Global conservation maps often overlook community lands, impacting decision-making and reducing local agency. We focus on the high-profile and regionally important case of Massaha’s ancestral territory (Ibola Dja Bana Ba Massaha). In Gabon, the forest is largely gazetted into logging concessions and described as an Eden-like wilderness despite long-term human presence. We compare Massaha’s biocultural maps to global, colonial,...

Microbial processes regulating carbon cycling in ancient oceans remain poorly understood, yet characterizing these processes is critical for understanding early Earth biogeochemistry. Here, we investigate microbial communities associated with sinking particles regulating carbon cycling in meromictic Fayetteville Green Lake, a mid‐Proterozoic marginal ocean analog. The lake's photic zone spans oxic through sulfidic conditions,...

Light-driven water oxidation by photosystem II sustains life on Earth by providing the electrons and protons for the reduction of CO 2 to carbohydrates and the molecular oxygen we breathe. The inorganic core of the oxygen evolving complex is made of the earth-abundant elements manganese, calcium and oxygen (Mn 4 CaO 5 cluster), and is situated in a binding pocket that is connected to the aqueous surrounding via water-filled ch...

Climate extremes such as droughts are expected to increase in frequency and intensity with global change. Therefore, it is important to map and predict ecosystem responses to such extreme events to maintain ecosystem functions and services. Alongside abiotic factors, biotic factors such as the proportion of needle and broadleaf trees were found to affect forest drought responses, corroborating results from biodiversity–ecosyst...

Hemispheric asymmetry is a fundamental principle in the functional architecture of the brain. It plays an important role in attention research where right hemisphere dominance is core to many attention theories. Lesion studies seem to confirm such hemispheric dominance with patients being more likely to develop left hemineglect after right hemispheric stroke than vice versa. However, the underlying concept of hemispheric domin...

Background The composition of gut microbiota plays a pivotal role in priming the immune system and thus impacts autoimmune diseases. Data on the effects of gut bacteria eradication via systemic antibiotics on immune neuropathies are currently lacking. This study therefore assessed the effects of antibiotics-induced gut microbiota alterations on the severity of experimental autoimmune neuritis (EAN), a rat model of Guillain-Bar...

The African fungus Ceratocystis albifundus does not cause disease symptoms on its wide range of native woody hosts. However, on non-native Acacia mearnsii and orchard-grown Protea cynaroides , it represents an economically significant pathogen. Because previous studies exploring the biological fitness of C. albifundus were constrained by small sample sizes, we aimed to determine how commonly used measures of fitness (growth in...