Spring is the season of blooming flowers and buzzing bees.

It’s also the time of year when birds are breeding and raising fluffy little chicks. Between September and November these baby birds, also known as fledglings, learn to fly and eventually leave the nest.

You may well have encountered one of these bedraggled, slightly confused birds on a neighbourhood stroll – perhaps a magpie lark, red wattlebird or willie wagtail.

You might instinctively try to rescue it, but this may do more harm than good.

What is fledgling season?

In Australia, peak bird breeding typically falls between September and November. This is when food is most plentiful, making it easier for busy bird parents to feed their chicks.

We are now in fledgling season, the time when young birds leave the nest to learn to fly and forage. As spring rolls into summer, chicks of all species start to spread their wings. But many seem to start this journey before they’ve passed all their flying tests. Fledgling birds are like teenagers: they’re allowed to be out by themselves but still depend on mum and dad to provide meals and stay close by.

Fledgling birds have plumage that looks similar to adult birds. But they often have the odd fluffy patch of feathers and look a bit untidy. Much like pimply faced teenagers, this in-between stage is a natural part of bird development. When it comes to flying, fledgling birds generally have enough adult feathers to get off the ground but just need more practice.

The dangers of ‘bird-napping’

People often think fledgling birds need rescuing because they can pop up in unusual places – in front of your driveway or balancing on short shrubs, for instance. But not every young bird needs help. In fact, this can lead to “bird-napping”, where a person sees a young bird on the ground, assumes it is lost or injured, and takes it.

These birds are practising their flying and foraging behaviours for the first time. Given they are still a little clumsy or don’t have a good map of their neighbourhood, it can be hard for them to get back to their nests.

Bird-napping can be incredibly harmful to birds. Removing a fledgling from its habitat may disrupt its natural development and deprive it of much-needed food, as it is likely still being fed by its parents. Adult birds may think their chick has been eaten and even decide to breed somewhere else next year, changing the local bird population.

What to do instead

If you stumble across a fledgling bird, it’s generally best to leave it alone. This is because touching young birds can:

• accidentally injure them

• cause them undue stress, potentially disrupting their natural behaviour

• attract unwanted attention from nearby predators such as larger birds, domestic cats and dogs or invasive carnivores like foxes

• transmit diseases between people, pets and birds, including the deadly H5 bird flu spreading across Australia.

If a bird is sitting somewhere risky, such as on a road, path or near a park with pets, approach slowly and it will likely fly away.

If it doesn’t move, you can pick it up and place it in the nearest patch of vegetation, ideally off the ground. Make sure to use gloves or a soft cloth, washing your hands thoroughly before and after handling any birds.

If the bird appears to be injured, it’s best to call a wildlife carer or rescue organisation to first ask for advice.

What about nestlings?

If you see a bird covered only in very soft downy feathers or pin feathers resembling tiny spikes or quills, you have found a nestling.

Nestlings are younger birds that can’t fly, have few or no feathers and remain totally dependent on their parents for survival. These birds won’t last long outside the protection of the nest.

If you can see and reach a nestling’s nest, place the bird back in it, taking care with hygiene. If you can’t see a nest, the next best thing is to put the chick on a stable, wide branch as high as you can reach. This will allow its parents to find it. You can even make a substitute nest from a small box, or a food container lined with paper towel, to hang in a nearby tree.

It’s very likely its parents are hiding nearby, calling to their nestling or perhaps even scolding you. If this happens, try to place the bird as near to the calling birds as possible.

Importantly, don’t feed the bird or give it water, as this can damage their delicate mouths and throats. It may even suffocate and kill them.

For extra support, you can call a local wildlife carer, wildlife organisation or veterinarian for guidance. They can give you specific instructions for how to handle and transport a hatchling (a naked baby bird usually with closed eyes), nestling, fledging or injured bird. Support is available in different states and territories, including through:

• in Victoria, Wildlife Victoria

• in the Australian Capital Territory, ACT Wildlife

• in New South Wales, Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Services (WIRES)

• in Queensland, Queensland Wildlife Rescue

• in Western Australia, WA Wildlife

• in South Australia, Fauna Rescue SA

• in Tasmania, Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary.

Spring is the perfect time to learn about your local birds – and even witness them raising their young. In most cases, it’s best to let birds live and learn to fly by themselves. You can also help them thrive by growing native plants in your garden and being a responsible pet owner.

Holly Kirk, Associate Professor and ARC Industry Fellow, Urban Ecology, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In recent weeks, people across Australia have found fluttering bogong moths (Agrotis infusa) in their homes, cars and even bedrooms. These insects have embarked on their annual migration from breeding grounds across southern Australia to the cool caves of the Australian alps.

For entomologists, or insect scientists, like myself who have studied these moths for years, it’s been a hopeful sight. But it hasn’t changed the fact bogong moths remain endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Species. Bogong moths are at risk of extinction due to climate change heating up their mountain boulderfields.

Why so many moths?

Scientists are keen to understand why bogong moth numbers have surged in cities this year.

More food, favourable breeding conditions and strong winds carrying moths towards the coast could all have contributed. It’s unclear whether the bogong population is rebuilding after years of decline or if we are just seeing them more in cities this year.

In many places, scientists can model and predict bird migrations. But we can’t do that for bogong moths until we learn more about their biology and movement patterns. Dedicated citizen scientists are helping fill these knowledge gaps.

When researchers like myself discover something new, we usually publish a scientific paper about it and then spend years trying to tell everyone what we’ve learnt. But this spring, it’s felt like we’ve gained millions of colleagues, with Australians recording hundreds of bogong moth sightings in a matter of months. These observations provide crucial information, such as how much bogong moths seem to prefer Callistemons (bottlebrushes) and Grevilleas (spider flowers), something unknown a month or so ago.

In 2000, when a vast cloud of moths famously engulfed the stadium where the Sydney Olympics closing ceremony was unfolding, we didn’t have many online platforms to document insect sightings. Today, this is as easy as taking a photo and sharing it on biodiversity platforms like iNaturalist and social media.

An endangered species

Because bogong moths can be almost everywhere, the species may appear to be thriving. But it’s not that simple. A species’ extinction risk depends on access to high-quality habitat, which in this case is cool mountains.

On the Red List, which classifies species’ risk of extinction, a species only needs to meet one of five criteria to be considered endangered.

These include Criteria A and C, which refer to whether a species has a small and declining population, with few individuals left. This is simple to answer for animals that can be easily counted, such as rhinos or quolls, but not insects like bogong moths.

Criterion B, the criterion under which bogong moths are listed as endangered, is concerned with the amount and quality of habitat available to a species. Current research suggests bogong moths migrate because they don’t cope well with heat, seeking refuge in cool alpine caves. But the Australian Alps are rapidly warming due to climate change. Without this vital habitat, bogong moths may be less able to escape the summer heat and might not continue to complete their migration.

Where to from here

There’s so much left to learn about bogong moths, including how far they actually travel.

Bogongs are found as far west as Perth and as far north as southern Queensland. While visiting Uluṟu recently, my family and I spotted a bogong moth at our hotel, more than 2,000 kilometres from the alps. Where they fly from and to, and the routes they take to get there, are all still open questions.

Researchers are currently exploring whether weather radar could help us understand and track the travel patterns of bogong moths. People can also get involved in the Bogong Watch tagging program.

It’s been 26 years since bogong moths last blanketed Sydney and Canberra. That means many young and new Australians may have never experienced their mammoth migration. It’s my hope that after this year’s experience, the next generation will not only marvel at these migrating moths, but join us in protecting them.

Kate Umbers, Associate Professor, Zoology, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The UN’s main biodiversity summit, held every two years, wrapped up in Yerevan, Armenia, on October 31.

Biodiversity summits don’t attract the same fanfare as their climate change equivalents, yet loss of nature threatens food systems, water security, health, livelihoods and cultural traditions. Forests, soils, wetlands and oceans absorb around half the carbon dioxide humans emit, while climate change is itself one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss.

This summit, technically the 17th Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) conference, or Cop17, was meant to take stock of progress and accelerate action on protecting biodiversity. Back in 2022, the same conference launched an ambitious framework to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, a goal that will require closing an US$700 billion (£520 billion) per year finance gap.

Targets include protecting 30% of land and sea, restoring degraded ecosystems, and halting the extinction of threatened species. Yerevan was the halfway point, and the first time countries formally reviewed how they were doing.

So, how did they do?

The first global review of the framework, State of Biodiversity Action, showed how little progress has been made. Almost 90% of countries have set national targets, but fewer than half are on track. The targets lagging furthest behind – covering business impacts, unsustainable consumption, harmful subsidies and finance – are the ones that need action beyond environment ministries and conservation programmes.

Who pays?

It comes down to money: who should pay for biodiversity protection? The framework calls for US$200 billion a year from all sources by 2030, including US$30 billion per year through international finance.

Two debates stood out. The first concerned who should manage the funds. Lower-income countries have argued for a new funding mechanism under the CBD’s control. Many high-income countries prefer the current Global Environment Facility, which critics say is bureaucratic and hard for local communities to access. Decisions on a new financial mechanism have been pushed to the next summit, Cop18, in Ecuador in 2028.

The second debate was about extending the list of countries expected to provide finance to developing countries. Emerging economies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar resisted, as it would shift their contributions from voluntary to obligatory. In the end, it was agreed that countries that now want to contribute as donors can “signal interest” before Cop18.

The summit presidency announced that more than US$1.8 billion had been pledged from governments, philanthropic organisations and investors. That is welcome, but negligible compared with what is needed. Recent cuts to development aid have made the shortfall even harder to address.

