Exclusive: UCL scientists find large swathes of southern Europe are drying up, with ‘far-reaching’ implications

Damit die hohen Zölle für die Schweiz tatsächlich reduziert werden, fordern die USA noch einiges mehr von der Schweiz. Eine vom Weissen Haus veröffentlichte Liste zeigt Forderungen, die hierzulande te...

The fundamental problem is this: that most of the means of communication are owned or influenced by the very rich, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Daily swims, power naps and five meals a day – not tips from the latest hit wellbeing podcast, but longstanding traditions that have kept generations healthy in Iceland, Ukraine, France and more …

Report calls for scaling-up of renewable energy and electrification of key sectors to limit peak of global heating

Unabhängige Fachleute sprechen von einem nie dagewesenen Angriff auf die US-Demokratie und die freie Meinungsäusserung.

Der Klimawandel schreitet voran – darum will die Schweiz bis 2050 klimaneutral sein. Aktuell sind wir «nicht auf Kurs». Doch das Ziel ist noch erreichbar.

The rights we enjoy in the UK, and the movement the PM purports to lead, were built on protest. Those rights are in dire peril, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Lord Stern says fossil-fuelled growth is futile as the damage it causes ends in economic self-destruction

Ihre Mission: Sie leiten die Abteilung Beratung und Kommunikation (u.a. die Koordinationsstelle für Amphibien- und Reptilienschutz (karch) und die

Empirical knowledge on how genetic diversity changes through time in populations in the wild is extremely limited. This study aims to contribute toward a better understanding of the dynamics of genetic diversity over time in an amphibian species Red-Listed as endangered in Switzerland, the natterjack toad, Epidalea calamita, which lives along the Swiss Reuss valley, an area Dominated by human activity. We collected samples in 1998 and 2020 from the same area and, when possible, from the same sites (i.e., populations). Observed and expected heterozygosity, and allelic richness (Ho, He, and Ar, respectively) were significantly higher in 1998 than in 2020, while the fixation index (Fst) was significantly higher in 2020 than in 1998. The inbreeding coefficient and the effective population size (Fis and Ne, respectively) did not differ between 1998 and 2020. Bottleneck events were detected in two populations in 1998 and in five populations in 2020. Spatial genetic differentiation among the four populations which could be sampled in both 1998 and 2020 was greater in 2020 than in 1998. In conclusion, genetic monitoring revealed that populations of an endangered amphibian lost genetic diversity and became more isolated over a period of 22 years, corresponding roughly to seven generations. Future research should investigate the causes and consequences of this loss of genetic diversity for individual fitness and population viability and to develop conservation strategies to mitigate further losses of genetic diversity.

Wide ranging and abundant species, often termed common species, play critically important roles in ecosystem functioning. However, conservation practice usually focuses on rare and declining species, including monitoring their state, while population trends of common and widespread species are often logistically difficult to evaluate compared to rare habitat specialists. This is particularly the case for small nocturnal vertebrates such as common amphibians, where abundance data are typically absent across most of their range. Building on previous work, we used national scale volunteer-collected data across Switzerland and Britain to investigate population trends over four decades for Europe’s two most common amphibian species, common toads (Bufo bufo) and common frogs (Rana temporaria). We included an average of 86 populations per year with an average count of 87,900 toads and 74,000 frogs in Switzerland and 80 populations per year with an average count of 75,800 toads in Britain, resulting in a total count of nearly 5.5 million toads across the entire study period. Overall, toad abundance declined in all decades since 1973 in Switzerland (33% abundance reduction) and since 1985 in Great Britain (41% reduction), but there were significant regional recoveries in Britain since 2013. Common frog abundance trends in Switzerland varied and remained positive overall but population growth rate declined after the year 2000. The impacts of such large-scale and ongoing abundance loss of common species may affect the ecosystem services provided by these species and require effective conservation action that expands beyond protected areas.