Potential for cascading impacts of environmental change and policy on indigenous culture.

Global environmental and societal changes threaten the cultures of indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLC). Despite the importance of IPLC worldviews and knowledge to sustaining human well-being and biodiversity, risks to these cultural resources are commonly neglected in environmental governance, in part because impacts can be indirect and therefore difficult to evaluate. Here, we investigate the connectivity of values associated with the relationship Ngātiwai (a New Zealand Māori tribe) have with their environment.

Publisher Correction: The tuatara genome reveals ancient features of amniote evolution.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

The tuatara genome reveals ancient features of amniote evolution.

The tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus)-the only living member of the reptilian order Rhynchocephalia (Sphenodontia), once widespread across Gondwana-is an iconic species that is endemic to New Zealand. A key link to the now-extinct stem reptiles (from which dinosaurs, modern reptiles, birds and mammals evolved), the tuatara provides key insights into the ancestral amniotes. Here we analyse the genome of the tuatara, which-at approximately 5 Gb-is among the largest of the vertebrate genomes yet assembled.

Use of pollen and ancient DNA as conservation baselines for offshore islands in New Zealand.

Islands play a key role globally in the conservation of endemic species. Many island reserves have been highly modified since human colonization, and their restoration and management usually occur without knowledge of their prehuman state. However, conservation paleoecology is increasingly being recognized as a tool that can help to inform both restoration and conservation of island reserves by providing prehuman vegetation baselines.