The negotiations looked at alternative ways of valuing nature, such as natural capital accounting or treating nature as infrastructure. “Biodiversity is not just for tree-huggers,” said the CBD’s executive secretary Astrid Schomaker at a workshop in Yerevan, suggesting it should matter to business.

Cutting or redirecting US$500 billion a year in harmful subsidies would help fund all this. But though this is the framework’s target 18, little progress has been made.

Who benefits from genetic data?

So-called digital sequence information, or DSI, was another subject of contention. This is genetic data gathered from plants, animals and microbes, stored in online databases and used by companies to develop medicines, crops and cosmetics. However, the countries and communities where these organisms come from have rarely been paid for their use.

The 2024 biodiversity summit in Colombia created the Cali Fund to change this. Large companies using DSI are expected to pay 1% of their profits or 0.1% of their revenue to this fund. At least half of the money is meant to go to Indigenous peoples and local communities.

The fund was expected to raise at least US$1 billion a year. By the end of this year’s summit, just five companies had committed a total of just US$10,565.

Part of the problem is that contributions are voluntary. Negotiators debated who counts as a user of DSI, whether only large companies should pay, and how to avoid companies being charged twice under national and international schemes. After fraught discussions and delays, many of the key decisions were postponed to the next summit in 2028.

The role of Indigenous people

Indigenous peoples and local communities manage or hold rights over a large share of the world’s remaining biodiverse land. In 2024, parties created a permanent body to strengthen their role.

In Yerevan, discussions focused on how it should work: who leads it, and who chooses the representatives. Campaigners warned that governments were deciding how Indigenous peoples should be represented instead of letting them decide for themselves. In the 12-hour-long final plenary, the body’s rules of operation were agreed, but as an advisory body, its influence will depend on whether governments listen.

Women’s rights were another focus. The global progress review found that only about a quarter of countries’ national targets address women’s land rights or access, leaving women with little power in conservation decisions. The Yerevan summit encouraged governments to embed gender equity into national biodiversity strategies and data collection.

Halfway and behind

Finance, DSI and Indigenous rights may have been separate items on the agenda, but they raise the same questions: who pays to protect nature, who gets to decide, and who benefits?

The agreed Yerevan Pathway urges countries to take faster action on priorities including cutting subsidies that harm nature, providing financial and technical support to developing countries, and aligning national budgets with biodiversity goals. But it leans heavily on commitments already made.

Outside the main negotiations in Yerevan, Indigenous groups, campaigners and non-governmental organisations showcased their work protecting and restoring nature in spite of limited funding. The tension between biodiversity targets and the extractive industries was also visible in protests against a controversial gold mine, which recently began production in south-eastern Armenia.

Governments now need to back their commitments with money that reaches the people doing the work, an end to economic incentives that drive nature loss, and a meaningful say for Indigenous people and local communities.

Gabriella Santini, Post-doctoral Researcher in Anthropology, UCL; Emily Woodhouse, Associate Professor in Interdisciplinary Environmental Anthropology, UCL, and Simon Chin-Yee, Lecturer in International Development, UCL

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Once again, Australia’s flying-foxes are in trouble.

Wildlife carers have been overwhelmed by large numbers of distressed animals needing care. Banana and berry growers are reporting crop damage and sightings of weakened bats. New South Wales and eastern Victoria are the areas currently affected. Grey-headed flying-foxes seem to be the worst affected species.

The most likely cause is a food shortage. Australia had a very warm winter, which may have changed the flowering patterns of some trees and led to a nectar shortage. This isn’t yet confirmed, as investigations are continuing.

Unfortunately, this is only the latest in a string of mass deaths of flying-foxes, the world’s largest flying mammals. Over the 2019–20 Black Summer, extreme heat claimed tens of thousands, and thousands more died from the same cause over the 2025–26 summer. Climate change is steadily making their lives harder.

Australia is poorly placed to respond to wildlife emergencies affecting these important, highly mobile bats. In 2016, land managers, researchers, conservationists and industry backed a national approach to managing flying-foxes. A decade later, there’s still no sign of change.

A forest is not a supermarket

Many Australians call flying-foxes “fruit bats”.

But grey-headed flying-foxes actually prefer eucalypt nectar and pollen over cultivated fruit. They turn to orchards only when their preferred foods are scarce.

Eucalypt flowering is highly variable. Forests with plenty of flowering gums one month can offer little the next. Flying-foxes are good at finding these ephemeral sources of food. But food isn’t always available in a land of droughts and flooding rains.

Flying-foxes have long had to deal with food shortages. Between 1996 and 2020, researchers documented recurrent food shortages, as well as changes in flying-fox distribution and their increasing reliance on agricultural and urban areas. Land clearing and urban development have removed much of southeast Queensland’s native winter-flowering habitat, making winter nectar harder to find.

Planting, protecting and restoring native food trees help sustain the irreplaceable role of flying-foxes as long-distance pollinators and seed dispersers, boosting the economy and reducing the chance of disease spilling over.

Life on the move

Flying-foxes are among the most mobile animals on Earth, able to fly over 100 kilometres a night. They’re nomads, moving between a vast network of camps. It’s easy to spot a flying-fox camp – the squawking and constant bustle make it hard to miss.

Australian cities offer flying foxes an attractive, stable supply of food, due to a mix of exotic and native trees fruiting or flowering at different times, allowing the bats to spend more time at urban camps.

When the megafires of the Black Summer burned large areas of prime habitat, flying-foxes began foraging very differently, seeking out lower-quality unburned forests further inland.

How do people respond?

Flying-foxes are weird, wonderful and ecologically vital. But they are not universally loved.

Desperate flying-foxes have been reported damaging crops, while sudden changes in camp size can make local communities concerned about noise and smell.

We can’t overlook the effects they can have on communities. But it’s wrong to treat them as pests – or let landholders face the sudden arrival of a colony alone. Instead, we should aim to recognise flying-foxes as natural and ecologically invaluable – while protecting both their habitat and our human crops.

As reports of sick and hungry flying-foxes emerged this spring, local wildlife carers again stepped up. Their work is vital. But it comes at real cost – physically, financially and emotionally. These volunteers need much better support, across training, equipment, vaccinations, access to vets, and help to boost rehabilitation capacity.

‘No response to date’

When eucalypts flower en masse, thousands of flying-foxes can arrive rapidly. For local towns, this can create tensions.

These tensions even led to a federal parliamentary inquiry. The inquiry’s 2017 report called for a national or eastern-states flying-fox consultative body, and recommended dedicated funding for research, recovery and at least ten more years of monitoring. It also recommended decision-support tools for councils and community education.

Ten years later, the official outcome is “no response to date”. Meanwhile, national monitoring and crisis responses remain fragmented.

In late 2022, the long-running National Flying-Fox Monitoring Program was defunded. This left Australia without an up-to-date national picture of flying-fox populations, making crises much harder to understand and manage.

In good news, other government agencies, land managers and volunteers have continued to monitor these animals locally. For example, of the 476 known flying-fox camps in NSW, 52% are now being monitored. In 2019, that figure was 35%.

To help improve the situation, our team at Western Sydney University has recently released the Australian Flying-Fox Monitor, which holds population records, tracking and citizen science data collected for all Australian flying-fox species. Users can also report entanglements, electrocutions, starvation and bats affected by extreme heat.

National protection requires follow-through

Three of Australia’s five flying-fox species are considered threatened nationally. But federal recovery planning is falling well short for all three, reflecting a broader failure to deliver on recovery commitments.

The Christmas Island flying-fox is critically endangered, but has no national recovery plan. The spectacled flying-fox is endangered, but still relies on a 2010 plan, now six years beyond its intended timeframe. And the grey-headed flying-fox is vulnerable, but its 2021 recovery plan is past its mandatory five year review period.

State and federal laws can clash. Queensland still allows grey-headed flying-foxes to be shot to protect crops, despite promises to ban the practice. To our knowledge, it’s the only nationally threatened species routinely culled at state level other than the great white shark.

From crises to coordination

This year’s flying-fox crisis isn’t the first and it won’t be the last. In the absence of proper coordination, it’s been left to wildlife carers to respond.

But they cannot do it alone. Local commitment cannot substitute for national coordination. It’s time to stop managing flying-foxes one crisis at a time.

Justin A. Welbergen, Professor of Animal Ecology, Western Sydney University and Jessica Meade, Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer in Movement Ecology, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It’s the build-up in northern Australia – the time of year when heat and humidity get worse ahead of the wet season. Common phrases such as “going troppo” or “mango madness” give a sense of the effects. Tempers fray and tensions rise.

There’s now emerging evidence that humidity makes heat more dangerous. Humid heatwaves – where high temperatures combine with high humidity – are potentially more dangerous than dry heatwaves.

Elsewhere in the world, humid heatwaves are already claiming lives. Over 1,300 pilgrims died in Saudi Arabia in 2024 due to lethal levels of humidity and heat, while India and Pakistan have also been hard hit.

Our recent research in the Northern Territory found more people came to emergency departments during intense humid heatwaves than comparable dry heatwaves.

The problem is, we’re not warning people about this combined threat. Australia’s heatwave warning systems focus only on temperature – not on humidity.

Why humidity matters

Intense heat stresses the body. Humidity can make this worse.

The human body relies heavily on sweating to regulate temperature. When sweat evaporates from the skin, it removes heat and helps keep the body cool. When humidity is high, evaporation doesn’t work as well and it’s harder for the body to release heat and stay cool.

