Actions speak louder than words: the case for responsible scientific activism in an era of planetary emergency.

The world's understanding of the climate and ecological crises rests on science. However, scientists' conventional methods of engagement, such as producing ever more data and findings, writing papers and giving advice to governments, have not been sufficiently effective at persuading politicians to act on the climate and ecological emergency. To date, governments' decisions (such as continuing with vast subsidies for fossil fuels) clearly show that powerful vested interests have been much more influential than the amassed scientific knowledge and advice.

The biospheric emergency calls for scientists to change tactics.

Our current economic and political structures have an increasingly devastating impact on the Earth's climate and ecosystems: we are facing a biospheric emergency, with catastrophic consequences for both humans and the natural world on which we depend. Life scientists - including biologists, medical scientists, psychologists and public health experts - have had a crucial role in documenting the impacts of this emergency, but they have failed to drive governments to take action in order to prevent the situation from getting worse. Here we, as members of the movement Scientist Rebellion, call on life scientists to re-embrace advocacy and activism - which were once hallmarks of academia - in order to highlight the urgency and necessity of systemic change across our societies.

Conservation needs to evolve to survive in the post-pandemic world.

The conservation of biodiversity-and the vital ecosystem services it generates-is one of the greatest challenges humanity faces, yet the field faces drastic funding cuts as society realigns its priorities in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we argue that diverting attention from conservation would, however, increase the risk of further global health crises because the emergence of novel infectious diseases is partially driven by global environmental change. As the discrepancy between conservation needs and society's willingness to pay for them grows, conservation will have to evolve to stay relevant in the age global change-induced human infectious disease.

Conservation must capitalise on climate's moment.

The health of the natural environment has never been a greater concern, but attention to biodiversity loss is being eclipsed by the climate crisis. We argue that conservationists must seize the agenda to put biodiversity at the heart of climate policy.

Quantifying the impacts of defaunation on natural forest regeneration in a global meta-analysis.

Intact forests provide diverse and irreplaceable ecosystem services that are critical to human well-being, such as carbon storage to mitigate climate change. However, the ecosystem functions that underpin these services are highly dependent on the woody vegetation-animal interactions occurring within forests. While vertebrate defaunation is of growing policy concern, the effects of vertebrate loss on natural forest regeneration have yet to be quantified globally.

On specimen killing in the era of conservation crisis - A quantitative case for modernizing taxonomy and biodiversity inventories.

Background To The Work: For centuries taxonomy has relied on dead animal specimens, a practice that persists today despite the emergence of innovative biodiversity assessment methods. Taxonomists and conservationists are engaged in vigorous discussions over the necessity of killing animals for specimen sampling, but quantitative data on taxonomic trends and specimen sampling over time, which could inform these debates, are lacking.

Methods: We interrogated a long-term research database documenting 2,723 land vertebrate and 419 invertebrate taxa from Madagascar, and their associated specimens conserved in the major natural history museums.

Use of Mangroves by Lemurs.

Despite an increasing recognition of the ecosystem services provided by mangroves, we know little about their role in maintaining terrestrial biodiversity, including primates. Madagascar's lemurs are a top global conservation priority, with 94 % of species threatened with extinction, but records of their occurrence in mangroves are scarce. I used a mixed-methods approach to collect published and unpublished observations of lemurs in mangroves: I carried out a systematic literature search and supplemented this with a targeted information request to 1243 researchers, conservation and tourism professionals, and others who may have visited mangroves in Madagascar.

Discovery of an island population of dwarf lemurs (Cheirogaleidae: Cheirogaleus) on Nosy Hara, far northern Madagascar.

The species-level diversity of Madagascar's lemurs has increased hugely over the last two decades, growing from 32 species in 1994 to 102 species in 2014. This growth is primarily due to the application of molecular phylogenetic analyses and the phylogenetic species concept to known populations, and few previously unknown lemur populations have been discovered during this time. We report on a new population of dwarf lemurs (Cheirogaleus sp.

Comparing Methods for Prioritising Protected Areas for Investment: A Case Study Using Madagascar's Dry Forest Reptiles.

There are insufficient resources available to manage the world's existing protected area portfolio effectively, so the most important sites should be prioritised in investment decision-making. Sophisticated conservation planning and assessment tools developed to identify locations for new protected areas can provide an evidence base for such prioritisations, yet decision-makers in many countries lack the institutional support and necessary capacity to use the associated software. As such, simple heuristic approaches such as species richness or number of threatened species are generally adopted to inform prioritisation decisions.

Cooperative rescue and predator fatality involving a group-living strepsirrhine, Coquerel's sifaka (Propithecus coquereli), and a Madagascar ground boa (Acrantophis madagascariensis).

The interactions between primates and their snake predators are of interest because snakes have influenced the evolution of primate visual systems and predation has driven the evolution of primate behaviour, including group living. However, there are few accounts of primate-snake interactions in the wild. We report an incident from Northwest Madagascar in which a large female Madagascar ground boa (Acrantophis madagascariensis) captured an adult female Coquerel's sifaka (Propithecus coquereli); upon capture, the prey's group members proceeded to bite and scratch the snake until it released the prey, which survived.