Where human settlements abut or intermix with wildlands, people may encounter animals that host zoonotic pathogens which can spillover to cause human disease. Known as the wildland–urban interface (WUI), this zone occupies around 5% of the Earth's surface and is home to 3.5 billion people. The rapid spread of SARS‐CoV‐2 has demonstrated the importance of understanding risk factors for disease among an increasingly urbanized po...

The incidental capture by marine fisheries as bycatch poses a global threat to pelagic sharks and rays. In large, industrialized fisheries that often operate in areas beyond national jurisdiction, at least 22 threatened species of pelagic elasmobranchs are caught as bycatch, representing the majority of megafauna bycatch in tuna fisheries. Here, we investigate (1) the efficacy of the current policies of the five tuna‐related R...

The focus on flag States for the purpose of attributing fisheries catch is inconsistent with the assignment of sovereign rights to coastal States under international law and undermines equity in contemporary quota allocation negotiations. We propose modernizing reporting frameworks to include zone-based reporting of fish catches to more equitably present data, ensure consistency with the Law of the Sea, and better support the...

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an interconnected and tightly coupled globalized world in rapid change. This article sets the scientific stage for understanding and responding to such change for global sustainability and resilient societies. We provide a systemic overview of the current situation where people and nature are dynamically intertwined and embedded in the biosphere, placing shocks and extreme events as part of th...

Inaccurate or incomplete diagnosis of the root causes of overfishing can lead to misguided and ineffective fisheries policies and programmes. The “Malthusian overfishing narrative” suggests that overfishing is driven by too many fishers chasing too few fish and that fishing effort grows proportionately to human population growth, requiring policy interventions that reduce fisher access, the number of fishers, or the human popu...

Summary Chytridiomycota, often referred to as chytrids, can be virulent parasites with the potential to inflict mass mortalities on hosts, causing e.g. changes in phytoplankton size distributions and succession, and the delay or suppression of bloom events. Molecular environmental surveys have revealed an unexpectedly large diversity of chytrids across a wide range of aquatic ecosystems worldwide. As a result, scientific inter...