Humid conditions can boost the risk of heat-related illnesses such as heatstroke, worsen existing heart and lung conditions and put more strain on the bodies of people with chronic diseases.

High humidity can also contribute to poor sleep, reducing the body’s ability to recover during prolonged hot periods.

Hot and wet conditions also provide optimal conditions for mosquitoes, ticks and parasites, which are vectors for the spread of key tropical diseases. Mould, bacteria and viruses are more likely to grow in high humidity, increasing the risk of lung and skin disease.

What we found in the Northern Territory

The top third of the Northern Territory has a monsoonal coastal climate prone to humidity, while the two thirds inland is arid. This means we can analyse and compare humid and dry heatwaves across these environments.

Our study analysed more than two decades of emergency department data across the NT to see if dry heat or humid heat affected the numbers of people needing emergency care. We used a temperature-based index for dry heat and a combined temperature and relative humidity index to determine humid heat.

The results were clear. While more people sought emergency treatment during both dry and humid heatwaves, humid heatwaves were worse. Severe and extreme dry heatwaves led to 4.4% more hospital visits, while similar humid heatwaves saw 6.1% more people attending emergency departments.

When arid areas of the Territory were hit by humid heatwaves, the effect was even clearer – emergency visits rose 8.7%.

Where are the warnings?

In many parts of northern Australia, heatwaves are projected to become more frequent and intense due to global warming.

Every summer, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology issues heatwave warnings to give people advance notice of three or more days of unusual heat over day and night. Warnings can be issued for mild, severe and extreme heatwaves.

These warnings are vital. They let people prepare for heat and change plans, while health services can boost staffing numbers.

The problem is, these warnings are largely based on temperature. Most people can tolerate a 35°C day with low humidity. But a 35°C day with high humidity is much harder for us to cope with.

This means the current system may not be warning Australians about a real risk to their health – especially those in tropical and coastal regions.

Preparing health services for humid heat

Health services in the NT are often ageing and under strain. Last wet season did significant damage.

Dry and wet heatwaves will put more pressure on health systems already struggling during extreme weather. Even a modest increase in patients will add more pressure on staffing, bed capacity and resources.

We’ve long known heat affects some people much more than others. Children, older adults, people with chronic diseases and those in disadvantaged communities are hit harder. In the Territory, low-quality housing, poor access to healthcare and outdoor work and recreation also boost risks from heat.

Time to redefine heatwaves

It’s no longer enough to define a heatwave using temperature alone. Across northern Australia, humidity directly affects how people experience a heatwave.

Climatologists are already exploring ways to include humidity in measures of dangerous heat.

To take the threat of humid heat seriously, we need to redefine heatwaves to include humidity and temperature. This will strengthen our early warning systems.

On a practical level, we need to prepare our health systems for more demand during severe humid heat, particularly in remote and tropical regions.

As the Top End prepares for another wet season, authorities will focus on the threats of cyclones, flooding and other visible weather threats. It’s time to look at a less visible danger – the combination of heat and humidity.

Alyson Wright, Adjunct Fellow in Public Health, Menzies School of Health Research; Mark de Souza, PhD Candidate in Sustainable Healthcare, The University of Melbourne, and Sharon Campbell, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Environmental Health Research, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As sea levels creep higher in the Pacific, salt leaches into the soil, and reduces the land available to grow food. Ocean warming is damaging coral reefs, reducing fish stocks, and salinity has tainted fresh water supplies.

As a result, Pacific communities are being forced to turn to imported food, which is often high in calories but low in nutrients. And this, along with a myriad of intersecting social, cultural, and economic factors, has led to a rise in the rates of chronic diseases, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Ahead of the upcoming UN climate conference COP31, discussions by government ministers, civil society advocates, multilateral agencies, and academics at the pre-COP meeting in Fiji and Tuvalu last month emphasised the importance of health for those on the front line of the climate crisis.

Women in the Pacific are disproportionately responsible for family care, and the burden of food and water insecurity falls most heavily on their shoulders. Women at the pre-COP meeting told us replanting crops after extreme weather is increasing their domestic burden, contributing to exhaustion and mental ill-health.

But these women are not passive bystanders. Again and again in Fiji we heard incredible stories of women developing and implementing their own climate solutions. Australia can learn from their leadership and make health a central part of the global agenda at COP31.

What’s the focus of COP31?

This year’s summit is being promoted as the “implementation COP”: acting on existing promises (rather than making new ones) to keep the critical threshold of 1.5°C of warming within reach. There will be a push to increase climate finance – funding for activities to mitigate or adapt to the impacts of climate change.

But health needs to be higher up the agenda. Global warming is worsening chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer, which are the primary cause of death and disability, both in the Pacific and globally. As an amplifier of inequity, it is women who bear the greatest health burden.

The Pacific has the highest rates of these chronic diseases in the world. They are responsible for 87% of deaths in the Western Pacific region, with mortality rates in Kiribati five times those of Singapore, and yet they have largely absent from the wider COP agenda.

Throughout the pre-COP talks, Pacific leaders repeatedly emphasised the need for climate action to reflect the everyday health realities facing communities. Too often, conversations focus on disasters and emergencies and the acute injuries and infectious disease outbreaks that ensue. The less visible ways climate change is undermining population health are often overlooked.

Chronic disease prevention and treatment is shaped by interwoven systems, such as food, water, housing, gender equity and economic security. But policies designed to support the systems are fragmented across sectors and institutions.

There was a welcome focus on gender and women’s health at the Fiji meeting, including discussions about how extreme heat is making pregnancy more dangerous for mothers, and women are facing poorer health outcomes and heightened care giving.

Tuvalu prime minister Feleti Teo said it best:

Ensuring that gender and health are fully integrated into climate financing is not just an ambition; it is an urgent necessity for the survival and wellbeing of our island communities.

What needs to happen

Fortunately, many Pacific Island nations are making inroads at addressing these challenges.

The Pacific Resilience Facility, a climate finance mechanism owned and led by Pacific people, is funding women-led climate projects, such as installing community water tanks. One community leader at pre-CoP spoke about the value of having a clean and reliable water supply for their village in remote Fiji for the first time, for the modest cost of US$6,000 (A$8,600). Projects like this demonstrate climate adaptation can drive health and economic development that creates broader prosperity.

Other changes that should be reflected at the COP31 meetings in Turkey include:

1. chronic diseases should be included in national climate and health action plans

2. climate action must include strengthening primary health care

3. climate action must be gender-responsive, with women included in climate leadership

4. most importantly, emissions reduction must be accelerated to keep 1.5°C within reach.

The Pacific has shown the world what climate leadership looks like. Now the priorities discussed at Fiji must be taken up at COP31. Climate change is multi-faceted and our response must be the same; connecting climate action, health equity and sustainable development.

Veronica Le Nevez, Co-Director, Impact and Engagement, The George Institute for Global Health, George Institute for Global Health and Laura Emily Downey, Associate professor, George Institute for Global Health

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This year may be seen as a turning point in the climate crisis. The UN has accepted that global warming is going to exceed 1.5°C, while climate scientists have concluded that the rate of warming has effectively doubled over the past decade.

What’s worse, the world may be approaching climate tipping points that could trigger further heating and catastrophic environmental change.

Back in 2018, an international team led by Earth system scientist Will Steffen warned that continued greenhouse gas emissions and destruction of biodiversity could produce a cascade of warming that would culminate in the climate systems passing a threshold into a so-called “Hothouse Earth”.

The engine of this cascade would be individual tipping points in the climate. For example, the shutdown of certain Atlantic Ocean currents would not just plunge Europe into freezing winters, but could significantly starve the Amazon rainforest of water vapour. A drought that turns the Amazon to savanna would have huge consequences for the global carbon cycle and climate system. Further warming would accelerate ice sheet loss and ramp up temperatures.

As various tipping points are passed, the Earth system reaches a threshold that could produce a rise in temperatures greater than any for the past 1.2 million years. This would have devastating impacts on ecosystems and societies. Indeed, it’s hard to see how complex, industrialised civilisation would be able to exist in a world that has rapidly warmed beyond 4°C.

Are we responding to the risks?

To what extent the Earth system has the capacity to produce this sort of cascading warming is a topic of intense scientific research. We may be lucky, in that individual tipping elements such as Atlantic current collapse require much higher levels of warming, or more fundamentally the Earth’s current climate may prove to be more resilient than we think. Unfortunately, the opposite may be the case and a planetary threshold may lurk at lower levels of warming than Steffen and colleagues proposed.

It seems reasonable to assume that a deepening climate crisis will focus minds and spur climate action. Unfortunately, new research by my coauthors and I suggests the exact opposite may happen: the worse climate change gets, the harder it could be to stop it. The end point of that process is a disastrous acceleration towards further warming.

Rather than being a purely theoretical exercise, we propose that we can begin to see signs of this slide away from climate action in the real world. For example, those nations most at risk from climate change can be caught in a sovereign debt “doom loop” whereby the damage caused by extreme weather reduces their abilities to repay loans and makes it harder to obtain desperately needed finance to both mitigate and adapt to climate change.

This feedback loop can derail climate policy over time: as debt servicing consumes growing shares of government revenue, climate investments are sidelined, and the country becomes increasingly exposed to climate change.

Increased warming can also increase conflict, thus undermining international cooperation required for mitigation. This is affected by a range of socioeconomic factors, such as inequality and political polarisation.

For example, see the increase in popularity of Spain’s far right-wing and climate-denying Vox party following the devastating Valencia floods of 2024. While the floods were made much more likely because of human-caused climate change, Vox argued that it was left-wing “ideological” environmental policies that made people more vulnerable to the intense rainfall.

