Natural History Museum Magazine Spring 2025

Dodo detectives

Museum scientists reveal the truth about how these iconic birds looked and lived

Until 29 June 2025

Welcome

Facing the future

I’m delighted to welcome you to the rst Natural History Museum magazine of 2025.

In 2031, we’ll be celebrating 150 years of the Museum, and we’re thrilled to launch our new campaign. Following the redevelopment of the Museum’s gardens last summer, we’re working to transform our much-loved building at South Kensington, restore the architectural glory of our galleries and take our mission to create advocates for the planet to the next level – and we need your help.

Our new gallery Fixing Our Broken Planet –which you can experience from this spring – is just the start of the future-focused, changemaking exhibits we have planned. It explores some of the solutions to today’s environmental challenges and seeks to inspire even more visitors to care about the natural world on which we all depend. See page 62.

At the time of writing, I’m hoping this spring will not be as wet as last year, when cool, wet and cloudy weather caused butter ies and other invertebrates to experience their worst year on record. Fortunately, experts at the Museum assure me that an ‘insect apocalypse’ is not as cut and dried as it may appear, with further research needed to understand the long-term global picture. Find their insights on page 24.

As well as their work to understand how human activities are changing biodiversity, scientists from the Museum have also been

We’re restoring the architectural glory of our galleries and stepping up our mission to create advocates for nature

busy contributing to the discovery of new species around the world. From new dinosaurs to new spiders, meet some of the extraordinary species that were described for science in 2024 on page 38. And nd out why the dodo was not the ‘slow and clueless ball of feathers’ depicted in popular culture but was, in fact, superbly adapted to its Mauritian environment. Finally, thank you! We feel exceptionally privileged to be blessed with such a passionate and committed group of supporters who make all of this possible.

Dr Doug Gurr Museum

Director

MAKE THE MOST OF BEING A SUPPORTER

The Anning Rooms

Named in honour of legendary fossil hunter Mary Anning, this suite is exclusively for your enjoyment. Tuck into tasty lunches and snacks in the restaurant, take in the views from the lounge, or read a book in the study area.

Exhibitions

Get free, unlimited entry to all of the Museum’s ticketed exhibitions, such as Wildlife Photographer of the Year 60, and guaranteed entry to our free exhibitions and installations.

Exclusive events

Enjoy private exhibition views, workshops and a series of talks, Dig Deeper, led by Museum scientists. As well as discounted tickets you will also receive priority booking and access to a special Members’ Bar on the night.

Shop and café discounts

Receive a 20 per cent discount in the Museum’s shops – which are stocked with a wide range of inspiring gifts, books and clothes – as well as a 10 per cent discount in our cafés and restaurants.

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Issue 57 Spring 2025

Dr Paul Taylor Paul is an invertebrate palaeontologist specialising in bryozoans. His main interest is in the evolution of these animals.

Karolyn Shindler

The author of Dorothea Bate’s biography, Karolyn has written extensively for NHM magazine (formerly Evolve).

Hein Van Grouw

Senior Curator of Birds at Tring, Hein worked in the bird collections of Naturalis Dutch Centre for Biodiversity from 1997–2009.

Back from the dead?

How the dodo may return

©Julian Hume

52

Features

24 Where have all the wasps gone?

2024 was terrible for ying insects in the UK, but does one bad year spell catastrophe for global invertebrate populations? Museum scientists explain why more research is needed to nd out.

32 The truth about dodos

The dodo is one of the most famous birds in the world, yet little is known about how it lived. Now Museum researchers are reinventing its image and leading the hunt for fossil DNA.

38 Meet our new species

With Earth facing a biodiversity crisis, it has never been more important to understand the life with which we share our planet. In 2024, scientists described over 190 new species.

46 Who’s a clever bird?

Crows have long been considered cunning. But their intelligence may be far more advanced than we thought possible, akin to that of children and great apes.

52 Discovering Dorothea

Fearless fossil hunter and explorer Dorothea Bate found bizarre fossil animals while struggling to be taken seriously as a scientist. A newly discovered diary casts further light on her remarkable life.

58 Standing up for nature

Damaged coral reefs in Zanzibar are being revived thanks to arti cial reefs and Community & Conservation Ranger Hija Uledi.

62 NHM150: A catalyst for change

Help us transform the Museum, and revitalise four existing galleries, in preparation for our 150th anniversary in 2031.

Journal

12

New at the Museum

This issue, we nd out how our garden’s audio guide was created, get roarsomely excited about our rst-ever touring show, Dinosaurs Live!, and reveal the next set of coins in The Royal Mint’s Tales of the Earth series.

16 What’s on Events for Museum Members and Patrons, plus a 60-second chat with Mark Moseley.

18 Science in focus:

Digging into soil pollution

Revealed: how soil pollution has surpassed climate change as the top threat to underground biodiversity.

20 Inside story: Dr Jesús Hernández-Orts From ukes to atworms, the Museum’s Senior Curator of Parasitic Worms shines a light on our great collection of these species.

22 Exceptional specimen: Fulgurite

Witness fossilised lightning – a natural tube of fused melted glass, formed when lightning strikes the ground.

Every

issue

6 View nder

Be amazed by three extraordinary images that inspired everyone at the Museum.

66 From the Archive

Read how Grace Edwards’ work as a model maker at the Museum was not just life-like, but also life-saving.

Senior Editor Helen Sturge

Editorial team Kevin Coughlan, Josh Davis, Alessandro Giusti, Holly Murphy, Dr Peter Olson, Jennifer Pullar, Dr Helen Robertson, Professor Sara Russell, Dr Tom White and Colin Ziegler

For Our Media

Editor Sophie Stafford

Art Editor Robin Coomber

Production Editor Rachael Stiles

Account Manager Debbie Blackman

Creative Director Matthew Pink

Contributors James Ashworth, Paul Bloomfield, Mark Boyd, Dr Gavin Broad, Georgie Britton, Dr Victoria Burton, Professor Nicky Clayton, Iona Cunningham-Eurich, Hana Dethlefsen, Lottie DodwellWilliams, Ben Gibson, Dr Doug Gurr, Dr Jesús Hernández-Orts, Dr Julian Hume, Justin Isip, Lucy Minshall-Pearson, Mark Moseley, Lizzie Raey, Kathryn Rooke, Karolyn Shindler, Dr Paul Taylor, Victoria Thomson, Hija Uledi, Hein Van Grouw, Judith White

With thanks to Liz Church, Nicola Cook, Eliza Fitzherbert, Lucie Goodayle, India Main, Sarah Ralph, Jemima Rellie, Penny Ruszczynski

The views expressed in Natural History Museum magazine do not necessarily reflect those held by the Natural History Museum. Produced in association with Our Media. ourmedia.co.uk

All photographs and copy © 2025 The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London unless otherwise stated. If you would like copies of any Museum images please contact the Museum Picture Library on 020 7942 5401.

ISSN 2044-7582

The paper used for this publication is responsibly sourced, and has enabled the capture of 57kg of CO2 at Thorney Coppice, Northamptonshire. Learn more at forestcarbon.co.uk

Natural History Museum magazine is mailed in packaging using potato starch along with other biological polymers. It is totally biodegradable and compostable and can be disposed of in the green recycling bin or a home compost bin. It can also be used in your food waste caddy.

Our Media Company is working to ensure that all of its paper comes from wellmanaged, FSC®-certified forests and other controlled sources. This magazine is printed on Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®) certified paper. It can be recycled, for use in newspapers and packaging.

Viewfinder

Extraordinary images of our natural world

Twin-horned giant

Thanks to its pair of giant horns, Arsinoitherium zitteli is one of the better-known fossil mammals from the Eocene and Oligocene. Standing about 1.75m tall, this stocky herbivore resembled a rhino, though it’s more closely related to the elephant, and spent most of its time grazing fruits and leaves in mangrove swamps.

