Earth and Environmental Sciences

This article bridges the gap between inequality and segregation research by introducing a method to decompose income segregation across spatial units, income groups, and income sources, applied to detailed full-population register data for Sweden from 1991 to 2017. Sweden’s sharp rise in income inequality—driven largely by capital income gains among top earners—has coincided with intensifying spatial sorting, especially within cities. We find that segregation is most pronounced at the neighborhood level, where income gaps exceed those between regions; regional segregation has risen by 5%, while neighborhood segregation has increased by 15%, entirely due to capital income segregation. Low-income families, disproportionately foreign-born, have become increasingly concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods, and high-income households have moved away—a pattern shaped by urbanization, immigration, and a shrinking rental housing supply. These trends appear driven less by changes in labor income taxation or welfare benefits than by lower taxation of capital income, wealth, and property, propelling the growing wealth concentration found in the inequality literature.

Increasingly critical focus is being placed on how urban adaptation policies approach issues of justice. Adaptation has been shown to exacerbate existing inequities or create new ones. Framings of justice issues in adaptation policies affect what representations are ultimately translated into practice. This study contributes to the field of adaptation justice by offering a critical look into the way proposed frontrunner cities approach justice issues by employing a frame analysis on 14 urban adaptation policies for the concepts they use and centre the issues around, what issues they focus on and how, and the way justice issues are presented. The results show three frames used in the policy documents: (i) justice through protection, which focuses on protecting the citizens and their ability to adapt; (ii) justice through equity and participation, which stresses equitability in distribution and increased fairness in participation; and (iii) justice through transformation, which suggests that justice issues are more deeply rooted in social structures and systems. We argue that while not all adaptation actions have far-reaching justice consequences, adaptation policies and policymakers should make a cognisant effort to recognise and acknowledge how and what inequities affect the adaptation initiatives and processes, to achieve more just and equitable adaptation outcomes.

The peripheries of cities in Australia are witnessing dynamic socio-spatial changes driven by infrastructure growth and land-use changes. This study investigates how land-use changes and housing developments near legacy industries in a recently established outer suburb of Melbourne lead to land-use conflicts and emerging air quality concerns, such as dust, odour, and noise. Employing a mixed-methods approach that combines spatial analysis with stakeholder interviews, this study situates these conflicts and environmental issues within the fragmented and compliance-driven local planning and regulatory frameworks. Drawing on the lens of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), this study reveals how rapid housing development encroaches on industrial buffer zones, leading to incompatible land-use patterns and subsequent air quality concerns. The findings demonstrate that existing planning and regulatory frameworks are inadequate for managing the nonlinear and emergent dynamics of peri-urban growth, contributing to escalating air quality concerns. This study contributes to the current understanding of peri-urbanisation by exploring the linkages between land use transformations, inadequate planning frameworks and air quality concerns. We further highlight the need for an adaptive, context-specific, local planning framework to anticipate and respond to the dynamic challenges of peri-urban growth.

Australia’s rental crisis is deepening, with older women now one of the fastest growing cohorts at risk of homelessness. At the same time, more than 13 million bedrooms remain underutilised across the housing system, many within the homes of older women living alone. Despite this potential, research has largely overlooked how older women might engage in share housing and how policy frameworks shape these decisions. This pilot study explores older women’s willingness to share, drawing on a survey of members of a community-based government-supported initiative in Queensland that connects women interested in shared living. The findings suggest that share housing among older women is shaped by a combination of financial, regulatory and relational factors. Whilst interest exists, particularly among those in housing stress or motivated by social and ethical considerations, uptake depends on appropriate tax and pension settings, legal protections, and support mechanisms to manage compatibility and risk. By positioning share housing as a viable yet undervalued option for older women, this study offers something rare in housing policy: a low-cost, high-benefit intervention that simultaneously addresses affordability, social connection and supply – a genuine win for older women seeking housing, for those with rooms to share and for the broader community.

Urban density is increasingly on the agenda of urban geographical research where urbanists have in particular foregrounded the political dimension of ever-increasing densification of cities around the world. This article shifts the analytical focus away from structural considerations of politics and density and instead asks: how can we theorise people’s lived experiences with urban density? In this article, the notion of “lived density” is developed to make a conceptual contribution to existing debates on density. Lived density, it is proposed, signifies the practical engagement of being part of and perceiving urban density and the organic living quality of urban density itself. Lived density highlights the subjective, embodied experiences of urban density. We theorise lived density through a close reading of Henri Lefebvre’s work on rhythms and rhythmanalysis, arguing that lived density consists of the tripartite framework of subjectivity, materiality, and relationality. We decipher the conceptual-analytical opportunities which arise from lived density through a discussion of rhythms in a street market in Hong Kong.