The name we give to these dynamics is “derailment risk”, the situation where the consequences of climate change makes it harder to deal with the drivers of climate change, and so sustainability efforts end up being derailed.

Planetary stewardship

Given the potentially devastating consequences of a Hothouse Earth, it seems sensible to minimise the chances of it happening as much as possible. To that end, climate and Earth system scientists have argued that active management of this risk is required.

This “planetary stewardship” goes beyond phasing out the burning of fossil fuels to include strengthening forests, peatlands and other natural stores of carbon, along with behavioural changes, technological innovations, new ways of governing, and transforming social values. But derailment risks could undermine the political and social conditions needed to establish any sort of planetary stewardship.

A key concept here is agency – the capacity to produce change. In the original hothouse framework, agency is essentially one way. Humans affect the Earth system by destabilising it. But humans are not simply an external force acting on the Earth system: we are part of it, and our social and political forces can influence its stability and whether the planet slides into a hothouse state.

We argue that the feedback loops pulling us towards derailment can be stronger than those needed to establish planetary stewardship. That’s because collective action can be easier to destroy than build. At a psychological level, bad events affect people more strongly than good events. This is a factor in how trust within a society can be much easier to undermine than create. Increasing climate change impacts could therefore erode the social institutions needed to sustain effective mitigation and adaptation, just when they are most needed.

To respond to this risk we propose a three-stage framework for assessing and managing derailment threats. First, identify and map feedback loops between the human and natural world; second, anticipate disruption and build resilience; third, develop active responsive governance strategies for periods of escalating instability.

Humans are entirely responsible for the climate and ecological crisis, but we also hold the solutions. Maintaining our agency – the ability to put solutions into practice – may prove to be the keystone for all climate policies.

James Dyke, Assistant Director of the Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia relies on diesel to move freight, run mines and harvest crops. We’re now the world’s top importer of seaborne diesel, importing around 28 billion litres of the fuel last year.

Diesel is the fuel most exposed to the ongoing US–Iran war as it’s the biggest export product for Persian Gulf refineries. Last year, Russia was the world’s biggest diesel exporter. But Ukrainian drones have now damaged many Russian refineries, making supplies scarcer. This year’s turmoil has shown the risks and costs of this dependency.

In Australia, diesel prices have gone as high as A$3.20 a litre this year. Prices remain very high at around $2.79 a litre – almost a dollar more than this time last year.

Between March and August, Australia paid an extra A$9 billion to import diesel, according to the Climate Council – more than twice as much as any other country, or about $324 for every Australian.

Wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe have done more than drive prices higher. They have redrawn the global map of buyers and sellers.

My analysis of over 21,000 diesel shipments since January 2025 exposes the shift. Exports from the Gulf have largely vanished and Russian exports have collapsed. Refineries in the United States and Asia are filling the gap.

Two big suppliers knocked out

On February 28, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. This blocked most crude and diesel shipments through the Gulf.

Saudi Arabia was able to keep exporting diesel from its refineries on the Red Sea. But this lifeline is fragile, as recent drone strikes on its East-West pipeline proved.

Russia was the world’s largest diesel exporter in 2025, shipping about 734,000 barrels a day. But diesel exports began falling sharply in July as Ukrainian drone strikes took refineries offline. Moscow was forced to ban most diesel exports to preserve local stocks.

By October, Russia supplied just 2% of the diesel arriving at ports worldwide – a sharp fall from last year’s figure of 12%.

America stepped in, Asia stepped up

The gap in supply has largely been filled by the United States. My analysis shows the US exported about 50% more diesel between April and October than its 2025 average. As of October, the US is the world’s top diesel exporter.

Before the US–Iran war, Asian refineries, including India’s, shipped about 28% of seaborne diesel. In October, that figure had risen to almost 40%.

These refineries are also finding new customers.

In October, Asian refiners supplied about 38% of sub-Saharan Africa’s diesel imports, up from 22% before the war. Over the same period, the Gulf’s share of that market fell from 44% to 24%.

Europe has changed too. India and Saudi Arabia are now the largest suppliers of diesel to Europe and the Mediterranean after the United States.

Closer to home, China supplied almost half of Singapore’s diesel imports in October, up from about 12% before the war.

Asian refineries have had to change suppliers of crude oil to keep running. Before the war, 57% of Asia’s seaborne crude came from the Middle East. But that share has fallen to about 40%, while Russian, American and Latin American oil has filled the gap.

What do these shifts mean for Australia?

In 2025, Australia bought almost 8% of all diesel traded by sea. Arrivals have remained steady this year despite rapid shifts in suppliers. Between March and October, around 488,000 barrels per day have arrived (about 78 million litres a day).

Global disruptions this year have led to a narrower supply chain.

In 2025, about 46,000 barrels of Indian diesel arrived per day. But none has arrived since July this year, despite official efforts to shore up fuel security.

Australia is buying much more diesel from South Korea. In 2025, South Korea supplied 29% of diesel imports. By October 2026, that figure was almost half. Australia now buys over a third of all South Korean diesel exports.

This doesn’t reduce Australia’s vulnerability. South Korean refineries get more than half their crude oil from the Middle East, much of it loaded at ports outside the Strait of Hormuz. About 20% of South Korean crude is now imported from the US.

If Middle Eastern supplies tighten or Korean refiners find better prices elsewhere, Australia will feel it.

Questions remain about how reliable the US is as a diesel supplier, given President Donald Trump floated a possible diesel export ban in September to rein in soaring domestic prices, before ruling it out in October. Because the US is the world’s largest exporter, any pullback would tighten the market Australia buys from.

What about the Russia–US deal?

On October 9, Trump unexpectedly announced a deal with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

In return for the lifting of US sanctions on Russian diesel, Russia would ship a total of 1.8 million tonnes (13 million barrels) of diesel to the US. The first cargo left on October 22.

This figure is less than three weeks of Russia’s pre-war exports. It’s unclear whether Russia can spare the diesel. Ukraine briefly paused its refinery strikes under US pressure, but resumed within days, hitting a major Russian refinery at Yaroslavl this week.

None of this diesel will come here: Australia has banned Russian oil imports since 2022.

But at present, Australia competes with European and Latin American buyers for diesel from Asian refineries. If more Russian diesel crosses the Atlantic, those buyers would compete less intensely for Asian cargoes, which could ease supply and prices here.

What’s next?

The past eight months show how fast supply chains can reroute. It took just weeks for the Gulf to lose its markets, while Asian refineries found new customers in Africa and the Mediterranean almost overnight.

Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has picked up, but there were 29 attacks on merchant ships in the first three weeks of October – more than in any full month since March.

Australia can’t assume diesel suppliers will stay loyal – or reliable. It’s sensible to broaden suppliers and, as I’ve argued, rapidly boost diesel storage to buy time.

Policymakers and business leaders must rapidly reduce our reliance on diesel. Electric buses and delivery trucks are arriving, while some major miners are electrifying trains and haul trucks. Where batteries can’t yet do the job, Australian gas could. Reducing diesel demand is our best long-term protection.

Lurion De Mello, Senior Lecturer in Finance, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Is your new phone already slowing down or your expensive earphones acting up?

You’re not imagining it. Our products are no longer designed to last, with some barely working a few years before ending up in landfill.

Shortening the lifespan of a product is a strategy known as planned obsolescence.

My new research takes a closer look at this concept and argues that, by strengthening existing laws, it is possible to make products that last while reducing costs for consumers and the environment.

Mountains of e-waste

Modern devices like laptops and smartwatches are made of a combination of rare materials, toxic substances and flammable batteries, such as mercury and arsenic. When released into the environment, these toxic chemicals can pollute the soil and waterways.

This should make us think twice about throwing out broken devices. Yet, Australians produce almost three times the global average of electronic waste, known as e-waste. Globally, we generated 62 million tonnes of e-waste by 2022. That amount could fill more than one million trucks, about enough to wrap around the earth’s equator. E-waste worldwide is set to rise by another 32%, reaching 82 million tonnes by 2030.

In Australia, reducing waste must be a priority if we’re to meet our net zero goal and transition to a circular economy, where our belongings are reused, repaired or recycled instead of piling up in landfill.

Faulty by design

Planned obsolescence is one way technology companies pull people into a loop of constant consumption. When our new device quickly breaks, we simply buy a new one.

But planned obsolescence is one problem with many facets.

For starters, companies can design products that aren’t sustainable. Think wireless earphones with batteries that quickly break down. Their design can make it very difficult to replace the battery, making them “disposable gadgets” once they’re unable to hold a charge.

Manufacturers may also make it harder to repair their products. For instance, parts of a device can be glued together so it can’t be taken apart and repaired. What’s more, some companies require a repairer to be “authorised” to get access to the parts, software locks or information needed to repair a specific product. You can try and fix a device yourself, but repair manuals can be subject to copyright and manufacturers may prevent third parties from sharing them online.

Beyond the actual product, there’s the behavioural side of planned obsolescence. Technology companies regularly update models so your current device quickly looks out of date, a strategy known as psychological obsolescence. Companies use advertising to convince you to buy their latest product and market newer devices as status symbols, such as a smartphone with accessories that are only compatible with the “new generation” of phones.

A systemic problem

Planned obsolescence is typically viewed as a company strategy.

In Europe, consumer associations launched a complaint against Nintendo for premature obsolescence, claiming its Nintendo Switch controllers were quickly becoming unresponsive. After the European Commission and other authorities contacted Nintendo, the company agreed to offer free repairs.