The impressive double horns are thought to have been hollow and made of bone that probably had a keratin sheath, like a cow’s horns. There were two small, knob-like horns behind them. Experts theorise that the horns were used to produce loud mating calls and compete with rival males, since these formidable animals had few predators as adults.

Arsinoitherium was rst found southwest of Cairo in the Fayum Depression, the palaeontological equivalent of the Valley of the Kings, and so was named after Queen Arsinoe, the wife of King Ptolemy.

VISIT OUR SHOP

Fossils: The essential guide, by Museum palaeontologist Dr Paul Taylor, explores what fossils like Arsinoitherium reveal about the history of life on Earth. Priced £20, it is available in the Museum’s Shops. Members and Patrons get a 20 per cent discount.

Remembering Tigers

Remembering Tigers is the ninth edition in the Remembering Wildlife book series and is one of the most beautiful co ee table books on tigers ever seen. Witness the lives of these majestic and adaptable big cats through stunning images donated by the world’s leading photographers. From cubs to adults and Russia’s snow-clad forests to India’s

shimmering grasslands, 88 photos o er a visual feast – and a poignant reminder of the challenges tigers face. Today, there are only around 5,500 left in the wild. The series has so far raised more than £1 million for conservation projects working to protect threatened species.

Remembering Tigers is available from all good bookshops, priced £49.50.

LISTEN TO THIS Be inspired by the Remembering Wildlife podcast and enjoy exciting interviews with some of the projects supported: linktr.ee/ ThisWildLifePodcast

Fixing Our Broken Planet

Biodiversity is essential for the health of the planet, but only 75 per cent of Earth’s biodiversity is intact today. The Sumatran rhino is just one species under threat. Historically found all over southeast Asia, today fewer than 80 individuals remain.

This reclusive rhino lives deep in dense rainforests that are being felled to make way for co ee and oil palm plantations. Indonesia was once one of the most wildlife-rich places on Earth, but scientists at the Natural History Museum estimate that, today, only 60 per cent of its biodiversity is intact. They’ve created the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) model to track global biodiversity, measuring how thousands of species are being a ected by farming, pollution and burning forests, and to help protect areas most at risk.

VISIT THE MUSEUM

Find out more about this story and others in Fixing Our Broken Planet, a free, new permanent gallery about our relationship with nature, which opens this spring.

Journal

A world of discovery awaits you in our round-up of Museum news

Feel our V-shaped Theropod footprint with its long, slender toes. Or touch the antlers on our sculpture of a male stag beetle.

Bringing our garden to life

Our new Museum gardens o er a space that’s inclusive and accessible – and our recently launched audio guide will help everyone journey through time.

The Museum’s gardens tell the incredible and dramatic story of our planet’s history, spanning 2.7 billion years. Now, our new audio guide helps bring the stories of our gardens to life with spoken word, so that all our visitors can feel connected to nature.

The guide is designed to help visitors feel and understand how the rocks, plants and animals evolved. Each step takes you forward in time to the present day, so that by the time you reach the end, you can appreciate how signi cantly

humans have changed the planet during the relatively short time that we’ve inhabited it.

The project to create the audio guide began with an exchange of knowledge – a series of conversations with those with lived experience. We also worked with an expert on navigating museums as a blind or partially blind person, who shared how she uses audio to interpret and navigate museum spaces. Once we understood our visitors’ needs, we recorded interviews with Museum scientists, youth climate activists and horticultural experts.

Above Our audio guide o ers fascinating insights into how our gardens were designed and the stories held within.

Below, right Reach out and touch a snail or an Ornithopod footprint.

Right Members of our Youth Advisory Panel helped shape our audio guide.

Described navigation helps blind and partially blind visitors get more out of their visits

It was important to create a garden that was inclusive and welcoming to all our visitors, so our approach to creating the audio guide had to be inclusive as well. We invited a group of talented blind and partially blind young people to the Museum for a week of workshops and creative sessions with poet, rapper and writer Testament.

From smelling soil samples to touching fossils that are millions of years old, they explored their sensory reactions to the objects and their emotional reactions to stories from our scientists. Their experience has been captured and shaped into 13 spoken-word pieces that are included in the audio guide.

The resulting guide is an accessible, inclusive experience that includes described navigation of the gardens. It also encourages visitors to reach out and touch certain parts of the garden such as sculptures, tiny tactile models of insects, and even some of the plant life. It indicates moments where visitors can pause to participate in pond dipping, or lie on custom-designed benches while listening to narrative content and more lyric storytelling about the natural life surrounding them.

For anyone intending to use the guide, we recommend visiting with sighted support to help navigate the space. Find our audio guide at bit.ly/nhm-audio-guide.

The audio guide was generously supported by Edith Murphy Foundation. We thank the wide variety of trusts, foundations, companies and individuals who generously supported the Urban Nature Project including Amazon Web Services, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Evolution Education Trust, The Cadogan Charity, Gar eld Weston Foundation, Kusuma Trust, The Wolfson Foundation, Charles Wilson and Rowena Olegario, Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, Clore Du eld Foundation, Workman LLP and Accenture.

YOUR MUSEUM IN NUMBERS

20

A study published in Nature calculated that over 52 million tonnes of plastic waste enter the environment every year. Around 70 per cent of this comes from just 20 countries.

66

By analysing the chemical signatures of rocks, scientists have discovered that the Chicxulub asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago came from beyond Jupiter.

32,000

A rare rib bone of an extinct species of human – the Denisovans – recently found high in the Tibetan Plateau, suggests they may have lived in eastern Asia as recently as 32,000 years ago, when our own species was expanding across Asia.

130

A large, petri ed tree, which lived around 330 million years ago, has towered over visitors to the Museum for more than 130 years. It weighs around three times more than normal wood due to the fossilisation process.

The Voyage of the Beagle

In this faithful facsimile of his famous journal, Charles Darwin chronicles the landmark expedition that altered the course of scienti c thought. First published in 1839, The Voyage of the Beagle remains a must-read text in the elds of biology, geology and anthropology, inspiring generations of scientists and scholars. In this detailed travelogue, Darwin describes the geology, ora and fauna of South America, the Galápagos Islands, Australia and beyond. And he lays the groundwork for his evolutionary theory of evolution by natural selection. This facsimile edition has been reproduced from a copy of the generously illustrated 1891 edition held by the Library of the Natural History Museum. It includes Darwin’s preface to the second edition from 1845.

We have ve copies of The Voyage of the Beagle to give away. To be in with a chance of winning one, simply tell us the year Darwin was born.

To enter, send an email with your name, address, phone number and answer to magazine@nhm.ac.uk and put ‘Beagle’ in the subject line. Or post your answer to ‘membership’ at the address on page 3. The closing date is 30 June 2025.

Journal Museum news

Dinos on tour!

Great news, dinosaur lovers. The Natural History Museum has launched its rst-ever dinosaur theatre production – and it’s hitting the road in 2025.

Ever since dinosaurs were rst described in the 1800s, they have sparked the imaginations of children and adults alike. Nearly six million curious minds ock to the Natural History Museum every year to nd out more about the brilliant beasts that once roamed the Earth.

Now we’ve teamed up with Mark Thompson Productions to take you on a dinosaur adventure like no other.

Dinosaurs Live! is a one-of-a-kind family show where you can expect close encounters of a prehistoric kind, exploring the vast and ancient history of our planet. Dive into Earth’s history

‘Come faceto-face with T. rex and other dinosaurs that come alive on stage through astounding animatronics’

and take a pre-historic journey to the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. Come face to face with extinct species that come alive on stage through astounding animatronics, including Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Diplodocus and the fearsome Velociraptor. Then nd out more about fossils, time scales and how our planet has changed over hundreds of millions of years.

Dinosaurs Live! marks the rst time since the Museum opened in 1881 that it has created a touring theatrical production of this scale, which takes its expertise outside its iconic home in Kensington and onto stages at 60 venues across the UK.

