Abstract A century after the Scopes Trial focused America’s attention on whether teaching evolution compels acceptance, answers remain unresolved. Nearly 100 studies investigating the knowledge–acceptance relationship have produced contradictory results. We predicted that answers to longstanding questions—How are knowledge and acceptance related? Does acceptance change with instruction? What is religiosity’s role?—depend on study design. Using planned linear contrasts within multivariate models and a large, variable-rich dataset from a single gateway course, we emulate common study designs (e.g., single timepoint, variable omission) to test how these choices influence conclusions. Across designs, the same dataset reproduced the full range of findings in the literature: positive or negative relationships, increases or decreases in acceptance, and presence or absence of religiosity moderation. Results show that conclusions depended on several study design factors, most of which have not been previously tested. Our study provides a new framework for resolving longstanding questions about the knowledge–acceptance relationship.
The illegal wildlife trade is a dynamic, transnational form of environmental crime that intersects with numerous socioeconomic and public health issues. Despite increased global efforts to combat the illegal wildlife trade, significant gaps with implications for prevention exist in understanding plausible links among the illegal wildlife trade, traditional medicine, zoonotic diseases, and wildlife conservation. In this article, we review threat reduction for environment, people, and animals (TREPA) research, which explores the intersections of the illegal wildlife trade, anthrax, and traditional medicine within portions of the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area. TREPA's approach involved knowledge coproduction through an indaba, a traditional African method for decision-making. The TREPA indaba helped advance large-team science and community coproduction of knowledge about appropriate research methodologies, strengthened preparedness, and suggested response strategies. The indaba is one model that could be adapted and applied to other contexts, leveraging the benefits of community-centered research methods in addressing global challenges such as those associated with One Health.
Abstract At a Japanese museum, a poster for the rediscovered fairy lantern Thismia kobensis read, “Hello—after 30 years, I’m back.” The message made tangible an idea that had guided the description: naming a species can open, rather than close, its biological story. Drawing on four recently named Japanese plants, I show how names and diagnoses supported rediscovery, enabled separate conservation assessment of an overlooked lineage, connected scattered observations, and preserved a record of shared discovery. A name does not guarantee attention or protection. It can nevertheless give evidence, institutions, and care a shared address.
Urban megaregions are polycentric, highly connected networks of urbanised nodes. Human management and landscape hyperconnectivity make these systems fundamentally different from individual cities and other urban regions. Here, we present the ‘Urban Megaregion Amplification Hypothesis’, describing patterns that emerge at the regional level due to feedbacks between energy inputs and organism dispersal facilitation. These feedback loops amplify ecological processes and alter biodiversity patterns. We put forward 6 predictions: the urban megaregion metacommunities are structured under the mass effects paradigm; biodiversity increases within nodes but communities across the megaregion become more similar; gene flow increases and the gene pool is homogenised; trophic networks simplify and rely on human subsidies with mesopredator release; and temporal dynamics are altered by energy inputs and human management.
Abstract Animal-borne telemetry has transformed wildlife ecology, but its implementation in terrestrial systems remains constrained by the invasive, logistically demanding need to physically capture and handle animals. This traditional framework favors long-duration monitoring of relatively few individuals at the expense of temporal resolution and population coverage. Here, I propose capture-free, autonomous instrumentation as the basis for a broader shift in how wildlife telemetry data are collected and interpreted. Drawing on and synthesizing earlier developments in autonomous marking of terrestrial mammals and complementing these with proof-of-concept GPS collar deployments in an ungulate and a canid, I demonstrate the operational feasibility of this approach. Decoupling device deployment from direct human–animal interaction enables a high-throughput telemetry framework characterized by shorter deployments, expanded population coverage, and finer temporal resolution. Crucially, eliminating capture-related disturbance advances animal welfare and lessens observer effects, thus strengthening the ethical foundation and scientific validity of wildlife telemetry.