The federal court of Australia ordered Apple to pay A$9 million for making false or misleading representations to iPhone users affected by a software fault about their rights to have their device repaired or replaced under the Australian Consumer Law. These rights don’t simply stop applying because your phone has been repaired by a third party.

But planned obsolescence is not necessarily the fault of any one person or company. Rather, it’s the result of our current produce-and-consume system. Fixing such a complex, systemic problem will require intervention from various sectors, including product design, consumer law, competition law and intellectual property law.

We must also factor in consumer behaviour. After all, it’s ultimately the consumer who decides whether a broken product goes to a repair shop, in the junk drawer or straight in the bin. But consumers can’t always make an informed decision. For example, a person may be forced to replace a product because they can’t afford to repair it.

So, what can we do about it?

Stronger laws are key to ensuring products last. However, it’s difficult to change legislation. What’s more, lawmakers often fail to recognise the many aspects of planned obsolescence.

Consider Australia’s first right to repair law. This legislation aims to help people repair their vehicles more easily and at a lower price. This is a win for motorists, who would otherwise be forced to go to authorised dealerships.

The government recently asked for public feedback on whether the law should be expanded to agricultural machinery. But there has been no discussion about repairing devices and other everyday products. Importantly, this law doesn’t address what happens to products that simply can’t be fixed or help consumers tell if a product can be repaired before they buy it.

The European Union has made some progress. New rules aim at making all products placed on the EU market sustainable by design. It has also introduced a right to repair law with stronger rules around certain electronics, including mobile phones and washing machines, and a reparability score to help consumers choose fixable products.

We know our devices don’t last forever. But too often they break down in a few short years or even months, leaving consumers with little choice but to throw them away. It’s time Australia tightened its laws around planned obsolescence – for the sake of people’s hip pockets and the planet.

Margherita Feleppa, Lecturer, School of Law, University of Wollongong

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A breath of fresh air does wonders for the body and mind.

In some areas, however, the air may not be as clean as it seems. This may be due to pollution or natural hazards such as bushfires and dust storms.

If you’re worried about air quality in your local area, there’s no shortage of apps and websites promising to help.

But which should you choose? And can you trust the information they offer?

Where to start

In Australia, the most reliable place to start is your state or territory Environmental Protection Authority website.

These sites publish air quality information in many formats, from technical data and colour coded advisory maps to emergency incident updates.

The data comes from government monitoring networks, which operate under the Australian National Environment Protection (Ambient Air Quality) Measure. This framework sets assessment standards to ensure air quality data is collected and interpreted in a consistent, accurate and transparent way.

At first glance, this data may look intimidating. The simplest way to interpret it is to check the air quality category for your location. These categories are colour coded based on a traffic light system, with green indicating “good” air quality and dark red identifying areas with “extremely poor” air quality.

To determine these categories, the government collects data on the pollutant concentration in an area, which is the amount of a harmful substance found in a volume of air. This data is quality checked and published as hourly updates.

What about phone apps?

Mobile phone apps provide air quality information on the go. These apps often re-purpose data from government websites, sometimes in combination with low-cost monitoring networks like IQAir and PurpleAir.

These networks typically use indicative data, which points to general trends without offering exact values. So while these apps are convenient, it pays to check where their data comes from and if it has been modified in any way.

Many mobile apps use a traffic light reporting system that looks similar to the government’s air quality categories. However, a handful use the Air Quality Index. This index ranks common pollutants – such as carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide – on a scale from 0 to 500. The higher the number, the most “risky” the pollutant from an air pollution and human health perspective.

This numbers-based approach is useful for classifying air quality, but can hide important details. For instance, an app may not indicate which pollutant the air quality index is based on or whether measurements are taken hourly, daily or weekly. Just as weather apps can give varied forecasts, air quality apps can report different values for the same place and time because they use different models and data sources.

Grassroots solutions

To gather accurate air quality data, government monitoring systems rely on equipment known as reference instruments. These are highly precise devices that require regular maintenance, along with frequent checks and adjustments to ensure accurate readings. Given their complex design, reference instruments can be difficult to move and expensive to operate.

In contrast, indicative monitors are small, compact and affordable devices powered by batteries or solar. They estimate levels of dust, temperature and humidity. Some also measure gases and volatile organic compounds, which have been shown to harm human health.

Indicative monitors help fill gaps in official monitoring data and are widely used in community projects, such as OPENAIR and Air Watch. On a broader level, indicative networks can help identify and track pollution sources such as vehicle emissions and woodsmoke.

However, their data must be interpreted with caution. Without regular care and maintenance, the sensors in indicative monitors can become less accurate over time. What’s more, monitors can be placed in unsuitable locations – for instance, next to barbecues or outdoor smoking areas – where poor airflow can distort the readings.

So while indicative monitors can alert us to poor air quality, the data they provide is approximate, not exact.

What you can do

Air quality data from apps and websites can vary in quality and reliability.

Before trusting an air quality data app or website, it’s best to ask four simple questions:

• Who runs it? This may be a government agency, university, research body, company or community network.

• What data is it showing? Certain sources may present primary data collected by the organisation that operates the app or website, while others rely on secondary data repurposed from somewhere else.

• What instruments do they use? This determines whether an app or website provides estimates, indicative data or reference grade data, which is the gold standard.

• What quality control is in place? This includes measures such as regular maintenance and calibration, being placed in an appropriate location and transparent information about a system’s limitations.

If a platform cannot provide clear answers to these questions, it may still be useful. But it should not be treated as the final word on air quality.

So the challenge is not finding data, but knowing how to assess its quality and interpret it responsibly.

Margaret Davidson, Senior Lecturer, Occupational Hygiene and Environmental Health, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A ten-year scientific investigation of museum specimens has uncovered two previously unrecognised bandicoot species, expanded the known range of the iconic quenda (or southeastern brown bandicoot), and reshaped understanding of one of Australia’s native mammal groups.

Our new study examined hundreds of historical and modern specimens from museum collections around the world. The findings have led to the recognition of two additional species and several new subspecies within the genus Isoodon, commonly known as short-nosed or brown bandicoots.

What you need to know about bandicoots

Bandicoots are rabbit-sized marsupials found in Australia and New Guinea. They are distinguishable by their long-pointed snouts, large back legs and short tails. They gather food through digging with their front paws.

Most are omnivores, feeding on fungi, roots, insects and other small invertebrates. There are more than 20 living species of bandicoots, but in Australia, since European colonisation, several species have gone extinct.

The short-nosed or brown bandicoots are in the genus Isoodon. Until now, there were five living species known in Australia and New Guinea.

While some species remain widespread, others have suffered severe decline due to habitat loss, changing fire patterns and introduced predators. These include the golden bandicoot and the southern brown bandicoot, previously listed as vulnerable or endangered.

How we found new species

In 2016, one of us (Travouillon) travelled through Europe and the United States to study bandicoot specimens collected more than 100 years ago. Comparing these specimens with material held in Australian museums showed that existing species classifications might not be quite right.

The discovery prompted three of us (Travouillon, Cooper and Bertozzi) to embark on a larger research project. We went to museums around Australia, collecting measurements and genetic samples from specimens from across the continent and New Guinea. We then found other collaborators via the OZ Mammals Genomics initiative.

Using DNA analysis and detailed skull measurements, we reassessed how different bandicoot populations were related. This let us identify previously overlooked species and subspecies.

Among the most significant findings was the recognition of the little brown bandicoot (Isoodon microtis), a newly described species from South Australia. We believe it became extinct around a century ago. Specimens had sat unnoticed in museum collections for generations, and we determined it was distinct enough from other bandicoots to warrant species status.

Our study also found that the New Guinea brown bandicoot (Isoodon moresbyensis), previously regarded as a subspecies of the northern brown bandicoot (Isoodon macrourus), was actually a species in its own right.

While the discovery of a new living species is cause for celebration, the identification of an extinct species carries mixed emotions. It is sobering to realise that a unique Australian mammal disappeared before science even recognised it.

Re-evaluating species boundaries

Our research also dramatically altered understanding of bandicoot diversity in South Australia. Previous classifications suggested that only one species, the southern brown bandicoot, occurred in the state.

However, the revision found that South Australia was once home to three species: the southern brown bandicoot (Isoodon obesulus), the newly recognised little brown bandicoot, and the quenda (Isoodon fusciventer).

The quenda has long been regarded as a Western Australian species. However, we found it once lived around Adelaide, Kangaroo Island and the Nuyts Archipelago. This represents a major eastward extension of the species’ known historical range.

We also identified several new subspecies of already known species. We described two new subspecies of golden bandicoot, four of the quenda, and a new subspecies of the northern brown bandicoot from Cape York in Queensland.

Together, the findings show the continent once supported a richer array of bandicoot forms than scientists had understood.

Conservation and why it matters

The discoveries have important implications for conservation management. Taxonomy, the science of naming and classifying species, forms the foundation of conservation planning. Changes in these classifications can affect how we understand extinction risk, and how we allocate conservation resources.

For the quenda, the newly recognised broader range suggests the species may be less threatened overall than previously believed. However, we caution that South Australian populations remain small and require ongoing protection.

Conversely, the revised distribution of the southern brown bandicoot suggests its range is more restricted than once thought. Already listed as endangered, the species may face an even greater conservation risk under the new classification.

What’s next

With our work on short-nosed bandicoots now complete, we are turning our eyes to the next phase of our project: long-nosed bandicoots (the genus Perameles). Five species within that group have already disappeared since European settlement.

Remarkable discoveries are still waiting in museum drawers, in Australia and around the world. As we study them, we will continue to uncover hidden chapters in Australia’s natural history.

