QMUL Centre for Biodiversity and Sustainability News

Centre for Biodiversity and Sustainability presents at QMUL Climate Action Week

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0100

In this year's university-wide climate action week, the Centre for Biodiversity and Sustainability (CBS) represented the Faculty of Science and Engineering through the exhibition From London to the White Continent: Cooperation, Science and Climate Action in the Graduate Centre Foyer. The exhibition featured posters of CBS science highlights, various items used by the British Antarctic Survey, and series of photos from Ukraine's Vernadsky Antarctic research base, and a video presentation with interviews of CBS scientists and a live stream to the research base. The exhibition attracted wide interest from visitors of the Climate Action Week, and QMUL staff and students.

New journal Advances in Pollinator Research launched by Centre for Biodiversity and ...

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0100

Pollinators comprise a taxonomically diverse group – including insects, mammals, birds, and more rarely, amphibians, reptiles, and even gastropods – that support wild plant communities and underpin global food production systems. Today, a new journal has been lauched dedicated to the study of this essential ecosystem compoment: Advances in Pollinator Research. CBS member Dr Rachel Parkinson is on the founding Editorial Board Team as Subject Editor, and has been involved with the journal's initiation. The first article in the journal, co-authored by Dr Parkinson, explain how the journal aims to transform how pollinator science is shared and translated into real-world action.

"This engine is grinding to a halt" - Nature slowing down as climate change gains pace

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0100

The Centre for Biodiversity and Sustainability recently uncovered a global ecological paradox. While it is widely expected that accelerating climate change will speed up nature's pace—forcing species to replace each other more rapidly—we found the exact opposite. By analyzing a century of data across marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems, we discovered that local species turnover is actually slowing down. Lead author Dr. Emmanuel Nwankwo uses a striking analogy to explain this: "Nature functions like a self-repairing engine, constantly swapping out old parts for new ones. But we found this engine is grinding to a halt." The study, published in Nature Communications, suggests that widespread habitat degradation has depleted the "spare parts" of this engine: the regional pools of species capable of surviving in modified ecosystems. Without a diverse species pool to draw from, the internal dynamics of these communities are seizing up, even as climate change accelerates. Professor Axel Rossberg, co-author of the study, said: "We were surprised how strong the effect is. Turnover rates typically declined by one third." This research highlights the complex, often counter-intuitive responses of biodiversity to human impact. It is just one example of the diverse research we undertake at SBBS, where we combine fieldwork at sites around the world with data science and theoretical modelling to truly understand life in a changing world.

UK Annual Bioenergetics Conference

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Location: Arts 2 Lecture Hall and Foyer Join us for the UK Christmas Bioenergetics Meeting on 15th December! Plenary Lecture: Redox Regulation of Photosynthetic Electron Transport by Anja Krieger (CEA, Sacley, France). Have a look at the preliminary programme to find out more. As usual, there is no registration fee. The event is sponsored by the Centre for Biodiversity and Sustainability and the Centre for Molecular Cell Biology at QMUL, as well as the Biochemical Society and PSI. Refreshments and lunch will be provided. To make sure that we order enough food and drink, we'd be grateful if you could fill in registration as soon as possible. Student members of the Biochemical society are welcome to apply for travel support . See you soon!

UK Ash Trees Evolve to Resist Dieback

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 23:00:00 +0100

Research (published in Science) led by Profs Richard Nichols and Richard Buggs has uncovered early-stage signs of natural resistance to ash dieback—a fungal disease expected to kill half of the UK's 80 million ash trees. By comparing the DNA of older trees, present before the fungus arrived in 2012, with younger saplings, the team identified subtle genetic shifts across thousands of locations around the ash genome. These shifts suggest that the natural selection is favouring variants that confer greater disease resistance in young trees regenerating on the woodland flour under the dying mature trees. This adaptive response offers hope that future generations will be able to enjoy ash woodlands, and the research will be used to design human interventions to accelerate the adaptation, including avoiding unnecessary felling to maintain the populations' genetic diversity. The Guardian and the BBC reported on this story.

Old termite mounds help support high insect biodiversity in tropical rainforests

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 23:00:00 +0100

Imagine wandering through the lush Bornean rainforest, past towering trees and vibrant foliage. You might not give a second thought to termite mounds scattered across the forest floor. But what if we told you these seemingly unassuming structures are bustling metropolises for insects, even long after their original inhabitants have moved on? That's precisely what a new study, co-authored by Dr Tom Fayle, has revealed! Published in Soil Ecology Letters, the research uncovered that abandoned termite mounds are critical microhabitats, teeming with diverse insect life, particularly ants, in both untouched and previously logged rainforests. Dr Fayle, Dr Kalsum M. Yusah of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and Dr Jiří Tůma of the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences, discovered that these unoccupied mounds can host five to nine times more invertebrates than the surrounding soil. This means hundreds of thousands of insects per hectare are finding refuge and thriving in these 'ghost towns' of the termite world! This incredible finding challenges our understanding of rainforest biodiversity and highlights the often-overlooked role of "ecosystem engineers" like termites. Find out more about this remarkable discovery on the main QMUL website: https://lnkd.in/et7VBrUn Or dig into the paper here: https://lnkd.in/e5c8PFxX