Abstract Maintaining healthy pollinator communities is vital for both agricultural and natural ecosystems, but there are many threats to pollinator communities globally. Urbanization is a one of these major threats, but urban green spaces present opportunities for pollinator conservation. The effectiveness of designed urban landscapes in supporting pollinators largely depends upon plant selection and design, and there is an increasing emphasis on incorporating more native plants. To provide guidance on how landscape designs and plant selection influence pollinator communities in new residential developments, we compared floral visitors in two recently established neighborhoods: one with conventional landscaping consisting of turfgrass and mostly non-native ornamental plants, and one without turfgrass and mostly native plants. We recorded visual observations of insects visiting blooming flowers and identified 1,361 individuals from 88 different species. While floral abundance was similar between the two communities, pollinator abundance and diversity was 2–3 times higher in the native plant-dominant landscape, showing that plant species selection was more important than floral abundance. Pollinator communities in the conventional landscapes were a subset of the more diverse communities in the native-based landscapes. The short-term addition of potted flowering native plants to the two neighborhoods increased the observed pollinator diversity in the conventional landscapes. Our results show that incorporating diverse native plantings into new and expanding residential developments can lead to the rapid assembly of diverse, abundant pollinator communities.

Societal Impact Statement Iron (Fe) deficiency limits the physical health, cognitive development, and economic output of billions of people globally, especially children and productive‐age women. Tef is an underutilized and stress‐resilient crop, which is becoming popular for its grains containing high bioavailable Fe and has the potential to mitigate Fe deficiency. In this review, the mechanisms by which plants take up Fe from the soil and store it in their grains are highlighted, which have implications in biofortification strategies. Promoting tef consumption will enhance nutrition in vulnerable communities, fortify food networks, and promote equitable and sustainable agriculture in the face of climate change. Summary Iron (Fe) deficiency is a common problem worldwide, affecting over a quarter of the world's population. This is largely because of the consumption of predominantly major cereal crops such as rice, corn, and wheat, which are low in Fe. The mechanisms of Fe uptake, transport, and accumulation have been studied in model plants such as Arabidopsis thaliana and some major crops. Contrary, these mechanisms have not been investigated in Fe‐rich underutilized crops such as tef ( Eragrostis tef ). Comparison of Fe concentrations across various food crops reveals that tef contains significantly higher Fe levels than major crops such as rice and wheat. Tef has been a staple crop in Ethiopia and Eritrea for thousands of years. In Ethiopia, it is the most important cereal crop, supporting nearly 80 million people. Tef is grown on about 3 million hectares of land in Ethiopia alone, accounting for 30% of the total cereal acreage and producing nearly 5 million tons of grain. In this review, the mechanisms and strategies for Fe transport and accumulation, as well as for Fe uptake in plants, have been discussed in detail. We performed comparative genomics of Fe‐responsive genes in tef and other model and crop plants and concluded that there is a need to scrutinize Fe transport mechanisms in tef that have the potential to improve Fe content in other crops.

Societal Impact Statement Cities can harbor greater plant diversity than other ecosystems, yet how city sociocultural factors may determine differences in plant composition across equivalent urban green space types remains understudied. Here, we compare plant communities in five main urban greenspace types across three Swiss cities representing the country's French (Geneva), Italian (Lugano), and German (Zurich) cultural regions. We found that over half of the species recorded occurred in only one of the three cities, whereas less than a quarter were shared across all three. Our study supports the idea that cities' sociocultural contexts can leave a strong imprint on their urban plant life, underscoring the need to consider sociocultural diversity alongside ecological and planning factors when managing and promoting urban biodiversity.

Humans alter extinction pressures in ways that favor some species over others, causing nonrandom loss of functional diversity. While the three classic models of natural selection within species – directional, stabilizing, and disruptive – are widely used to explain trait evolution, it remains unclear whether they can also capture human‐caused nonrandom functional diversity loss among species. Here we develop a framework to test for nonrandom extinction by tracking how trait means and variances change as species with different functional traits are sequentially lost. Applying this approach to the Caribbean lizard genus Leiocephalus , which has already lost eight of its 32 species and has 10 more threatened with future extinction, we found that past extinctions were directional with respect to ecomorphological traits, as large‐bodied species were disproportionately eliminated, likely due to hunting and introduced predators. In contrast, predicted‐future extinctions are best explained by stabilizing processes, with species exhibiting extreme appendage morphologies most at risk and species with intermediate appendage lengths least likely to go extinct in the future, possibly because this phenotype is better adapted to the deforested habitats that dominate Caribbean islands today. Such a shift from directional to stabilizing nonrandom extinction is expected when natural extinction pressures are replaced by anthropogenic pressures that directionally shift trait distributions to new adaptive optima. By linking trait‐based extinction sequences to classic evolutionary models, our approach provides a generalizable framework for detecting and comparing nonrandom extinction across traits, clades, and ecosystems.