Mark Thompson Productions worked closely with the Museum’s palaeontologists to develop the brandnew show. Leading family show writer and director Miranda Larson, who’s currently developing Tom Fletcher’s The Creakers Musical at the Southbank Centre, lead the creative team.

Dinosaurs Live! o ers a roar-some, fun- lled adventure and an engaging, entertaining and informative experience for all the family. The show began its UK tour in February and will run for three years. For more information, including touring venues and dates, just visit nhmdinosaurlive.co.uk

NEWS SHORTS

AI conservation

Arti cial intelligence could help protect threatened shes. By estimating the extinction risk of di erent species, trained algorithms could help direct conservation funding to where it’s needed most.

Tough to chew

At the end of the Cretaceous, the duck-billed hadrosaurs were the most voracious herbivores on Earth. New research has revealed that, as their teeth wore away so quickly, they had evolved back-up teeth!

Risk of extinction

New research found undescribed beetles in tropical forests were more sensitive to habitat destruction than known species, which means we may be underestimating the e ects of environment damage on animals.

The new coins feature the steppe mammoth, woolly rhinoceros and giant deer

Ice Age species on the loose

Step back into a prehistoric world for the return of The Royal Mint’s Tales of the Earth, a series of coins created in collaboration with the Natural History Museum to celebrate the most legendary creatures to ever roam the planet.

Following the popular Dinosauria, Mary Anning and Iconic Specimens coin collections, The Royal Mint now ventures deeper into the land of the prehistoric with their new Ice Age Giants collection. The collection is dedicated to some of the largest mammals that lived during the Pleistocene Epoch, better known as the Ice Age.

Large mammals, or megafauna, thrived during a time when vast glaciers covered the Earth. Adapted for colder climates, these impressive beasts lived and ourished in open grasslands close to the icy terrain.

This new collection celebrates these legendary mammals from a lost world. Designed by palaeoartist Robert Nicholls, with the expert guidance of Museum palaeobiologist Professor Adrian Lister, the three new coins feature the steppe mammoth, woolly rhinoceros and giant deer, each telling the story of these fascinating gentle giants. Find out more at royalmint.com.

OWN A PIECE OF HISTORY

To celebrate the opening of the Museum’s new gardens last summer, Jim Moir, who you may know as comedian Vic Reeves, created this vibrant artwork of Fern the Diplodocus amid the wonder of the gardens.

Now you can own a limitededition digital print of his original painting. There are just 250 prints available, and the number of each print is

selected at random. The prints are numbered and signed by Jim, and each one is presented unframed. It’s accompanied by a certi cate of authenticity and arrives inside an organic cotton tote bag printed with ‘Natural History Museum x Jim Moir’. Get your piece of history now in the Museum Shop or online at nhmshop.co.uk. Members and Patrons save 20 per cent.

Journal What’s on

Exhibitions

Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Until 29 June 2025, normal Museum opening times

From £15.50 Adults / £9.25 Kids / £12.50 Concessions / £27.25–£47 Families

Members and Patrons go free

Enjoy more than 100 winning and commended images by leading photographers from around the world at the Museum’s annual exhibition of wildlife photography. nhm.ac.uk/wpy

Other activities

Dino Snores for Kids

Every month, 18.45–10.00 £80 non-members / £72 members

Ever wonder what happens in the Museum when everyone’s gone home? During this action-packed sleepover, you’ll take part in fun, educational activities, discover our T. rex in the shadows of the Dinosaurs gallery, create your own dinosaur t-shirt and experience a live science

Find out what’s on at the Museum, and plan your next great day out, by visiting nhm.ac.uk/whats-on

in spirit. Explore some of the treasures hidden among the 22 million animal specimens housed there. nhm.ac.uk/events/behindthe-scenes-tour-the-spiritcollection

Museum Highlights Tour

Various dates and times

£15 non-members / £12 members

Don’t miss

Members get priority booking on a number of events. To nd out what’s available and when please look out for your monthly e-newsletter.

show with a Museum expert. In the morning there’s breakfast and a trail of the galleries. For ages 7-11. nhm.ac.uk/dino-snores

Dino Snores for Grown-ups

Various dates, 18.30–9.30 £220 non-members / £198 members

Pull an all-nighter at the Museum and experience an unforgettable evening of comedy, food, science and cinema. Enjoy live shows, a three-course dinner, live music and Museum pub quizzes, followed by a hot breakfast the next morning.

For ages 18 and over. nhm.ac.uk/dsgu

Behind the Scenes Tour: Spirit Collection

Various dates, 15.00–15.45

£25 non-members / £22.50 members

Go behind the scenes in the Museum’s Darwin Centre for a look at our fascinating zoology collection preserved

From our blue whale skeleton to the largest blue topaz gemstone of its kind, the specimens we care for are full of wonder. Join our guides to explore the highlights. nhm.ac.uk/ events/ museumhighlights-tour

Women in Science Tour

Various dates, 14.15–15.00 Free

Hear the gripping histories of women scientists across history, including some who’ve worked at the Museum, and learn about the Museum’s displays and our cutting-edge science. nhm.ac.uk/events/museumwhats-on (search free events)

Visions of Nature: A mixed reality experience

Open daily, 10.15–16.45

£9.95 non-members / £7.95 members

Be transported a century into the future to explore what could lie ahead for the planet. Journey around the globe and become visually and audibly surrounded by the awe and wonder of the future natural world.

nhm.ac.uk/visit/exhibitions/ visions-of-nature

Gardens Tour: Journey Through Time and Nature

Various dates, 10.00–11.00, 13.00–14.00 and 15.00–16.00

£18 non-members, £12 members

Trace the footsteps of the past, unlocking a new chapter of our evolutionary history with every step. Having seen where we’re from, step into the present and consider where we’re going and our collective future.

nhm.ac.uk/events/gardenstour-journey-through-timeand-nature

Members events

Family Morning

1 March and 14 June, 8.00–10.00

Join us before we open for a fun- lled morning of activities, workshops and crafts. With exclusive access to our galleries and exhibitions, discover incredible stories that will inspire big and little minds.

Dig Deeper: Dinosaur Behaviour

21 March, 18.30–20.00

Join Dr David Hone and Professor Paul Barrett to uncover their understanding of dinosaur behaviour.

Dig Deeper: Wildlife Crime 6 May, 18.30–20.00

Learn how the Museum is working with experts from the Metropolitan Police to tackle wildlife crime through pioneering ngerprinting techniques.

Please note: Some dates and times are subject to change. For further information on members events, visit nhm.ac.uk/membership

Buzz along to the Hive

An exclusive digital hub especially for our supporters, the Hive is lled with exciting videos, articles and activities to help you stay connected with nature and the Museum. Here you’ll also nd an exclusive virtual events programme, bringing you closer to our world-leading scientists through a series of lectures and workshops. Discover it all at nhm.ac.uk/the-hive

Patrons events

Fixing Our Broken Planet Gallery Launch

Open to Gold, Platinum Patrons and Family Platinum Patrons

2 April, 19.00–21.30

We are delighted to invite you to the opening of a new permanent gallery in our Waterhouse Building.

Don’t miss Catch up on, or rewatch, any or all of our Dig Deeper talks at the Hive. nhm.ac.uk/ the-hive

60 SECONDS WITH… MARK MOSELEY

By Lucy Minshall-Pearson

What do you do?

I work for the Metropolitan Police Specialist Forensic Imaging Team, which has 15 professional photographers and is unique in the UK. I deliver a pro-active specialist imaging service to support investigations of serious crime incidents, including searching for latent (invisible) evidence at crime scenes.

Forensic techniques can help identify those involved in ivory poaching.

Treasures Gallery Tour and Co ee

Morning

Open to All Patrons

7 April, 08.30–10.00

Led by Museum curator Clare Valentine, enjoy a private tour of the Cadogan gallery, housing 22 of our most precious treasures spanning 4.6 billion years. Afterwards, join us for tea and co ee in the Anning Rooms.

Please note: Some dates and times are subject to change. If you have any questions about upcoming events, please contact patrons@nhm.ac.uk.

