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The world’s species are playing musical chairs: how will it end?

Many communities aren’t losing biodiversity, but ecosystems are changing rapidly and the future is far from rosy.
  1. Gayathri Vaidyanathan

    1. Gayathri Vaidyanathan is a freelance reporter in Bangalore, India.

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A man walks through a lush green forest in New Zealand

The number of plant species in New Zealand has doubled since humans settled there about 800 years ago. Credit: Matthew Lovette/Education Images/UIG/Getty

In June 2018, 180 cars fanned out across Denmark and parts of Germany on a grand insect hunt. Armed with white, funnel-shaped nets mounted on their car roofs, enthusiastic citizen naturalists roamed through cities, farmlands, grasslands, wetlands and forests. The drivers sent the haul from their ‘InsectMobiles’ to scientists at the National History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Leipzig.

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Nature 596, 22-25 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02088-3

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