Welcome to In the Spotlight, where each month we shine a light on something exciting, timely, or simply fascinating from the world of science.

This August, we're exploring the science behind the animals that share our planet. From the behaviors and adaptations that help species thrive to the conservation efforts protecting wildlife around the world, animal awareness days like World Lion Day, World Elephant Day, International Cat Day, and International Wolf Day are an opportunity to celebrate biodiversity and discover the research helping us better understand and protect the species that call our planet home.

Latest News Releases

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 22-Oct-2026 15:16 ET (22-Oct-2026 19:16 GMT/UTC)

3-Sep-2026

 

Bats as a form of biological pest control

University of Göttingen
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Labour-intensive harvesting, complex processing: the macadamia is one of the most expensive nuts in the world. This makes it all the more important to protect the trees from pests. An international research team led by the University of Göttingen has now investigated how natural vegetation in and around macadamia plantations affects pest infestation, paying particular attention to bird and bat populations. The researchers were able to demonstrate that the higher the level of bat activity, the lower the incidence of pest infestation. At the same time, yields increased in landscapes with a higher proportion of natural vegetation. The findings were published in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment.

Journal

Agriculture Ecosystems & Environment

3-Sep-2026

 

Probiotic and postbiotic treatments revive heat-stressed corals

Cell Press
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Climate change continues to threaten the world’s coral reefs, which support at least a quarter of all marine life. Though probiotics have been shown to rehabilitate corals in aquarium experiments, demonstrating the efficacy of such microbial therapy in the ocean is difficult. In a study publishing in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports on September 3, researchers establish that both live probiotic and inactivated postbiotic treatments improve coral health—while the animals are under thermal stress during a natural marine heatwave.

Journal

Cell Reports

Funder

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Ocean Science and Solutions Applied Research Institute, NEOM

3-Sep-2026

   

Completing the connectome: How pursuing a map of the fly brain rewired neuroscience

Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus and collaborators have completed a wiring diagram of the central nervous system of an adult male fruit fly, the culmination of nearly two decades of groundbreaking research.

Journal

Cell

3-Sep-2026

 

The blueprint for taste: scientists map the complete circuitry behind an animal’s feeding decisions

Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Everything you eat passes one checkpoint before it enters your body: taste. In a fraction of a second, it decides what gets swallowed and what gets rejected, a judgment call critical to survival. Now, for the first time, researchers at the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) and their collaborators have mapped the complete neural wiring behind this process in an animal, tracing taste signals from sensory neurons across the body all the way to the motor neurons that drive feeding, and revealing neural pathways that could explain how taste triggers anticipatory insulin release before a single calorie is absorbed.

Journal

Cell

3-Sep-2026

 

Indy gene reduction linked to healthier gut microbiota and longer lifespan in fruit flies

Impact Journals LLC
Peer-Reviewed Publication

BUFFALO, NY — September 3, 2026 — A new research paper was published in Volume 18 of Aging on August 12, 2026, titled “Indy reduction decreases aging-related dysbiosis in Drosophila.”

Journal

Aging-US

3-Sep-2026

 

Working together to combat wildfires: Building resilient landscapes

University of Göttingen
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Wildfires in the Mediterranean region are becoming drastically more intense. The recent major fires in France, Spain and Greece show that firefighting efforts are reaching their limits. An international research team led by the Universities of Göttingen and Kassel is therefore calling for a fundamentally new approach to landscape design: in the journal iScience, the researchers demonstrate that wildfire prevention should be conceived and planned in conjunction with nature conservation, agriculture and rural development.

Journal

iScience

3-Sep-2026

 

Climate change won’t simply shrink marine life

University of Helsinki
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Global study of more than 23,000 marine mollusk species projects major shifts in body size by 2100 — including surprising growth in some animals and ocean regions

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

3-Sep-2026

 

ERC Starting Grant for Tom Beneke: Drug resistance in tropical parasites

University of Würzburg
Grant and Award Announcement

Tom Beneke, a researcher from the University of Würzburg, has received an ERC Starting Grant for his work on the tropical disease leishmaniasis. This prestigious European research award is worth 1.5 million euros.

Funder

European Research Council