Kenny Travouillon, Curator of Mammals, Western Australian Museum; Curtin University; Matthew Phillips, Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology and Zoology, Queensland University of Technology; Steve Cooper, Principal Researcher, South Australian Museum; Adelaide University , and Terry Bertozzi, Research Scientist, Bioinformatics, South Australian Museum; Adelaide University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A grazed knee. A cut while gardening. A routine hip replacement. For most of the past century, these were minor worries. But in a world where antibiotics stop working, any of them could turn deadly.

Drug-resistant infections are on the rise, and developing new drugs is difficult, expensive and slow. This has researchers looking beyond conventional medicines for new ways to fight harmful microbes.

One place worth investigating is surprisingly close to home: the nests of Australia’s native stingless bees.

In our new study published in PLOS One, we tested honey and propolis (a sticky resin bees build their nests from) from the tiny native bee Tetragonula carbonaria against 16 types of bacteria and fungi that can cause disease in people.

The honey stopped every bacterium we tested. The propolis was more selective, but it hit certain fungi remarkably hard.

A different kind of bee

Australia is home to 11 of the world’s roughly 550 stingless bee species. Tetragonula carbonaria is a small black bee found along the east coast, from tropical Queensland to temperate New South Wales.

For thousands of years, Indigenous Australians have valued its honey, known as sugarbag, as food and medicine, including for itchy skin and sores.

Inside the nest, you won’t find the tidy wax combs of a honeybee hive. Stingless bees build almost everything from propolis, a blend of plant resin and their own wax. The honey sits in small, sealed pots made from this propolis, so every drop is stored in a container that fights microbes itself.

That is important because the honey is runny: about a quarter of it is water, compared with at most a fifth in honeybee honey. Wet food usually spoils, yet much of stingless bee honey stays remarkably free from harmful microbes.

Not all honey works the same way

In our tests, native bee honey packed a punch. Even diluted more than tenfold, it stopped golden staph and E. coli. It also worked against bacteria called Pseudomonas, Klebsiella, and Acinetobacter, which cause hard-to-treat wound, lung, and bloodstream infections in hospitals. And it stopped the fungi behind ringworm and athlete’s foot.

Most honey relies on hydrogen peroxide, a natural antiseptic produced by enzymes the bees produce. In honeybee honey, this burst of peroxide lasts only hours. Native stingless bee honey does something unusual: it can keep producing peroxide for up to a week.

But there is a second surprise. Very few honeys retain their antimicrobial activity when peroxide is removed. Manuka is the famous exception, thanks to a compound from manuka flowers. Native bee honey can do it too, but without the Manuka compound.

It stayed active after we heated it to destroy the peroxide. Samples kept in a fridge for 18 years had lost their peroxide entirely but still kept the rest of their punch.

So what’s doing the work? One possibility is what the bees forage on. Native bee honey is rich in plant compounds called phenolics, some of which fight microbes. Another is how the bees make their honey. Compared to honeybee honey, it contains a different mix of proteins, and some of these may attack microbes directly.

A precision weapon against fungi

If the honey is a shotgun, the propolis is a sniper.

Propolis extracts from eight nests stopped the ringworm and athlete’s foot fungi, plus a mould called Rhizopus behind rare but dangerous infections.

They worked at concentrations roughly equal to a pinch of salt in a ten-litre bucket.

Yet they did nothing at all against some other fungi. Every sample showed the same pattern.

Why would bees make something so choosy? Stingless bees live alongside complex microbial communities, and some species depend on beneficial fungi. One possibility is that their chemical defences help protect the nest from harmful microbes without disrupting useful ones.

The effect on human skin fungi may just be a lucky side effect.

From bee nests to new medicines?

Medical-grade honey is already used in wound care, giving honey-based products a head start over entirely new drugs.

But native stingless bee honey still needs further testing before it can be used routinely in medical products.

The next steps are practical: develop suitable formulations, investigate storage, and test safety and effectiveness for specific uses. Our laboratory results are promising, but they do not yet show that these products can treat infections in people.

Supply is another challenge. Stingless bee colonies produce relatively small amounts of honey, although growing interest in keeping native bees could create opportunities to increase production sustainably.

And the potential goes beyond using the honey and propolis themselves. Identifying the compounds behind these effects could reveal new molecules to inspire future antimicrobial treatments.

So the next treatment for a grazed knee gone bad might not come from a pharmaceutical lab, but from the nest of a tiny native bee.

Kenya Fernandes, Research Fellow, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney and Jasmin Li, PhD Candidate, Fernandes Lab and Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution (BEE) Lab, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Every Bonfire Night, people pay for a box of fireworks so their friends and family can enjoy the colourful display. Within a few minutes, it’s all over. But the price on the box doesn’t reflect the hidden costs. The smoke inhaled by neighbours, the animals disturbed or the public services called out when things go wrong.

It’s not a question about whether fireworks celebrations are enjoyable, but whether the people enjoying them are aware of – or actually paying for – their full cost. Economists call this a “negative externality”. A purchase benefits the buyer and seller, but some of its costs fall on people outside that transaction. Fireworks offer a particularly visible example because the enjoyment is concentrated in time while the consequences are spread among households, public services and wildlife. As a finance researcher, I think this concept is overlooked in the fireworks debate.

Consider injuries. Figures show that 123 hospital admissions in England attributed to fireworks in 2024–25. That is not a count of everyone injured: cases treated without hospital admission are excluded. Preventing such injuries may not cut the NHS budget, but it can free clinical time for other patients. In an overstretched health service, that is an economic benefit even if it never appears as a saving in the Treasury’s accounts.

Pollution creates another unpriced cost. The UK’s official air-quality monitoring has recorded short-lived spikes in fine particles around Bonfire Night, although bonfires also contribute and weather affects how quickly smoke disperses. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs assigns a central estimated damage cost of £114,411 per tonne of fine particulate emissions (known as PM2.5), expressed in 2025 prices to account for inflation. This is not a figure for fireworks: calculating that would require information about their emissions and who is exposed. It does show why a product can have an environmental cost that never appears on its receipt.

Nature belongs on the balance sheet

The damage is not limited to human health. In a peer-reviewed Dutch study, researchers found that approximately 1,000 times as many birds were flying during New Year’s Eve fireworks as on ordinary nights. The disruption extended several miles from the displays. The exact scale cannot be transferred to British Bonfire Nights, but the finding challenges the idea that fireworks affect only those who choose to watch.

Birds forced into sudden flight expend energy and lose opportunities to rest. Pets and livestock may also be distressed. Alongside noise and smoke, spent casings and other waste leave a physical footprint. Sustainability means considering these effects, not simply asking how much carbon a celebration emits.

Yet putting nature on an economic balance sheet requires care. The value of healthy ecosystems is real, but we should not invent a monetary figure for fireworks-related wildlife damage when credible national estimates are lacking. Some effects can be quantified; others must still inform decisions even without an exact price.

The price of fireworks

Fireworks also create value. They support retailers, display organisers and cultural celebrations, including Bonfire Night, Diwali and New Year. The UK government’s 2026 consultation reports that fireworks imports averaged £27 million a year from 2021 to 2024. That is the value of imports, not total industry sales and certainly not what Britain would save by banning them.

If households bought fewer fireworks, they might spend on a local community event, food or another kind of entertainment instead. They might equally save the money. There is no basis for promising that fewer fireworks would automatically increase jobs, GDP or tax receipts.

But GDP and wellbeing are not the same thing. Treating avoidable injuries and clearing pollution may involve paid work without making society better off. The relevant comparison is between the enjoyment fireworks provide and the harm, resources and opportunities their use consumes.

The practical question is not simply whether to completely ban fireworks and take the joy out of Bonfire Night. It makes more sense to ask which forms of celebration produce the most enjoyment with the least harm. Organised displays, fewer private launches, predictable timings and wildlife-sensitive locations could change that balance. Drone and laser shows might offer alternatives, but they also require electricity and equipment; their sustainability should be assessed, not assumed.

This is especially timely. The government’s fireworks consultation closed in October 2026 after receiving more than 140,000 responses from members of the public, businesses, charities and other stakeholders.

Policymakers now have an opportunity to assess the social costs alongside safety, business impacts and cultural value. A credible assessment would be honest about what the evidence shows, and about the nationwide economic savings that cannot yet be calculated. Because when a fireworks celebration leaves a bill for people who never attended, its market price only tells part of the story.

Narmin Nahidi, Assistant Professor in Finance, University of Exeter

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A Dutch family doctor called Tibor Poelmann posted a petition on an online forum for GPs in 2021. He wanted their pension fund to stop investing in oil and gas. It quickly gathered 1,200 signatures.

Three years later the fund, which looks after €10 billion (£8.4 billion) for 25,000 doctors, decided to sell all its fossil fuel investments. The push came from the doctors themselves, through a council of GPs elected by the fund’s members.

Our new paper in the journal Frontiers in Education was inspired by cases like this. Research on who can act on climate change tends to sort the world into governments, markets and campaigners. Professionals fall between those groups. We treat them as a class of climate changemaker with their own means of influence.

Nearly everyone agrees something has to be done, yet on current policies the world is still heading for nearly 3°C of warming. Responsibility is scattered across governments, businesses and individuals, each able to point to someone else who should act first. Psychologists call this diffusion of responsibility. In everyday life, that sounds like “that’s not my job”.

A doctor’s focus is health, a lawyer’s is the rule of law, an engineer’s is structures that stand up and a teacher’s is the children in front of them. Climate change now threatens each of those. Doctors owe duties to patients, and lawyers to clients. Climate change has begun to harm those people, so acting on climate change as part of doing the job well.