As a Patron, you’ll enjoy all member bene ts, as well as discounted access to visitor and members events plus your specially curated programme. Complimentary tickets for Platinum Patrons and Family Platinum Patrons are available for the Dig Deeper and family morning events, respectively.

Tell us about your work with wildlife crime. Powdering items to obtain friction ridge detail ( ngerprint) is a well-known technique. Some new powders have smaller particles that adhere better to ivory. When studying ivory, I found it is possible to obtain friction ridge detail up to 28 days after contact, giving greater opportunity to identify people who handled the ivory. This can also be applied to keratin. Portable, easy-to-use specialist ivory forensic kits were developed with the help of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. These were distributed worldwide to countries such as the US, Australia and Singapore to support wildlife investigations.

What is the impact of your research in helping conserve wildlife?

The ivory forensic kits are an additional tool for law enforcement to help identify criminals involved in wildlife crime. They have been successful in London and overseas, and I have trained more than 40 rangers and custom o cials in Africa to help ght ivory poaching.

You worked with Britta Jaschinski on her winning WPY Photojournalism image. What do you hope the photo might achieve? Britta created a powerful image (left). I really hope it encourages others to share their expertise and consider how forensic applications can help identify those that harm wildlife. And that it raises awareness of environmental issues so we can prevent past mistakes being repeated.

VISIT THE MUSEUM

Come and see ‘Forensic crime expert’ by Britta Jaschinski at the Wildlife Photography of the Year exhibition, open until 29 June 2025. nhm.ac.uk/wpy

Journal Science in focus

The lowdown

3,161

The number of case studies the scientists re-analysed for their research, coming from more than 600 academic papers.

£1.6 trillion

The value of healthy soils to the world’s economy every year, including carbon storage, crop fertility and ood prevention.

59 per cent

The proportion of species estimated to live in soil, with plants, fungi and termites among the most dominant groups.

200 years

The amount of time it takes to form a centimetre of soil.

Digging into soil pollution

Farming chemicals and industrial waste have left behind a toxic legacy for the world’s soils. James Ashworth reveals how subterranean wildlife is bearing the brunt of these impacts.

Heavy metals and pesticides are threatening our food security, new research has revealed. By analysing data from more than 600 studies, an international team of scientists showed that pollution was by far the greatest threat to soil health, outstripping both climate change and farming intensi cation.

Dr Victoria Burton, a soil researcher at the Museum, was part of the team that came to

this worrying conclusion. ‘On the surface, land use, climate change and invasive species have the greatest impact on biodiversity, so we assumed this would be similar below ground,’ Victoria says. ‘But our results show this isn’t the case.

‘Instead, we found that pesticide and heavy metal pollution caused the most damage to soil biodiversity. This is worrying, because there hasn’t been a lot of research into the impacts of soil pollution,

Fast fact

While most subterranean life is found in the top 10 centimetres, some animals live more than three kilometres underground.

so its e ects might be more widespread than we know.’

The study showed that wildlife above and below ground generally respond very di erently to the same issues. While the loss of a forest might be devastating to the plants and animals that live there, subterranean

‘Soil health is an important topic that’s currently being overlooked’

organisms are often bu ered from the e ects by the soil they inhabit. This is because soils store moisture and nutrients, which help life living underground to withstand short-term changes. However, these aren’t enough to help underground life cope with the impacts of pollution.

At their worst, these e ects can be directly lethal. When heavy metals get into the soil around mines and smelters, for example, the pollutants can kill the wildlife that lives there and prevent the soil from recovering for decades.

While the impacts of pesticides on soils are shorter lived, they can be just as harmful. Their exact e ect on soil health depends on their concentration and can range from rapid death to interfering with organisms’ growth and reproduction.

Though the study has begun the process of digging into the threats that are facing soils, it’s barely scratched the surface. Victoria says that more research is needed to better understand the di erent impacts, and the way they interact. ‘Soil health is an important topic that’s currently being overlooked,’ she points out. ‘There are many sources of pollution, such as microplastics, hydrocarbons and persistent chemicals, and their impacts are unknown.

‘We need to gain a better understanding so we can track how soil health is changing. For instance, while the underground impacts of climate change appear to be limited for now, its longterm e ects are less well known. Only by acting now can we put ourselves in the best position to help the life beneath our feet.’ O

The secret life of soils – under threat

As soils harbour around 60 per cent of global biodiversity, it’s crucial that we identify the main threats facing its underground life. Human life relies on soil health. These unseen animal communities are composed of a diverse range of invertebrates, but here are four of the many species a ected by soil pollution.

Earthworms

A vital part of life on Earth, earthworms release the nutrients of dead matter back into the environment. This meant that when the researchers examined the impact of adding organic fertilisers to the soil, these animals were the only group that became more diverse. It was the opposite picture when land was used more intensively, with earthworm species harmed the most.

Springtails

While they might look like insects, springtails are actually a distinct group of animals. They don’t decompose soils directly, but instead cut up buried organic matter into smaller pieces, making it easier for other animals to break down. Their di erent lifestyle, and fondness for areas with high humidity and lots of moisture, might explain why they were the only group in the study whose survival was signi cantly impacted by climate change.

Mites

Known as the ‘canaries of subterranean life’, woodlice are an indicator of the health of the soil. This is because, like other crustaceans, these small invertebrates have a special organ known as the hepatopancreas. As well as being important for digestion, the hepatopancreas can help woodlice tolerate some heavy metals. Scientists have suggested that this could make them good indicators of contamination and pollution in soils. 1 3 2 4

Mites are a group of small, eightlegged creatures that mostly make their home in the soil. Many species are decomposers, breaking down plants, fungi and dead animals lying on the ground. The researchers found limited evidence that these animals were a ected by climate change or nutrient enrichment, but pollution and intense land use made a signi cant impact on their communities.

Woodlice

Journal Inside story

‘From sharks to humans, all sor ts of animals host parasitic worms’

As the Museum’s Senior Curator of Parasitic Worms, Dr Jesús Hernández-Orts oversees a collection of several million specimens.

What do you do at the Museum?

My life in a nutshell

I grew up and studied biology in Puebla, Mexico and did a PhD in Valencia, Spain

Before coming to London, I conducted research on parasites at institutes in Argentina, Mexico and the Czech Republic

I became Senior Curator of Parasitic Worms in 2023

My rst connection with the Museum was during my PhD, when I deposited specimens of a new species of parasitic worm I described from bull rays

My role is to oversee one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive collections of parasitic worms, collected from all types of animals, including humans. The Museum’s collection includes more than 27,000 catalogued specimens bottled in spirit [preserving liquid], and over 180,000 specimens mounted on microscope slides. I’m responsible for their physical care, organisation and recording in our database, as well as handling new acquisitions and loans of specimens to scientists around the world.

At the moment, much of my time is devoted to preparing for the Museum’s move to the Thames Valley Science Park site in Reading.

What are parasitic worms?

Most people will be familiar with parasitic worms through deworming their pets. Anti-worm pills typically target the two major groups of parasitic worms: the roundworms (Nematoda), which includes groups like pinworms, and the atworms (Platyhelminthes), which includes groups such as ukes and tapeworms. These two major types of parasitic worms infect not only our pets, our livestock and ourselves, but all animals, from the smallest invertebrates to the largest vertebrates.

In addition, there are smaller groups of parasitic worms, such as thorny-headed worms (Acanthocephala) and horsehair worms

(Nematomorpha), which are common parasites of wild animals. The collection also includes some non-parasites, such as free-living atworms.

Numerically speaking, parasitic worms in their various forms represent one of the most common types of life on the planet. But being mostly small and residing inside the bodies of other animals, they’re usually invisible to us.

What are the challenges of handling the collection?

