Sanger Institute’s Tree of Life team say genomes offer invaluable insight into how species will fare under climate crisis
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“We are following the ‘invertebrate of the year’ series with bated breath,” began the email that arrived in the Guardian’s inbox last week.
Mark Blaxter leads the Sanger Institute’s Tree of Life programme, a project that sequences species’ DNA to understand the diversity and origins of life on Earth. But far more importantly, Blaxter and his team are superfans of our invertebrate of the year competition and have offered to map the genome sequence of whoever wins this year.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
04/03/2025 - 06:05
04/03/2025 - 04:41
Action urgently needed to save the conditions under which markets – and civilisation itself – can operate, says senior Allianz figure
The climate crisis is on track to destroy capitalism, a top insurer has warned, with the vast cost of extreme weather impacts leaving the financial sector unable to operate.
The world is fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for many climate risks, said Günther Thallinger, on the board of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies. He said that without insurance, which is already being pulled in some places, many other financial services become unviable, from mortgages to investments.
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04/02/2025 - 23:00
Traditional methods benefit hundreds of species but as new agricultural techniques take over, the distinctive haystacks mark a vanishing way of life
Golden haystacks shaped like teardrops have been a symbol of rural life in Romania for hundreds of years. The 3-metre-high (10ft) stacks are the culmination of days of hard work by families, from children up to grandparents, in the height of summer.
Together they cut waist-high grass, leave it to dry in the hot sun and stack it up to be stored over the winter, combing the hay downwards to protect it from harsh winds, heavy rain and snow. Throughout winter, clumps of it are removed from the haystacks and fed to livestock.
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04/02/2025 - 21:31
ANU climate scientist says ‘everyone is getting fatigued these records keep falling – it’s now incredibly predictable’
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Australia has experienced its hottest 12-month period on record, ending with its hottest March on record, with last month seeing temperatures 2.41C above average, the Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed.
The bureau said its data going back to 1910 showed the 12 months ending in March 2025 averaged 1.61C above average – the hottest of any 12-month period, beating the previous 1.51C mark set from January to December 2019.
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04/02/2025 - 20:47
Animals affected by domoic acid are known to exhibit erratic behavior and poisonings are becoming frequent
A teenager was attacked by a sea lion in southern California, raising concerns that a recent increase in algae-induced poisonings among marine mammals could have elicited the erratic behavior.
Phoebe Beltran initially feared it was a shark when she was bitten repeatedly during a 1,000-yard swim test for the Junior Lifeguards cadet program in Long Beach on 30 March. Relatives onshore saw the sea lion pop its head out of the water before it swam away, the Los Angeles Times reported.
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04/02/2025 - 12:39
Reports predict global heating will bring catastrophes and that air conditioning market could grow by 41%
The world is on track for disastrous global heating – but this will create profits for some air conditioning companies, according to forecasts by leading Wall Street financial institutions.
Recent reports by Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and the Institute of International Finance all make clear the finance sector considers the Paris climate agreement limiting global temperatures, signed a decade ago by nearly 200 nations, is effectively dead and investors should plan accordingly.
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04/02/2025 - 11:24
Buzzing insects may be seen as pests -- but globally, hundreds of fly species migrate over long distances, with major benefits for people and nature, new research shows.
04/02/2025 - 11:00
Hurricane Helene proved a hard truth: a freezer of seeds is the literal version of putting all your eggs in one basket
About a month after Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina last fall, Rodger Winn and I met in an Asheville, North Carolina, supermarket parking lot. He’d driven two hours from Little Mountain, South Carolina, where the passing storm had also left its destructive mark.
“When the power finally came back on,” Winn said, “two of my freezers didn’t work.” Winn was worried not about spoiled food inside, but his seed collection. On that autumn day, in an act of forced downsizing and seed philanthropy, Winn handed over two boxes filled with seeds. He wanted me, as founder of the non-profit Utopian Seed Project, to share the seeds with farmers across the region. The boxes contained a trove of Appalachian varieties: speckled field peas, white mountain half-runner beans, purple-podded bush beans and lots of butterbeans.
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04/02/2025 - 10:50
Appeal court finds in favour of anglers who said plans to clean up river were so vague as to be totally ineffectual
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A group of anglers trying to restore the ecosystem of a river have seen off a challenge by the environment secretary, Steve Reed, who claimed that cleaning up the waterway was administratively unworkable.
Reed pursued an appeal against a group of anglers from North Yorkshire, who had won a legal case arguing that the government and the Environment Agency’s plans to clean up the Upper Costa Beck, a former trout stream devastated by sewage pollution and runoff, were so vague they were ineffectual.
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04/02/2025 - 09:00
If Peter Dutton needs to court the crossbench to form minority government after the election, he would risk putting his Coalition partner offside on climate and environment policy
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If the Coalition wins the election, it will face a concerted push from its junior partner, the Nationals, to weaken and even abandon climate initiatives and promote coal as an interim measure in the Coalition’s nuclear power plan.
That would put Peter Dutton and the Liberals between a rock and a hard place should he seek to form a minority government, given that might require the support of environmentally minded crossbenchers.
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