This paper examines why robust causality assessment is central to toxicology yet increasingly difficult in networked biological systems, including Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) networks and multi-omics datasets. Classical causal frameworks (e.g., Koch/Dale reasoning and Bradford Hill-type considerations) remain useful for scoping, but they offer limited operational guidance for multifactorial, nonlinear, and feedback-dominated...

Climate change is expected to create a range of impacts on biodiversity, land use, and economic activities, but those sector impacts are rarely analysed together. Here, we assess how climate change and socioeconomic narratives will affect land use and biodiversity in the state of Bavaria, Germany. We apply a multi-sectoral modelling approach with two climate projections (RCP 2.6 and 8.5) downscaled from three different climate...

The transition from traditional animal-based approaches and assessments to New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) marks a scientific revolution in regulatory toxicology, with the potential of enhancing human and environmental protection. However, implementing the effective use of NAMs in regulatory toxicology has proven to be challenging, and so far, efforts to facilitate this change frequently focus on singular technical, psycholo...

Motivation Geographic occurrences are essential for biodiversity studies, but publicly available repositories like GBIF often contain errors and biases, especially for taxonomically complex groups like Carex L. (Cyperaceae). This work provides an expert‐curated global dataset of occurrences compiled from different sources to enhance data accuracy and usability. The final dataset includes 384,067 occurrences of 1790 Carex speci...

Risk of bias is a critical factor influencing the reliability and validity of toxicological studies, impacting evidence synthesis and decision-making in regulatory and public health contexts. The traditional approaches for assessing risk of bias are often subjective and time-consuming. Recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) offer promising solutions for automating and enhancing bias detection and evaluation. This...

Balancing increasing demand for wood products while also maintaining forest biodiversity is a paramount challenge. Europe’s Biodiversity and Forest Strategies for 2030 attempt to address this challenge. Together, they call for strict protection of 10% of land area, including all primary and old growth forests, increasing use of ecological forestry, and less reliance on monocultural plantations. Using data on country wide silvi...

The ongoing transition from chemical hazard and risk assessment based on animal studies to assessment relying mostly on non-animal data, requires a multitude of novel experimental methods, and this means that guidance on the validation and standardisation of test methods intended for international applicability and acceptance, needs to be updated. These so-called new approach methodologies (NAMs) must be applicable to the chem...

For reliable pest suppression, benefits of habitat management for natural enemies of agricultural pests need to be consistent over time. Unfortunately, most research projects allow only for one or two years of data collection. Here, we present a five-year study on effects of fungicide reduction and altered plant architecture on arthropod abundances and natural pest control in an experimental vineyard. The vineyard rows were di...

Urbanization is a leading cause of biodiversity loss globally. Expanding cities alter regional ecological processes by consuming habitat and modifying biogeochemical and energetic flows. Densifying cities often lose valuable intra-urban green spaces. Despite these negative impacts, novel urban ecosystems can harbor high biodiversity and provide vital ecosystem services for urban residents. Recognizing the benefits of urban eco...

Oil spills at sea, such as the Deepwater Horizon incident in 2010, are devastating environmental hazards, especially for biodiversity in the maritime ecosystem. In order to help the restoration of coastlines, it is critical to clean the oil up quickly and efficiently with various measures, such as the use of barriers, skimmers, sorbents, dispersing agents, in situ burning, and biological agents. However, most of them still cau...

Glyphosate ( N -[phosphonomethyl]-glycine) is the most widely used herbicide worldwide. Due to health concerns about glyphosate exposure, its continued use is controversially discussed. Biomonitoring is an important tool in safety evaluation and this study aimed to determine exposure to glyphosate and its metabolite AMPA, in association with food consumption data, in participants of the cross-sectional KarMeN study (Germany)....