The Museum’s parasitic worm collection grows every year thanks to donations from researchers all over the world. From time to time, we also receive donations of thousands of specimens from personal collections or other institutions. In 2023, for example, the Parasitology Collection at the National Museum Wales was transferred to the Museum. It’s a historical research collection of around 9,000 slides and 5,000 jars of worms from sharks and rays (Elasmobranch and bony shes), mainly from British waters.

Making this available to the wider scienti c community requires a lot of work, and the curatorial team is busy assessing and cataloguing the material. The greatest challenge is the reorganisation required to physically incorporate such a large number of specimens into the Museum’s existing collection.

Tell us about your research

I’m a specialist in the diversity and classi cation of marine mammal parasites. My research focuses on the diversity, systematics, biogeography and evolution of parasitic worms of marine mammals, especially seals and sea lions. As apex predators, these hosts accumulate parasites through their food – roundworms and thorny-headed worms are especially common. I work mainly with samples from stranded animals, as well as with previously collected specimens in museum collections such as our own. Incorporating morphological study with molecular sequencing, I document the parasites, describe new species, elucidate their life cycles and attempt to understand their evolution and impact on the health of their hosts.

What surprises you about this collection?

I’m always astonished by the wide diversity of hosts represented by specimens in our collection – especially those animals that are challenging or practically impossible to take samples from, such as coelacanths, basking sharks and gorillas, to name a few. We also have samples that are nearly 200 years old, which is around the time that many of the parasitic worm groups in the collection rst started to be documented and described by scientists. O

Journal Exceptional specimens

When lightning strikes

Lightning strikes happen in a ash, unleashing gigajoules of energy onto Earth’s surface. Yet nature has a way of capturing a snapshot of these dramatic events.

Scienti c name Fulgurite

Chosen by Mark Boyd Science Background

Interim Assistant Curator, Meteorites

Fulgurites, often called ‘fossilised lightning’, form when lightning strikes rock, sand or soil. Releasing over a million volts and currents up to 100,000 amps, strikes can shape Earth’s surface and possibly in uence the evolution of life itself.

When lightning strikes, it can produce temperatures of over 3,000°C in the ground, melting and vaporising the target material. As the vapour escapes, melted rock, sand or mineral grains cool rapidly to form glass – called a fulgurite, from the Latin for lightning, fulgur. With around 45 strikes occurring every second worldwide, it’s estimated that 10 fulgurites are formed globally per second. Depending on the target material, di erent types of fulgurite are made.

Sand fulgurites are created when lightning strikes sand, which mainly consists of quartz grains. The current follows low-resistance pathways and creates a glass called lechatelierite – a pure SiO2 mineraloid. Sand fulgurites have branching

The odd reactions created by lightning strikes are so unique that new minerals have been discovered in fulgurites

The lowdown

A sandy source

This fulgurite was collected on the HMS Amethyst expedition to South America. It was found in the sand dunes at Maldonado, Uruguay, and presented to the Museum by Lt J C Johnstone Soutter RN in 1912.

Lightning hunters

Fulgurites can be di cult to nd.

Sand fulgurites, like this specimen, are typically subterranean, with small protrusions above the surface. Rock fulgurites appear as glassy, dark crusts on rocks.

structures, hollow tubes lined with dark glass, and surfaces covered in unmelted sand grains.

Rock fulgurites form when lightning strikes a solid, rocky surface. Mountain peaks, acting as natural lightning rods, are particularly good locations for forming rock fulgurites. These fulgurites coat rocks in a dark, glassy layer, especially at high altitudes, and are often found with small depressions or fractures in the rock.

The intense conditions and odd reactions created by lightning strikes are so unique that new minerals have been discovered in fulgurites. Researchers attempt to replicate the process in ‘lightning labs’, though not without di culty, given the huge input of energy required. Fallen power lines can even create unnatural fulgurites, which are usually much larger, as the current ows for longer.

The Museum houses a large collection of fulgurites, ranging from delicate tubes to branching black glass embedded in the host rock. Some fulgurites are fragmented while others retain their original form, reaching over a metre in length. The fulgurites have been found worldwide, from Cumbria in the UK to Italy, South Africa and Australia.

Interestingly, lightning strikes may have played a crucial role in the emergence of life on Earth. Phosphorus is a key ingredient in living organisms, forming the backbone of DNA and RNA. Initially, phosphorus was locked within minerals on the early Earth and not ‘bioavailable’. However, studies of fulgurites have found minerals, such as schreibersite, that can release their phosphorus in the presence of water. Fulgurite-generating lightning strikes could have been vital in extracting phosphorus from the rocky surface, to be used by the earliest organisms as life emerged.

Puzzle pieces

This fulgurite arrived in eight fragments. Museum scientists and conversationists pieced it together to reconstruct the entire tube, which represents the passage of electricity through the ground.

Tree-like roots

When a strike hits the ground, the current follows the path of least resistance. If the lightning channel splits and branches, the resulting fulgurite will have a root-like structure.

VISIT THE MUSEUM

The Museum houses one of the longest fulgurites discovered, at almost ve metres. It was found in Dresden, Germany, by mineralogist Dr Karl Gustav Fiedler and purchased by the Museum in 1851 for £100. It can be seen in the Restless Surface gallery (Red Zone).

DID YOU KNOW?

Some of the few geological specimens collected by Charles Darwin on his famous Beagle expedition were fulgurites. They came from Uruguay, and are described in his 1882 publication, A Naturalist’s Voyage. This fulgurite was collected in Uruguay 50 years later.

Below This fulgurite measures 97cm in length and 2–5cm in cross-section.

Above The colour varies depending on the composition of the sand the fulgurite formed in, ranging from black or tan to green or a translucent white.

Empty inside

The high temperatures of lightning strikes vaporise sand, expelling the vapour and leaving the fulgurite with a hollow central tube. The inner wall is made of fully melted material, and is black and glassy.

Gas bubbles

Gases caused by boiling may be trapped in the melted material, creating ‘bubbles’. They insulate some sand grains from even higher temperatures and leave behind cavities on the fulgurite surface.

Rough edges

At the edge of the lightning channel, where melting takes place, sand grains are partially melted and fused into the glassy material making up the outer fulgurite walls. This creates a coarse surface, like sandpaper.

Tiny droplets

Fulgurite walls may contain microdroplets ~0.2mm in size. These are composed of rare minerals containing iron and silicon, which indicate rapid cooling and removal of oxygen from surface rocks.

on asps

wasps

?

Without invertebrates, life on Earth would collapse. So it’s no surprise that last year’s population crash sparked concern that the planet is facing an insect apocalypse. But the reality is a bit more complex and Museum scientists are leading e orts to nd out what’s really going on.

WORDS: PAUL BLOOMFIELD

For such small creatures, insects make big headlines. ‘‘Insect apocalypse’ poses risk to all life on Earth,’ warned The Guardian. ‘Car number-plate splatometer survey shows terrifying decline in ying insects,’ claimed Sky News. And last summer the BBC mourned the ‘really sad’ decline in wasp numbers. The tone of that last story is telling. Most of us are aware that a decline in bees and butter ies doesn’t only sap colour from our lives. Three-quarters of our crops depend on insect pollinators, while many species help control agricultural pests. If they vanish, our plates will be emptier – or, at the least, our food more expensive.

And insects do seem to be in trouble. The 2023 State of Nature report showed that the distributions of certain UK insect groups that provide key ecosystem services such as pollination and pest control declined by 18% and 34%, respectively. And Butter y Conservation’s Big Butter y Count last year recorded the lowest numbers since the survey began, with 81% of species declining since 2023.

Wasps, though – should we really worry if they disappear? Aren’t they just a buzzing nuisance, building nests in our lofts, feasting

The glittering ruby-tailed wasp is one of the UK’s many species of solitary wasp.

Three-quarters of our crops depend on insect pollinators, and they help control pests

on our fallen fruit and stinging us when irked? Well, no. They’re far more diverse than you might imagine – and play important roles in maintaining biodiversity.