Professionals also influence the institutions and decisions that shape how society responds. Doctors decide what gets prescribed and sit on the bodies that write clinical guidance. Lawyers advise the companies whose projects need permission. Engineers build to standards their own institution sets.

Each works inside an institution that needs to change and belongs to a profession that can rewrite its own rules. Health professionals also rank among the most trusted messengers on climate, whatever the listener’s politics. Governments still have to act, and professions are among the things that drive political change. It was doctors who turned smoking from a habit into a health problem, then the laws followed.

Yet professional authority can stall action too. Training instils standards and ethics, so that a patient or client can rely on the result, but those same standards and routines can make established ways of working difficult to challenge.

Without a push, professionals keep running the systems that cause the harm, competently and by the book. Healthcare has increased its greenhouse gas emissions by a quarter since 2016. Top American law schools send graduates into the oil and gas industry at well above the national rate. One student campaign calls this the fossil fuel lawyer pipeline. Teacher training, if it covers climate at all, teaches the science of a warming planet and says little about its social and economic causes.

Three stages

How can a profession begin to change? Our paper identifies three stages at which climate responsibility can become part of professional practice.

First, the profession needs to recognise climate change in its own terms. In medicine that has happened, with more than 200 medical journals jointly calling climate change the greatest threat to global public health. In law it is happening through pledges like Lawyers Are Responsible, whose signatories refuse work that undermines the 1.5°C warming limit agreed by the UN. Teachers can see how climate change undermines children’s learning, as hot classrooms sap concentration plus storms and wildfires close schools.

Second, recognition turns into duty, because it won’t automatically trigger action. The clearest case so far is in law. The Law Society, which represents solicitors in England and Wales, now tells them they have a duty to warn clients about climate risk, and advice that ignores climate looks less and less like competent advice.

Third, the duty is written into the rules and institutions a profession controls, from its codes of conduct and accreditation standards to its pension fund. This is where individual concern can become collective professional practice. That is what the Dutch GPs’ elected council did when it made divestment the fund’s policy. In Canada, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons is writing planetary health, the idea that human health depends on the planet’s health, into the framework that defines a competent Canadian doctor.

Where professions get stuck

Most professions have stalled before the third stage. Medicine has called climate change its greatest threat for years. Yet a student-run audit of 188 health schools in 21 countries, the Planetary Health Report Card, still finds many teaching little about it. Most bar associations have yet to say whether helping to expand fossil fuel production raises any ethical question.

The same questions extend beyond medicine, law and education. Engineers, accountants, planners, social workers and police officers all work under their own codes, regulators and training requirements. Climate change threatens what each profession is there to protect. A few have started to write it into their rules.

Canada’s government has set a target that by 2027, 70% of its engineers, planners, accountants and landscape architects should be able to help clients adapt to climate change. Adapting means preparing for the heat, floods and wildfires that are already here, whatever happens to emissions. Professions Advancing Adaptation Competencies is writing those skills into each profession’s standards.

If you belong to a professional body, ask it three questions. Does its code of conduct mention climate change? Does the training you need to stay qualified cover it? Where is your pension invested? If the answers are no, no and don’t know, our paper sets out how your profession could change them.

Aaron Thierry, PhD Candidate, Social Science, Cardiff University and Mario Veen, Senior Lecturer, Psychology, University of Applied Sciences Utrecht

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Turkey’s central Anatolian plateau is one of the country’s most important agricultural regions, producing wheat, maize, sugar beet and other crops. Yet beneath its cultivated fields, the ground is becoming increasingly unstable.

Large sinkholes, some tens of metres wide and deep, have appeared across the Konya basin, swallowing farmland, and threatening nearby roads and settlements.

These collapses can occur suddenly, sometimes in fields that have been cultivated for generations. Around 20 are opening up every year, according to a recent study.

Known locally as obruks, sinkholes are not a new geological phenomenon. They have existed in the Konya basin for thousands of years, but they have become far more frequent over recent decades.

Konya’s sinkholes are consequently both a geological hazard and evidence of a wider water-management problem. The cavities beneath the fields are the product of geological processes extending over thousands of years. Their recent instability, however, is occurring within a groundwater system profoundly altered by human activity and increasingly exposed to drought.

As representatives of countries all over the world prepare to head to Turkey to discuss climate change at the UN’s Cop 31 conference, Ankara continues to grapple with this escalating environmental disaster at home.

The nation’s disaster and emergency management authority (AFAD) has recently documented 684 sinkholes across Konya, Karaman and Aksaray in Turkey’s agricultural heartlands.

Why are they there?

The growing number of sinkholes is often attributed to drought and climate change. But intensive groundwater extraction for agriculture can also increase the risk of collapse.

Decades of intensive agricultural irrigation have altered the conditions beneath the basin’s surface. Groundwater, which is the layer of water below the Earth’s surface, is also not being replenished during long, dry periods, which adds to the problem.

Konya is a closed drainage basin. This means water entering the basin does not flow towards the sea. It is stored underground, and accumulates in lakes and wetlands, or returns to the atmosphere through evaporation and plant transpiration.

Rainfall is relatively low here, and much of it falls outside the main growing season. Groundwater has, therefore, become indispensable to agriculture, particularly for irrigated maize, sugar beet and fodder crops.

The difficulty is that demand for water has grown beyond the rate at which the aquifers, a body of porous rock or sediment saturated with groundwater, can recover. A recent regional study estimated an average annual loss of groundwater storage, equivalent to 3.4 centimetres of water. This figure clearly points to a system under sustained pressure.

Part of the problem is that Turkey experienced its most severe drought for decades in 2025, putting more pressure on farmers.

Farmers often respond by extracting more groundwater, causing underground water levels to fall. This reduces the pressure exerted by water within the pores and fractures of rocks and sediments, potentially destabilising existing underground cavities and increasing the risk of collapse.

The consequences extend beyond water scarcity, because groundwater also puts stress on underground geological formations. The Konya basin contains extensive carbonate rocks, including limestone. Over long periods, groundwater circulating through fractures dissolves minerals and enlarges openings. This process, known as karstification, can produce underground channels, caves and cavities. Sinkholes form when the material above such voids becomes unstable.

Lower groundwater levels can also change the movement of water and sediment through existing underground cavities, allowing loose material to shift downwards. Where the roof of a cavity is already weak, these changes may eventually lead to collapse.

But the response is highly dependent on local conditions. The depth and shape of underground cavities, the thickness and strength of the layers of rock and sediment above them, the distribution of fractures and the history of groundwater fluctuations all matter.

This helps explain an important finding from a study on sinkhole formation in the Konya basin between 2000 and 2024. The researchers identified a sharp increase in the annual formation rate, from approximately three sinkholes a year during 2000-10 to 32 during 2016-19. Yet the rate subsequently declined to around 22 a year after 2020, despite continuing groundwater depletion.

If falling groundwater is responsible, why would fewer sinkholes form while water levels continue to decline? One possible explanation is that the most vulnerable cavities in some areas have already collapsed. Sinkhole formation depends on the number of unstable underground structures, not simply on the volume of water extracted.

Land is breaking down

The basin is also experiencing another type of ground deformation, known as land subsidence, in which the surface gradually sinks as underground sediments compact. This can cause cracks in the ground and damage to roads and buildings, although the sinking is often too gradual to notice without satellite measurements.

Satellite radar measurements revealed widespread land subsidence in the area, of up to 90 millimetres per year. Unlike sudden sinkhole collapse, this can develop as groundwater withdrawal increases stress on the land and compresses sediments in the ground.

The problem is not unique to Turkey. A global analysis estimated that over 6.3 million square kilometres of land are subsiding by more than five millimetres annually. The researchers identified groundwater extraction as the most influential factor worldwide.

In Konya, the pressure on groundwater is closely connected to agricultural production. Farmers cultivate crops for established markets and processing industries, often under policies that have favoured high levels of production, rather than water conservation.

Irrigation provides a way for farmers to maintain yields of crops during dry years, but it also allows production to continue at levels that the basin’s renewable water supply may not sustain.

However, restricting how much groundwater is extracted without providing support for farmers could impose substantial economic pressure on them, as well as on the nation’s food supply. But continued groundwater depletion could progressively undermine the agricultural production that made the region economically important in the first place.

More efficient irrigation could help, but is not enough. If water saved through improved technology is used to expand the area being irrigated, total groundwater consumption may remain unchanged or even increase.

A long-term response would require reliable monitoring of groundwater levels and withdrawals, enforceable extraction limits, agricultural incentives aligned with local water availability and detailed mapping of geological hazards. Satellite measurements can help identify areas under pressure.

The most immediate danger is that another field, road or building may collapse, putting lives at risk.

Preventing the next sinkhole is difficult. The government could address the problem. But it needs to introduce agricultural policies that treat groundwater as a finite resource, rather than a permanent substitute for rainfall.

Nima Shokri, Adjunct Professor, Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), United Nations University; Technical University of Hamburg

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As temperatures rise and development expands, the number of homes and other structures damaged or destroyed by wildfires across the U.S. is on pace to triple by mid-century, my colleagues and I found in a study just published.

The 2026 wildfire season has been a sharp reminder of that risk and why making homes and properties less vulnerable to wildfires is increasingly crucial. Fortunately, strategies to lower the risk of losing a home to wildfire don’t have to be overly expensive.

The 2026 western fire season

The 2026 wildfire season began with historically low mountain snowpack, early snowmelt and exceptional warmth across much of the West. Even before the nation’s hottest summer on record intensified drought and dried vegetation, fires were breaking out.

