers and depends heavily on marine resources for food security and economic development. Yet while the island’s corals, fishes, and seagrasses have received sustained research attention, its crustaceans have not. No recent comprehensive inventory or checklist exists. The most detailed records date back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when naturalists such as H. Milne-Edwards and E. J. Miers described species from what was then known as L’Île de France. Paul Carié’s early twentieth-century work documented 147 decapod species across stomatopods, anomurans, macrurans, and brachyurans, laying a foundation that subsequent researchers have struggled to update.

The review compiles records from 61 crustacean families in Mauritius, with the crab families Xanthidae and Portunidae, the spider crabs of Epialtidae, and the hermit crabs of Diogenidae among the most frequently reported. But the authors caution that this apparent diversity should be interpreted carefully. Many records come from historical surveys whose species names and classifications may no longer align with modern taxonomy, and older literature remains incompletely digitized. Research effort has also been heavily skewed: from the late twentieth century onward, work focused largely on peracarid crustaceans, particularly amphipods and isopods. Christine Appadoo and Derek Steele’s 1998 study recorded 69 gammaridean amphipod species, including numerous new records and undescribed taxa, and later work by Guerra-García on caprellids and by other teams on isopods and hermit crabs added new species and Western Indian Ocean records.

Recent decades have seen only sporadic contributions, such as investigations of sponge-associated crustaceans, the rediscovery of the sponge crab Cryptodromia fallax, and the description of the lobster Enoplometopus holthuisi. The authors argue that the existing literature is better viewed as a historical baseline than a faithful snapshot of current diversity. They call for an updated checklist incorporating verified taxonomy, recent field surveys, molecular identification, and detailed distributional data, along with a reference library of DNA barcodes deposited in public databases such as NCBI and BOLD to support future biodiversity studies and detect whether historically reported species still persist.

Why does this gap matter so much? Globally, crustaceans are among the most functionally important animals in the ocean. They occupy nearly every trophic position, serving as primary consumers, detritivores, predators, and prey. Krill dominate the diets of mobulid rays, calanoid copepods sustain certain jellyfish, and the swimming crab Charybdis smithii feeds yellowfin tuna and pygmy sperm whales. In Mauritius, crustaceans have been reported as the dominant prey of albacore tuna, which uses Mauritian waters as a spawning ground, and decapods have turned up in the stomachs of apex predators from Mauritian and Réunion waters. Predators as large as gray whales track the abundance of benthic crustacean prey, meaning that shifts in crustacean populations can ripple through entire food webs and reshape the distribution of commercially vital fish stocks.

Crustaceans are also the ocean’s cleanup crew and its engineers. As scavengers, they process dead organic matter and can, in some ecosystems, break down up to 75 percent of available plant-derived organic material, with amphipods proving especially dominant from coastal shallows to hydrothermal vents. Burrowing thalassinidean crustaceans are considered among the most effective marine bioengineers: their bioturbation redistributes sediments and nutrients, enhances oxygenation, and stimulates microbial activity and nitrogen cycling. Evidence of these functions in Mauritius is thin but suggestive—crab burrow abundance has been used as an indicator of ecosystem recovery in the island’s mangrove forests—but the broader role of crustaceans in Mauritian nutrient cycling and sediment dynamics remains essentially unstudied.

The review also highlights the striking symbiotic lives of crustaceans, from obligate coral-dwelling trapeziid crabs that defend their pocilloporid hosts against corallivores, to coral gall crabs, to elaborate triple symbioses in which a goby, a pistol shrimp, and a porcellanid crab share a single burrow to mutual benefit. In Mauritius, however, documented symbioses are limited to scattered observations such as crabs inhabiting sponges and barnacle associations, leaving a rich field of research essentially untouched. Economically, the picture is equally lopsided. Fisheries and aquaculture contribute roughly 10.3 percent of Mauritius’s GDP excluding tourism and employ up to 10,000 people, yet in 2023 the country exported only about USD 187,000 worth of crustaceans while importing USD 16.2 million, mainly from India, Madagascar, and Vietnam—a trade imbalance that exposes the island to global price shocks and signals untapped potential for local production, aquaculture, and blue-economy growth.

Then there is chitin. Extracted from crustacean shells and processing waste, chitin and its derivative chitosan are finding applications across medicine, agriculture, and environmental technology: wound dressings and tissue-engineering scaffolds, antimicrobial and anticancer materials, plant-defense biostimulants and biopesticides, and adsorbents that strip heavy metals and arsenic from water. Crustaceans themselves serve as bioindicators, accumulating heavy metals, microplastics, and nanoplastics in ways that reveal ecosystem contamination. A systematic review has even identified Mauritius among the African countries with the highest reported use of marine animals, including crustaceans, in traditional medicine. Yet the biotechnological and pharmaceutical potential of Mauritian crustaceans remains almost entirely unexplored.

Climate change looms over all of it. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has climbed from about 278 ppm pre-industrially to over 421 ppm by 2023, driving ocean acidification projected to lower global pH by roughly 0.4 units by 2100. The Indian Ocean warmed by approximately 0.7 degrees Celsius between 1982 and 2021, faster than other basins. These stressors act on crustaceans at every level, from DNA repair and protein synthesis to haemolymph chemistry, immune function, molting, calcification, reproduction, and behavior. Flic en Flac lagoon offers site-specific warning signs: maximum sea surface temperatures rose from 29 degrees Celsius in 2000–2001 to 31 degrees by 2017–2019, while pH has become increasingly variable. Meanwhile, hard and soft coral cover in parts of Mauritius declined by roughly 40 and 83 percent respectively between 2004 and 2019, and lagoon sponges declined by up to 40.2 percent—collapses that threaten the habitat-dependent and symbiotic crustaceans relying on these structures.

Responses to acidification vary widely among species and over time. Crustaceans may tolerate acidification better than some calcifiers because their exoskeletons are largely calcite-based and rely on bicarbonate, but chronic exposure has been linked to reduced claw hardness, exoskeletal thinning in king crabs, altered mineral composition in shrimps, and delayed post-moult hardening. Behavioral changes add another layer of vulnerability: warming can push shrimps to forage recklessly in the presence of predators, acidification impairs mud crab foraging, and combined stressors disrupt the acoustic signaling of snapping shrimps. Warming and hypoxia also reshape disease dynamics, potentially raising infection risks in both wild populations and future aquaculture operations. The review’s authors are explicit about what comes next: Mauritius needs updated biodiversity inventories, integrative taxonomic and molecular research, long-term monitoring across coral reefs, seagrass meadows, and mangroves, and targeted multi-stressor studies of climate impacts. Without that effort, declines among poorly known, endemic, or economically important crustaceans could unfold silently, invisible beneath waters the nation depends upon.

Subject of Research: Marine crustacean biodiversity and climate-change vulnerability in Mauritius

Article Title: Current knowledge of marine crustaceans in Mauritius and their global importance in a changing climate

Article References: Bhuvaneshwaree, S., Nadeem, N., Sunita, F., & Mandić, J. (2026). Current knowledge of marine crustaceans in Mauritius and their global importance in a changing climate. Discover Oceans, 3(1), Article 61. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44289-026-00171-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44289-026-00171-z

Keywords: marine crustaceans, Mauritius, biodiversity, climate change, ocean acidification, ocean warming, Malacostraca, Decapoda, chitin, fisheries, ecosystem engineers, Indian Ocean