When you think of a wasp, you probably imagine one of our nine social species that build large, papery nests. Familiar yellow-and-blackstriped stingers including yellowjackets – the common wasp and similar-looking German wasp – and hornets. But the UK is home to some 7,000 species, including thousands of parasitoid wasps that lay eggs in or on other insects and spiders. Many are so tiny you’d never notice them, and only a handful will sting you. Each plays its part in a healthy ecosystem and many provide tangible bene ts to people.

‘Wasps are apex predators,’ says Gavin Broad, the Natural History Museum’s Principal

Curator of Hymenoptera, the group that includes wasps, bees and ants. ‘I like to think of social wasps as the lions of the insect world, but some kind of wasp attacks almost every insect at some point in its life cycle. It will eat them, feed them to its young or lay its eggs in them, depending on the species.’

Farmers’ friends

Many wasps help control populations of pests. ‘Wasps attack aphids, white y and mealybugs that damage tomatoes and other crops, for example,’ says Gavin. They can also be used to tackle the spread of invasive non-native species. ‘In New Zealand, parasitoid wasps are being introduced to control common and German wasps, which are impacting native insect and bird populations,’ Gavin adds. Some adult wasps feed on nectar, too, helping to pollinate owers.

Yet we know little about our wasp populations. Anecdotally, British wasp numbers were down in 2024, probably as a result of the very wet weather in spring and summer. ‘Persistent heavy rain a ects social wasps, many of which nest in holes underground that can get ooded out,’ explains Iona Cunningham-Eurich, a PhD student at the Museum and University College London researching parasitoid wasps. ‘If there’s no nest, there’s no colony – that means fewer wasps ying around.’

Smaller than a grain of rice, the minute chalcid wasps are the natural enemies of many insect pests.

But that doesn’t necessarily indicate an ongoing decline. Social wasps undergo annual population uctuations as part of their natural life cycle. In spring, a queen stirs from her winter hibernation and builds a nest. Workers emerge, then new queens and males in late summer; the nest dies, and only the new queens survive to nest again, allowing wasps to proliferate once more. ‘I’d be surprised if numbers didn’t bounce back this year, unless it’s really wet again,’ says Gavin, ‘because there were lots of queens out in late summer.’

It’s less evident how the thousands of smaller species are faring, because the vast majority simply go unnoticed. There are reasons to think they may be su ering, though, not least because studies suggest that ying insects as a whole declined by 60% in the past couple of decades. ‘A loss of other species means less food for them,’ notes Iona.

‘Wasps are the proverbial canary in the coal mine,’ adds Gavin. ‘We’d expect any change in their populations to re ect or have impacts lower down the food chain. So they’re a useful monitoring tool of ecosystem health. Looking at broad-scale patterns across the UK, it seems that, in fact, there’s been no detectable change in the distributions of common and German wasps over the past century or so.’ That said, few scientists focus on wasps, and they haven’t been studied enough to determine long-term trends. That’s something Gavin would like to see addressed.

Below left

The pennant wasp hunts solitary bees. It uses its long ovipositor to drill into the nest walls and deposit an egg. When the egg hatches, the larva feeds on the solitary bee grub.

Below

Social wasps are bene cial in gardens. They feed their grubs on caterpillars and other insects and so can reduce plant damage.

Asian hornet alert

Alarm about Asian hornets surged last year after three queens overwintered in Britain for the rst time. This non-native invasive species is indigenous to south and east Asia. But, having been accidentally introduced to France in about 2004, the species has spread across western Europe. First reported in the UK in 2016, some 72 nests were found here in 2023 alone. Concerns centre on this voracious predator’s fondness for eating bees. But how much of a problem are they?

‘It’s inevitable that Asian hornets will become established in the UK,’ says Gavin Broad. ‘They’re strong iers and can live in a wide range of habitats. They do eat quite a lot of honeybees and solitary bees, but so far they haven’t been shown to have a major impact on bee populations.’

For ID help, and to report an Asian hornet sighting, visit: nonnativespecies.org/non-native-species

The Museum is, of course, an incredible resource. ‘We’ve got about 3.7 million specimens of Hymenoptera, including perhaps two million wasps, the earliest of which were collected at Hampton Court in the 17th century,’ says Gavin. ‘Increasingly, new DNA sequencing and statistical tools enable us to extract fragments of genetic material from specimens, and look at populations over time.’

Historic collections are only part of the bigger picture. And Iona is among those working to expand our view. ‘When UK moth enthusiasts catch nocturnal wasps in their moth traps, they send their catch to us for identi cation,’ she says. ‘This helps create a snapshot in time of wasp diversity and distributions, which we can compare with data from museum specimens to detect and track changes.’

Just one of the drawers of wasps in the Museum’s collection – these are Aleiodes, or mummy wasps.

‘New DNA tools enable us to extract genetic material from historic specimens’

Another exciting development was the launch in 2017 of the Big Wasp Survey (bigwaspsurvey.org), a citizen science project run by the University of Gloucestershire. ‘Each participant sets up a beer trap for a week in late summer, when wasps are most active,’ Iona explains. ‘Initially, they sent in whatever they caught – more than 50,000 specimens over three years.

‘But now identi cation guides enable people to ID species at home and send in their data. This sampling can reveal a lot about the wasp distributions – and this information is then compared against historic records compiled by the Bees, Wasps & Ants Recording Society. We now have eight years’ worth of data to study.’ This work should indicate whether the abundance and distributions of wasp species are increasing or declining.

In the meantime, other projects are examining how insects as a whole are responding to ecological changes caused by human activities – and trying to predict the future impacts of the threats they face. ‘When we think about all the natural habitat being built on and converted for agriculture, it makes sense that insects must be doing badly,’ observes Justin Isip, another PhD student at the Museum and UCL.

‘But because there are so many more insect species in the world than, say, birds or mammals, it’s a lot harder to quantify changes in their populations.’

A glittering collaboration

To address this, a consortium of six institutions in the UK and South Africa, including the Natural History Museum, launched GLiTRS. The Global Insect ThreatResponse Synthesis project aims to understand

MUSEUM EXPERT Dr Gavin Broad →

Gavin is a Principal Curator of Hymenoptera, developing the Museum’s extensive collection of wasps and carrying out research on the taxonomy and ecology of parasitoid wasps.

1. Deforestation

Globally, 28.3 million hectares of forest were lost in 2023, due to factors including re, ooding and deforestation for agriculture, removing vital insect habitat.

12. Insecticides

Chemicals used in agricultural pest control contaminate ecosystems and kill or a ect other organisms, including insects.

GLOBAL THREATS TO INSECTS

2. Interaction disruption

The ranges of species shift as a result of climate change, bringing species into ecosystems that never previously encountered them – introducing new predators, for example.

3. Fire

Climate change is already increasing re risk, with blazes devastating habitats in North and South America and Australia in recent years.

4. Changing seasons

Weather is becoming less predictable, increasing incidents of mismatches between insect life cycles and food availability.

5. Climate change

Insect populations are being hit directly and indirectly by loss or change in habitats, including forest and coastal ecosystems a ected by rises in sea level.

6. Drought Spells of dry weather are becoming longer and more frequent in many regions, impacting a wide range of species.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1

11. Agricultural intensi cation

The development and spread of industrialised agriculture is linked to large-scale monocultures, nutrient input and increased use of pesticides, all a ecting insects.

10. Introduced species

Non-native, often invasive species are increasingly transported between locations, usually through global trade.

9. Urbanisation

The spread of towns and cities reduces suitable breeding habitat and availability of food for many species of insects.

8. Nitri cation

The use of nitrogenbased fertilisers and emissions from fossil fuel combustion increase nutrient levels in various ecosystems.

7. Pollution

Pollution of soil, water and air by chemicals, light and noise impacts insects in diverse habitats.

Treehoppers look like tiny aliens. Their ‘helmets’ may look like anything from bull horns to an alien spacecraft.

how insect diversity is changing in response to pressures from humans, and to predict how insects will respond in future.

