Waiting for ages for a bus to come along only for two to arrive at once is guaranteed to raise a frown, or worse. But, in this instance, two buses together are having a quite different effect. The buses concerned are two back-to-back ‘Letters’ that appeared on October 23 2011 in the journal Nature (Licausi […]

… that blows nobody any good” is an old English idiom that suggests that most bad things that happen have a good result for someone, somewhere. And Markus Hauck and colleagues in Göttingen, Germany, have illustrated this nicely – and rather literally – with some work looking at lichens growing in forests in Germany. In […]

Ecosystem services are not a meaningful framework of interpretation of human-environment relations for the vast majority of people, although the term has gained traction in science and policy. Culturally the concepts which have most meaning are those of nature. And the public does appreciate the benefits of provisioning services, for example the supply of food […]

Numerous communities in developing countries depend on bananas as a staple food and as a source of income. The vast majority of producers are smallholder farmers who grow most of the world production, estimated by the FAO to be more than 125 million metric tons in 2008. Less than 15% of global production is exported. […]

Deterioration of biodiversity jeopardises the wealth and employment we derive from nature, and endangers our wellbeing. In the EU, only 17% of habitats and species and 11% of ecosystems protected under EU legislation are in a favourable state. The targets for 2020 include; improvement in 100% more habitat assessments and 50% more species assessments under […]