Using cargo recovered from one of Australia’s most infamous shipwrecks, new Curtin University-led research has revealed how surprisingly sophisticated global supply chains helped source and transport construction materials in the 17th century.

Planetary scientists Brandon Johnson and Alexandria Johnson studied the asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago, killing most of the dinosaurs. They discovered the impact swathed the planet in an insulating dust cloud that caused planetwide spontaneous combustion, atmospheric contamination and population collapse in any species that couldn’t take shelter.

The latests assessment of South Africa’s marine biodiversity has added more than 1,000 marine benthic invertebrate species to the country’s known fauna since 2010, bringing the total known marine diversity to more than 14,000 species. The study highlights the critical role of taxonomy, museum collections, and DNA-based approaches in uncovering hidden biodiversity, while revealing significant gaps in our understanding of South Africa’s marine life.

Persistent herbicide residues can remain in agricultural soils long after application, disrupting microbial communities, nutrient cycling, crop productivity, and the long-term resilience of farmland. A new review highlights how carefully designed teams of microorganisms could offer a more effective way to break down these contaminants than relying on individual microbial strains.

Significance: Empirical evaluations of thermal tolerance for tropical species are sparse, and this reduces our capacity to anticipate the impact of the climate crisis on the undescribed morass of wild biodiversity. While theory predicts that heat tolerances ought to decrease and cold tolerances increase with elevation in the tropics, recent meta-analyses concluded that heat tolerance does not change with elevation. We used more than 100 species of rove beetle from a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and found that heat tolerances decrease and cold tolerances increase with elevation, highlighting the vulnerability of tropical mountain species to increased temperature. Furthermore, our work reinforces the knowledge gaps that exist for diverse tropical species as they experience the complicated impacts of the climate crisis.