‘To do this, we’re bringing together di erent sources of scienti c information,’ Justin says. ‘The rst is data collected from the eld –and that’s where PREDICTS comes in.’ Predicting Responses of Ecological Diversity in Changing Terrestrial Systems (PREDICTS) is a database developed at the Natural History Museum that compiles ecological survey data from hundreds of published studies and uses it to compare biodiversity levels across habitats that are facing di erent changes in land-use and intensities. The Museum’s collections make a signi cant contribution, not least thanks to the large-scale digitisation of our collections, including details of where and when each specimen was sampled.

‘By collating hundreds of datasets from around the world, PREDICTS enables us to compare broad-scale patterns of how biodiversity is responding to land-use changes,’ Justin explains. ‘This allows us to identify trends across whole continents and di erent ecosystems in humandominated environments. So we can compare primary

rainforest in South America with primary rainforest in southeast Asia to see how being converted for agriculture a ects the local ora and fauna. We can also examine the impact of other human activities, such as di erent levels of pesticide or fertiliser use.’

Predicting patterns

GLiTRS augments data from PREDICTS with expert advice from entomologists to identify gaps in evidence and to forecast the impact of changes in human activity on particular insect groups. It also analyses published studies to investigate how insects in a particular habitat respond to di erent human-made threats. ‘The hope is that we can identify patterns in global insect biodiversity, grow our understanding of the causes, and predict how insect communities might respond to di erent levels of pressure,’ says Justin. ‘We know, for example, that many invertebrates have declined on crop land, but we can try to forecast how di erent insects might respond if pesticides are reduced.’

The results so far might be surprising. ‘Not all insects are su ering,’ Justin continues. ‘You might expect all species to be decreasing as pristine natural habitats are converted for our own uses – that any kind of human activity must be a negative thing. But a far more complex picture is emerging. Insect populations are changing rapidly in areas a ected by human activities – but not all of them are declining. Generalist species can be surprisingly resilient and adaptable, and some populations are stable or even increasing.’

Lantern ies are planthoppers that have long ‘snouts’ that they use to suck sap from plants. Despite their often beautiful wings, they prefer to hop.

We want to understand how insects respond to human pressure – now and in the future

‘I want to know how insect groups with di erent functions within an ecosystem are responding to land-use change,’ Justin continues. ‘How are pollinators, pests, decomposers and predators doing? And how do changes in their populations a ect the way the ecosystem functions?

‘Traits such as size, dispersal, life cycle and diet a ect a species’ susceptibility to various environmental factors. They could tell us a lot about how these di erent groups will respond to humanmade threats.’

This kind of work is crucial to our understanding of how insect populations are changing, and what we can do to mitigate the impacts of human activities. The planet needs insects – we need insects – and, despite our prejudices, that includes wasps. ‘Around 20 per cent of the UK’s insect species are wasps,’ Gavin concludes. ‘They keep our ecosystems together – so we really need to do more to monitor their numbers and understand the threats they face.’ ●

How can I help insects?

Plant owers, shrubs and trees that insects love

Bumblebees throng English lavender blooms, for example, and other bees suck nectar from honeysuckle. Hedgerows can help, too: blackthorn blossoms provide early nectar for pollinating insects, followed by wild cherry, rowan and apple trees.

Leave areas of grass unmown

Longer lawns provide areas where insects can shelter and reproduce. Try to resist removing ‘weeds’ – a patch of nettles or wild grasses will provide food for butter y caterpillars, while garlic mustard attracts hover ies and orange-tip butter ies.

Don’t use chemical pesticides

Though it’s tempting to use chemicals to rid your garden of aphids, slugs and other ‘pests’, avoid pesticides wherever possible. Encouraging other invertebrates can help control problems: ladybirds feast on aphids, for example.

Create homes for invertebrates

You can buy bee and bug hotels, but you can also make inviting homes for insects and other invertebrates by building a log pile or compost heap, or simply leaving parts of your garden a little messier, allowing dead wood and foliage to sit untidied.

Add a pond

Even a small expanse of water provides habitat for dragon y and damsel y larvae, diving beetles and even aquatic wasps, as well as breeding frogs, toads and newts.

Above left Thorn bugs have a spiky, rose thornshaped horn on their backs that helps them blend in with their host plant. They use chemical communication to defend their young.

truth The about d d s

DID YOU KNOW?

The dodo laid a single egg in a nest on the ground. This meant it was vulnerable to attack by feral mammals, such as pigs, monkeys and rats, introduced by humans in the early 1600s.

The dodo is often depicted as a ‘fat ball of feathers’ that bumbled into extinction. But avian palaeontologists Dr Julian Hume and Judith White are digging up new insights that could reinvent its image – and lead to its return.

Atrue icon of extinction, the dodo exempli es what can go wrong when humans interfere with the natural world. Less than 100 years after people inhabited Mauritius, the dodo vanished – it was the rst species widely recognised as having become extinct due to human actions.

So rapid was the dodo’s demise, and so few were the specimens collected when the species was alive, that by the early 19th century some authorities doubted the birds’ existence. A stu ed specimen had been on display in the Ashmolean Museum, in Oxford, England, since at least 1656. But by 1755 it had deteriorated to the extent that only the head and one foot remained. Combined with a second foot in London, these remains formed the basis for the rst anatomical study of the dodo by Hugh Strickland and Alexander Melville in 1848.

They con rmed that the dodo was a giant, ightless ground pigeon, an idea that had been met with ridicule when proposed a few years earlier by Danish Professor J T Reinhardt. In 1856, Charles Darwin published his iconic Origin of Species, which explored the role of evolution. This was followed in 1865 by Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which catapulted the dodo to worldwide fame. As a result, scienti c interest in obtaining dodo specimens intensi ed, particularly the need to discover fossil material on Mauritius.

Scienti c feud

In September 1865, George Clark, a teacher based in Mahebourg, southeast Mauritius, and Harry Higginson, a British railway engineer, jointly discovered dodo fossils in a marsh called the Mare aux Songes. Using sugar-cane labourers to excavate the site, primarily by feeling around in the swamp with their hands and feet, they found a large number of dodo bones.

That same month, Clark sent the rst consignment of remains to Professor Richard

Judith White and Adisha Sewdyal, a bird biologist, excavate the cave oor for fossils.

Owen, a comparative anatomist at what was then British Museum – now the Natural History Museum. Alfred Newton, based at the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge, also expected a shipment of bones. One of the rst disciples of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Newton intended to publish a paper on what the bones revealed about the dodo’s anatomy. He also hoped to sell excess bones and other material on Clark’s behalf at the Stevens Auction House in London.

Machiavellian machinations

Owen and Newton had started their relationship on good terms. In 1866, Owen had written a testimonial supporting Newton’s application to become the rst Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Cambridge. But now things went downhill rapidly. When he was tipped o about Newton’s intentions regarding the dodo remains, Owen intercepted the consignment of fossils and arranged a new deal with Clark. Owen would now retain all the dodo material, including all future shipments.

Newton was furious but, since Owen blatantly blackmailed him by threatening his application as the rst Professor, he was unable to retaliate.

On Mauritius, two limestone cave systems have been discovered that contain fragments of fossil dodo bones buried in the sediment. Here, Owen Gri ths (sitting) receives cave sediment and passes it to Julian for sieving.

We were literally peeling back the history of Mauritius, layer by layer

Newton had to relinquish his claim to the bones and withdraw his dodo anatomical manuscript, leaving Owen to publish his rst monograph on the dodo in October 1866 amid a blaze of publicity. Owen needed a mounted dodo skeleton to illustrate his work, so he erected one using bones from di erent individuals (a composite), all from the Mare aux Songes consignments. This was a rst for the dodo, and his mounted skeleton is on display in the Museum.

The bones found in the limestone cave – a tibia, a femur and a metatarsus (shown) – are incredibly well preserved.

Dodo detectives

A century later, I was privileged to be part of an international team of scientists excavating fresh fossils at the Mare aux Songes swamp.