Anthropogenic disturbances are degrading nature at a rate that exceeds its capacity to recover. While considerable research has focused on understanding ecosystem impacts, recovery processes remain comparatively overlooked, particularly in marine ecosystems, where long‐term data on how highly complex systems respond to disturbances are scarce. In this context, we provide decadal insights into recovery patterns in Mediterranean coralligenous assemblages by revisiting a site that had lost 60% of its benthic cover due to an extreme storm in 2008, and comparing it with a nearby, non‐impacted reference site. Using a community trait‐based approach, we evaluated whether, after 14 years, the storm‐impacted site achieved functional recovery, defined as a return to pre‐disturbance levels of trait diversity and dominance. Our results show an initial recovery during the first four years, driven by the intermediate recolonization of local species and nearing pre‐storm values in terms of species size and longevity. However, a decade later, recovery has stagnated, resulting in a more autotrophic and less structurally complex community, with potential consequences for ecosystem functioning. Notably, both the storm‐impacted and reference sites exhibited a similar shift in trait dominance, accompanied by an increase in functional divergence, suggesting that marine heatwaves and global warming are reshaping community structure. These changes may be altering the recovery trajectory of the storm‐impacted site and exacerbating its recovery debt. Overall, our findings provide new insights into how coralligenous assemblages may respond to acute extreme events in the current context of climate change, while highlighting the role of ongoing global pressures in deepening the functional deficits of recovering systems.

Understanding the demographic mechanisms underlying population decline or recovery is critical for conservation and management, yet similar population trends may arise from very different underlying processes. Comparing populations of vulnerable species groups like long‐lived raptors in different environments can reveal how species respond to change. Here, we explore the demographic drivers of population recovery in two white‐tailed eagle Haliaeetus albicilla populations, for which we have comprehensive data available: a mainly coastal population in the Baltic Sea region and an Arctic inland freshwater population primarily in Lapland. We analysed over 50 years of data, including breeding pair counts, productivity, ringing records, visual resightings, and genetic identification of individuals at natal nests and breeding sites. These data were combined in a Bayesian age‐structured integrated population model to estimate key demographic parameters, population trends, and conduct prospective and retrospective analyses. Both populations experienced similar growth rates (Baltic Sea: 8.7% (CRI = −1.1%–16.8%), Lapland: 8.8% (CRI = −7.0–28.0%)) primarily supported by high adult survival typical for long‐lived species. Despite these similar growth rates, demographic pathways differed markedly between populations: subadult survival being higher in the Baltic Sea, whereas adult survival was higher in Lapland. Both populations showed evidence of negative density dependence, and in the Baltic Sea population this appeared to operate primarily through delayed recruitment. This was associated with an increase in the non‐breeding floater cohorts, suggesting increasing constraints on recruitment into the breeding population. Our results demonstrate that comparable population growth can be sustained by contrasting demographic structures, implying that monitoring and management strategies should account for population‐specific processes rather than relying on trends alone. More broadly, this study highlights the value of long‐term, multi‐source data and integrated demographic modelling for identifying density‐dependent mechanisms and understanding recovery dynamics in long‐lived species.

Abstract Landscape features can shape the occurrence and strength of predator-prey interactions by influencing predation risk and prey distribution. In the High Arctic, some bird species select nesting sites with physical features that limit the access by their main terrestrial predator, the arctic fox, though these features do not always provide full protection. We investigated how nest microhabitat characteristics and prey availability modulate nest survival in tundra birds that select pond and lake islets as breeding sites. Over four summers, we analyzed the survival of 132 cackling goose and 55 glaucous gull nests located on islets or on pond and lake shores within a 150 km 2 area occupied by a snow goose colony on Bylot Island, Nunavut, Canada. We also analyzed survival of 537 artificial nests deployed over three summers. We found that islets act as partial prey refuges, with higher nest survival rates on islets than on pond and lake shores. Nest survival generally increased with islet distance from shore, but we found little evidence of this effect for cackling geese and glaucous gulls, which avoided nesting on islets near shore. Moreover, water depth surrounding islets had little to no influence for any nest type. Nest mortality was much higher in a year with relatively low snow goose nest density, suggesting a short-term positive indirect effect of this colonial nesting bird on species nesting on islets. Since the arctic fox was virtually the sole predator of artificial nests, our findings indicate that annual variation in nest survival on islets were driven by a shift in fox foraging behavior in response to changes in prey availability across the landscape. Our study, which integrates multi-year monitoring and field experiments, highlights the interplay between microhabitat selection and predator-multi-prey dynamics in the arctic tundra.

