October 10th is World Mental Health Day. Despite the progress made in the development and implementation of therapies for mental health conditions, further understanding of the underlying mechanisms are needed. Here we highlight some studies published by Communications Biology that have filled in some of the gaps in our understanding.

The anatomy of an organism provides the principal opportunity for biological insight - evolutionary relationships, function and ecology can all be inferred based on observable structures. From fossils representing the long extinct, to embryos representing the earliest stages of the extant, this collection represents some of our editors’ favourite anatomy-driven Communications Biology articles.

World Microbiome Day on June 27th celebrates achievements in microbiome research, as well as the important role of the microbiome in human and environmental health. This year, our editors have curated a collection of articles from Communications Biology to highlight microbiome research in all its forms. For more information about World Microbiome Day, please visit these resources here and here. You can also find a previous collection of articles commemorating milestones in human microbiota research from editors across the Nature Portfolio here.

The United Nations General Assembly has declared this upcoming decade the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, highlighting how management and research to restore degraded ecosystems, and reverse the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss, are being prioritised worldwide. To address this critical need for empirical research evaluating these efforts, we are opening a call for submissions relating to ecological restoration and rewilding to either Communications Biology or Scientific Reports.

COVID-19 has had a huge impact on our lives since it was first identified in Wuhan in late 2019. Since then, the massive efforts of the research community have greatly enhanced our understanding of the properties of and the host responses to the virus. To mark World Immunology Day 2021, we have compiled a Collection of papers published on SARS-Cov-2 so far in Communications Biology, to be updated as we publish more in this field.

In line with the Earth Day 2021 theme to “Restore Our Earth,” the Communications Biology editors present a Collection of articles that feature important research on climate & conservation, forests, and evolution that further the goal of protecting and restoring our Earth’s biodiversity.

In honour of World Cancer Day, a global initiative that seeks to unite the effort to fight cancer, our editors have selected some of our research highlights in cancer research from the last year to reflect on this ongoing journey. We contemplate the many emerging techniques that are furthering our understanding to improve the diagnosis, treatment and prevention processes, and look forward to another year of exciting developments.

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna for their pioneering work in gene-editing.

New technologies to study stem cells have increased our knowledge about their physiological roles and contributions to development, ageing, regeneration and disease. This collection showcases research articles, reviews and protocols from across the Nature journals to highlight the striking advances made in basic and translational stem cell research.

On this year's World Oceans Day, we reflect upon the oceans that connect us all and the many challenges they face today. To celebrate the currents propelling us toward conservation action, our editors have rounded up a collection of the ocean-related articles at Communications Biology. For more information about World Oceans Day please visit these resources here and here.

Stress affects all forms of life and can often feel like a common presence for us. For this month's collection our editors have selected articles from Communications Biology that describe how life — from the cellular to the population level — reacts and adapts to stressors of different forms and in diverse systems.