Colorado’s Aspen Acres Fire destroyed hundreds of structures in June. Four firefighters died from injuries suffered when the fast-moving Knowles Fire overtook them near the Colorado–Utah border in July. In August, wind-driven fires swept into neighborhoods in Spokane, Washington, damaging more than 800 homes and forcing tens of thousands of residents to evacuate.

In Colorado, the summer monsoon season brought rainfall, helping firefighters gain ground. Across the Rocky Mountain region, lightning continued to start fires, but rain helped keep many fires small in many areas despite above-average temperatures.

Despite this reprieve, Colorado fires had burned more than 318,000 acres by late October, nearly twice the annual average since 2000. Nationally, the total area burned was also well above average. The U.S. spent 48 consecutive days at Preparedness Level 5 – the highest level, indicating that firefighting resources were stretched nationally – compared with a 10-year average of 25 days annually.

Reasons for rising fire risk

Fire is a natural and often beneficial part of many ecosystems, shaping vegetation and supporting biodiversity. However, a century of fire suppression has allowed dry vegetation to accumulate in forests that historically had frequently burned.

Rising temperatures caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels have increased the rate at which the atmosphere pulls moisture from the land, drying soils and vegetation. Researchers estimate that this drying nearly doubled the area burned in western U.S. forests between 1984 and 2015 compared with what would have burned without human-caused climate change.

More people also now live in and at the edges of wildland areas, raising the risk of fires reaching neighborhoods. Human activity has extended the fire season beyond summer, when most lightning-caused fires occur, too. Power lines, vehicles, machinery, burning of debris and campfires can spark fires year-round.

These interacting factors have helped nearly quadruple the annual area burned in the western United States since 2000.

They also contribute to the growing threat of fast-growing fires, which can overwhelm emergency response.

In a 2024 study, my colleagues and I used satellite imagery to measure daily fire growth across the contiguous United States from 2001 to 2020. “Fast fires,” defined as those that burned more than 4,000 acres in a single day, represented just 2.7% of fires analyzed but accounted for 78% of documented structures destroyed and 61% of reported firefighting costs.

A brief burst of growth, often fueled by strong winds or highly flammable materials, can matter enormously, even if a fire’s eventual size is relatively small. And in many ecosystems, fires are getting faster.

More homes in harm’s way

The number of people and buildings in harm’s way has also been increasing in the U.S., raising the risk of damage.

Between 1945 and 2015, development in regions of the country with the highest wildfire risk expanded tenfold, increasing the amount of human exposure to wildfires while also introducing ignition sources and buildings that can burn. Once embers enter a neighborhood, fire can spread quickly from building to building.

My team’s new research suggests that without further action to reduce wildfire risk, the annual number of structures damaged or destroyed nationwide could nearly triple by mid-century. That would mean up to 449,000 structures lost between 2026 and 2060.

We used historical data about development patterns, wildfire area and the fires’ effects to reconstruct the past fire risk, then modeled future fire risk by incorporating weather, climate and housing-density expectations.

We found that roughly one-third of western neighborhoods facing the greatest future risk are low-income communities. In these communities, people may struggle to afford measures to protect their homes, maintain insurance coverage and recover financially after a fire.

How to lower your wildfire risk

These projections are sobering, but actual losses will depend partly on the choices people make now.

For example, homes can be made less likely to ignite with Class A fire-resistant roofs and ember-resistant vents that reduce the potential for burning particles to enter homes. Removing flammable debris, mulch, firewood and vegetation from around buildings also reduces the risk of fire spreading to the home. Community programs are available in many areas to help low-income homeowners reduce their home’s fire risk.

Building homes to be wildfire-resilient can also cost less than people may expect. In a study of new home construction, my colleagues and I found that meeting the two protection levels established by the Colorado fire code increased minimum construction costs by approximately 0.6% and 4.2%. Access to lower-cost materials and homeowner education can help make wildfire resilience more affordable.

Wildfire-resilient construction can lower the risk of losing a home, but it does not completely eliminate it.

Beyond individual buildings, prescribed burning and appropriately designed forest-thinning operations can reduce fuels and alter fire behavior before flames reach neighborhoods. Utilities can strengthen infrastructure and reduce the probability of ignition while limiting disruptions from preventive power shut-offs. Insurance companies can reward measurable risk reduction and help sustain coverage in communities working to become safer.

These measures work best when they reinforce one another. The odds of losing a home to wildfire depend on its construction, its immediate surroundings and the broader neighborhood. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to wildfire risk. As the threat grows, strategies tailored to the environmental, social and economic realities of each community are more important than ever.

Virginia Iglesias, Earth Lab Director, University of Colorado Boulder

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A 115-million-year-old fossil dinosaur bone encased in a dense mat of microbes found in Brazil contains tiny structures resembling red blood cells, and molecular traces of blood.

Along with colleagues from Brazil, Japan and the United States, we’re reporting the discovery today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This is the first direct molecular evidence of compounds from dinosaur blood preserved within structures that look like red blood cells. The find offers an unprecedented window into the biology of extinct animals.

It also expands what we thought possible: that fossils can preserve soft tissues and biomolecules such as blood over millions of years.

A remarkable fossil from Brazil

We studied a fossil specimen of a small dinosaur called Aratasaurus museunacionali, found in the Romualdo Formation in northeast Brazil.

The Romualdo Formation is renowned for its exquisitely preserved fish, turtles, crocodile relatives and pterosaurs. It also contains rare dinosaur material. The site’s unique geochemical conditions have preserved fossils with fine anatomical detail rarely seen elsewhere.

Currently housed at a palaeontology museum in northeast Brazil, the dinosaur fossil consists of an exceptionally well-preserved partial hind limb.

The specimen was in Brazil’s National Museum until a catastrophic fire destroyed much of the museum’s irreplaceable collection in 2018. However, the building holding this fossil was not affected by the fire.

Its name reflects this extraordinary history. Aratasaurus combines the Tupi (an Indigenous Brazilian language) words ara (“born”) and atá (“fire”) with the Greek sauros (“lizard”). The species name museunacionali honours the museum itself.

Together, the name means “the dinosaur born from the National Museum fire”.

What we discovered inside the bone

A key question was whether the structures we saw were really biological remnants – that is, actual blood – or something that may have happened to the fossil later as the tissues were turning to stone.

Some of the most compelling evidence comes from the precise anatomical location of the structures. They are exclusively within vascular canals inside the bone – where red blood cells are found in living vertebrates.

At the same time, the sediment that surrounded the fossil didn’t have any of these structures. This makes it even less likely they came from some sort of external contamination.

We evaluated and ruled out several alternative explanations for the structures. In the end, we believe they’re most likely authentic fossilised red blood cell remains.

Chemical fingerprints of ancient blood

To further strengthen the claim, we also found two chemical “fingerprints” of blood. These had the structure of heme molecules – a key component of haemoglobin, the protein in blood which carries oxygen.

There was a dramatic difference when we analysed the chemistry of the sediment that surrounded the fossil, and the chemistry inside it. The sediment mostly contained compounds from plant and bacterial sources. The fossil bone contained a distinct signature dominated by the heme molecules.

Together, this evidence points to the conclusion that we’re seeing real preserved compounds derived from blood.

Other analysis techniques confirmed the presence of molecules from heme, as well as elements including iron, carbon and nitrogen. We also discovered amino acids associated with collagen, which is found in connective tissue.

How could this be preserved for 115 million years?

The dinosaur was rapidly buried in a low-oxygen environment which slowed down its decay. The blood did not remain fresh or unchanged. Instead, microscopic red blood cells turned into minerals during fossilisation.

Another crucial factor may be the presence of minerals such as hausmannite, which can act a bit like antioxidants. They could stabilise sensitive organic molecules and slow their breakdown.

Together, these conditions preserved biological information at a molecular level – blood and collagen – for far longer than expected.

What the cells reveal

The fossil red blood cell-like structures appear a bit larger and more rounded than the cells found in modern birds and crocodilians.

This difference may be because they were deformed as the bone fossilised. Alternatively, it could suggest the red blood cells of dinosaurs not related to birds were shaped differently than those of birds, their modern relatives.

We’ll need further research to resolve this question. However, the discovery opens intriguing new possibilities for understanding dinosaurs’ bodies at a cellular level.

How sure are we it’s really blood?

Evidence from microscopy, mineralogy, spectroscopy and molecular geochemistry all points toward the same conclusion. We are convinced these are fossilised red blood cell structures containing traces of heme molecules.

Our discovery shows that blood-derived molecules can survive for more than 110 million years under the right conditions. It also provides a plausible explanation of how it happened.

Fundamentally, it suggests soft tissues in fossils are more likely to withstand time than researchers previously thought.

Perhaps the most exciting implication is that museums around the world already hold an enormous, largely untapped scientific resource. Many fossils are not spectacular display specimens. Even so, they may preserve remarkable molecular, chemical and environmental information.

Using modern analytical techniques, we can revisit specimens collected decades ago and ask completely new questions about ancient life.

The fossil was collected and curated through the efforts of researchers including Renan Bantim and Antônio Saraiva of the Regional University of Cariri, along with Juliana Sayão and Alexander Kellner from Brazil’s National Museum and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, who also contributed to the research and facilitated access to the specimen. Other collaborators include Yuta Isaji, Calum Fox, Nana Ogawa and Noa Ohkouchi from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and Jasmina Wiemann from Johns Hopkins University in the US.

Kliti Grice, Founding Director of WA-Organic & Isotope Geochemistry Centre, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.