Herbivore responses to host plant concentration and plant community diversity are predicted to depend on diet breadth, yet most studies to date have focused on dietary specialists. The few that have included generalist herbivores have largely been conducted in agricultural settings or measured resources at a single spatial scale, leaving it unclear whether these predictions hold in natural systems across multiple spatial scales. Here, we examine how host plant concentration and plant community diversity shape the population densities of dietary specialist and generalist larval Lepidoptera (caterpillars) in secondary forests of New England. We measured host plant assemblages and densities at scales from 3–400 m to assess the patch size‐specific effects of host concentration and plant diversity. To accurately characterize the resource landscape for herbivores that consume > 1 host species, we weighted host plant concentration by electivity (a measure of each species' observed frequency of association with each host plant relative to its availability) and demonstrate that this weighting is necessary to detect responses that are otherwise obscured. We found that dietary generalists' population densities correlated positively with their host plant concentrations at scales up to 25 m, a pattern that was only detectable when electivity was considered. In contrast, dietary specialists' population densities correlated positively with their host plant densities at scales < 3 m and negatively at scales 25–50 m. This suggests that specialists aggregate in small, dense patches of resources, while their density saturates or declines at intermediate scales, consistent with resource dilution, not concentration. Neither generalist nor specialist caterpillar populations responded strongly to plant community diversity at any scale. These findings demonstrate that herbivore responses to resource concentration are contingent on diet breadth and spatial scale, that detecting generalist responses requires diet‐ breadth‐appropriate measurement, and that the influence of plant diversity on herbivore density documented in agroecosystems may not generalize to structurally complex natural forests.

In the version of this article initially published, in the last sentence of the second paragraph of the “Mechanisms—efficient traffic dispersion” section, the route numbers for Atlanta highways were incorrect and have now been amended in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

The analysis of patterns of trait covariance is of tremendous importance in the study of evolution and development as well as in quantitative genetics. Multivariate quantitative genetics and morphological integration were combined in the 1980s under the latent variable model for integration developed by Wagner and Cheverud. The palimpsest framework builds on this model. Based on a definition of integration as disposition, it distinguishes between the developmental determinants of covariation (integration) and observed phenotypic covariance patterns. Further, the palimpsest distinguishes between the role of the distribution of variance across latent processes that generate covariance versus the developmental architectural features that connect those processes to phenotypic traits. In this paper, we construct a simple simulation to illustrate how these two different aspects of integration relate to observed phenotypic covariance patterns. We show that: 1) changes in the distribution of variance across latent processes can significantly alter both integratedness and covariance structure, 2) increases in the variance of leading processes tend to increase integratedness and the circumstances under which integratedness decreases are more restricted, 3) changes in the relative variances of latent processes can result in discontinuous change covariance structure, 4) changes in which developmental processes are linked to which traits (the process-trait map) can also alter covariance structure and interact with how variance is allocated among processes in complex ways. These findings can serve to inform and ground hypotheses about covariance structures and their interpretation in real biological settings.

Neurodiversity has received considerable attention recently from the general population and academic researchers, coinciding with an increase in formal adult diagnoses and individuals self-identifying as neurodivergent. Many neurodivergent individuals, particularly academic trainees, have reported adverse experiences while participating in STEM fields, citing a lack of support and resources. Further, academic systems are based in a history of ableism which assumes and reinforces normative ways of productivity, speaking, and being within academic spaces. It is thus imperative that the field of biology moves towards more inclusive practices that rethink how to fully support and invest in neurodivergent members of the field, which generate a diversity of thought necessary to promote scientific discovery, and deserve full equity and inclusion in our field. During the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) 2026 meeting in Portland, Oregon, neurodivergent scientists of all levels (from undergraduate to tenured professors) met to discuss their experiences as neurodivergent researchers. We share our roundtable reflections here, conceptualized as neurodivergent perceptions and perspectives. We also offer strategies and resources for neurodivergent individuals to navigate academic spaces, and also suggestions for departments, instructors, advisors to create more inclusive classrooms and lab spaces.

Chemical pesticide exposure is a major contributor to the global decline in honey bee and pollinator numbers. Biopesticides are naturally derived products that were developed as safer alternatives to mitigate the harm caused by the chemicals. The targeted mode of action of biopesticides is said to provide several advantages including low toxicity and minimal physiological harm to non-target insects. However, very few studies have been conducted to verify the effect of biopesticides on the behavior and cognition of non-target insects especially crucial pollinators such as honey bees and bumble bees. In this study, we investigated the effects of a commonly used biopesticide field spray in the Telangana region of India, DOR Bt-1 on the learning and memory of the Western honey bee, Apis mellifera using olfactory conditioning assays. Our results show that high and low doses of the formulation, when ingested, do not affect the learning and long-term memory but have mild effects on odor discrimination in the honey bees. This study contributes to the growing effort to establish evidence-based safety assessment frameworks for biopesticide formulations used in agricultural field applications.