A new large-scale study led by a research team from the Yale Center for Biodiversity and Global Change has found that wildlife responds not only to how humans reshape their habitats, but also to the simple presence of humans — and sometimes in surprising ways.

Even small changes in how people move through environments can significantly affect animal behavior and could have implications for wildlife conservation efforts, the study finds.

“Our findings provide an important nuance in our understanding of wildlife in a rapidly changing world,” said Walter Jetz, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and director of the Yale Center for Biodiversity and Global Change.

Scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have created a new artificial intelligence (AI) model that helps reveal how genes function together inside human cells, offering a powerful new way to understand biology and disease. The study, published in the May 21 online issue of Patterns, a Cell Press Journal [DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2026.101565], introduces a gene set foundation model (GSFM) designed to learn patterns in how genes are grouped and function across thousands of biological contexts. The work draws inspiration from advances in large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, which learn how words gain meaning depending on their context. In a similar way, a GSFM learns how genes behave differently depending on their cellular “context.”

Overcrowded animals produce an enzyme that damages DNA in eggs, potentially sabotaging reproduction, according to a new University of Colorado Boulder study. The findings could inform new approaches for improving fertility in people and animals.