©Julian Hume

©Julian Hume

©Judith White

The dig, which took place from 2005 to 2010, revealed thousands of bones, including bones from at least 17 dodos. The fossil layer also contained seeds, tree trunks and branches, leaves, insects, land snails and even fungi, deposited four millennia before humans arrived on the island.

At the same time, in 2007, a highland cave at Bois Cheri yielded a complete but degraded dodo skeleton known as Dodo Fred. Further discoveries of dodo fossils followed in 2017, in the Moka Range of mountains overlooking the capital, Port Louis. In 2019, an ancient swamp at Mare la Chaux proved to be the rst inland dodo fossil site discovered on Mauritius. Carbon 14 dating of the excavations gave an age of at least 14,000 years, making this the oldest fossil site in the Indian Ocean, other than Aldabra Atoll and Madagascar.

Mare la Chaux was one of the most exciting fossil excavations I’ve ever worked on. We were literally peeling back the history of Mauritius, layer by layer. The sheer volume of remains we found was incredible. It included extinct giant tortoises, giant skinks and, of course, dodos.

In June 2024, I began another excavation in earnest, working with Owen Gri ths, a natural historian on Mauritius and an expert on terrestrial snails, at a limestone cave. Limestone caves are

Thirioux’s dodo: the world’s most complete skeleton

In about 1903, Etienne Thirioux, a hairdresser and amateur naturalist, collected the most complete dodo skeleton in the world. Thirioux’s dodo is the only known skeleton in which all the bones derive from the same individual. He probably collected it from boulder scree in the Vallée des Prêtres above the capital, Port Louis. But he kept the exact location secret so that he could sell the skeleton, plus many other bones of extinct Mauritian species, to Alfred Newton.

When Newton o ered him a paltry £20 – an absolute insult – the two men fell out and stopped communicating for several years. Within a short time, the Mauritius Institute had purchased the collection for £80, excluding the dodo. But Thirioux became impatient about the lack of interest in his specimens, so, in 1907, he bought back part of the collection. He gifted it to Cambridge University, with the request that Newton describe the material.

By this time, Alfred Newton was 78 years old –he died ve months later – but Thirioux continued to send partially fossilised remains to Cambridge. His last contribution was in July 1908. In 1917, aged 71, Thirioux travelled to Rodrigues – a small volcanic island to the east of Mauritius – where he collected the last two specimens of the now-extinct Rodrigues day gecko on l’île Frégate. This discovery was his nal contribution to natural history. He died in June of that year in Port Mathurin, the capital of Rodrigues. Thirioux’s vast collection of fossils is still the most important record of the now-extinct fauna of Mauritius.

How the dodo lived is a mystery. These fossils help fill in the blanks

scarce on Mauritius, predominantly due to quarrying, and it’s only thanks to great fortune that some have survived. Most are on private land, so we requested permissions from the landowner and the government to excavate it.

We rst studied the cave in 2005 and again in 2008, but this time, we were accompanied by my colleague, Museum curator and bird osteologist, Judith White, and several local assistants. We measured the cave, photographing and sketching details such as the collapse of the roof and the size and position of each chamber, and checked for sediment deposits as these are often full of fossils. Judith and Ebony Forest biologists Adisha Sewdyal and Estelle de Sornay began excavating the smaller chambers close to the cave entrance. Small bones were separated from the sediment at a sieving table, while larger bones were placed in bags and given a eld number.

Within the rst few hours, we had already discovered lots of beautifully preserved dodo bones and the fossil remains of other extinct birds, fruit bats, snails and reptiles such as giant tortoises.

Dodo: back from the dead?

DNA studies have concluded that the dodo shared the same common ancestor as the southeast Asian Nicobar pigeon. This suggests the ancestral pigeon island-hopped to Mauritius from southeast Asia during a period of low sea levels, when it was able to use now-submerged islands. Researchers have earmarked this species to help bring the dodo back from extinction. But there are challenges. It’s proved hard to produce a fully sequenced genome in birds (the genetic information that makes up the bird), as the problem lies with the egg. Because of the size of the yolk, the cell’s nucleus is minute and therefore di cult to locate. Furthermore, the technique for removing, editing and reinserting it into the egg after it has begun to form is still being developed.

Colossal Biosciences intends to use a di erent approach. Primordial germ cells (PGCs) give rise to sperm and egg cells (gametes) and pass to the developing gonads via the bloodstream. Colossal plans to genetically modify PGCs extracted from a labgrown Nicobar pigeon embryo to produce a more dodo-like genome, and inject them into a Nicobar pigeon chick. The pigeon surrogates will carry the dodo genome and produce a hybrid bird with dodo characteristics, but to what extent remains to be seen.

Today, the closest living relative of the dodo (pictured) is the colourful Nicobar pigeon.

Fossil material found in caves is better protected from the elements than remains found in marsh sites, with even the smallest fossils often preserved. It is particularly good for DNA, so there’s lots of interest in retrieving fresh cave remains (see left).

The discovery of these marsh and cave fossil sites has provided unprecedented insights into the pre-human environment of Mauritius. The marshes were once lakes surrounded by wetland plants and tall forests dominated by the evergreen tambalacoque tree – or ‘dodo tree’ – palm trees and screw pines with their stilt roots. The standing water was an oasis in otherwise dry areas, attracting vast numbers of giant tortoises, along with dodos, fruit bats, giant skinks, parrots, owls, rails and a large number of songbirds. Almost all are now extinct.

Correcting the record

The dodo is one of the most celebrated birds in the world, with more written about it than any other species, but we still know relatively little about how it lived. These fossils help ll in some of the blanks.

VISIT THE MUSEUM

You can see Owen’s dodo from Mare aux Songes – which has such a signi cant history – in Treasures in the Cadogan gallery (Green Zone).

The dodo resided close to the coast and on o shore islets, and occupied dry and wet forests in the lowlands and mountains. It had a large gizzard stone – a rock in its digestive tract used to break down food to aid digestion – which indicates that it ate a diet of fallen fruits and seeds.

CT scanning of its skull reveals a brain size that o ered a level of intelligence similar to that of modern pigeons. Its large and well-di erentiated olfactory bulbs – masses of tissue in the brain that process smells – suggest that these grounddwelling birds relied on scent to detect food, rather than sight.

The dodo is almost universally depicted as a ‘fat, bulgy bird’, but it actually experienced seasonal fat cycles. It would have looked leaner during the non-breeding, hot, rainy season from October to March, and fatter during the cool, dry season from March to September. The latter time is also when the birds nested and produced a single egg. Dodos ercely defended their territories, and males probably fought each other with their large beaks. Far from being round and ungainly, the dodo was relatively slender and quite agile – but still among the heaviest birds known today.

MUSEUM EXPERT

Dr Julian Hume

Julian is an artist and bird palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in Tring. He excavates fossils, scienti cally describes them, and recreates them in art.

Dodo de-extinction?

Might we see a return of the dodo one day? Our excavation was visited by ancient DNA expert Beth Shapiro and her team, who are working alongside the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation on behalf of Colossal Biosciences, a company striving to resurrect extinct species including the dodo.

They may or may not succeed in recreating a bird that has some shared characteristics with the dodo. But their work on genetics and collaboration with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation is expected to open up new avenues for research that could improve conservation e orts and provide signi cant support to endangered birds, such as the Mauritius pink pigeon. This species was reduced to fewer than 20 individuals in the 1970s and is now su ering from inbreeding and associated diseases. Modifying its genome to enhance its immunity could dramatically increase its chance of long-term survival.

It’s clear the dodo continues to inspire us three centuries after its disappearance. And we hope it might, one day, become a symbol of resurrection rather than extinction. ●

species Meet o r new

Last year, scientists at the Natural History Museum described more than 190 new species for science. From ancient dinosaurs to a vegetarian piranha, here are just a few of the newcomers…

DEAD LEAF MANTIS Deroplatys xuzhengfai

Looking exactly like dead leaves on the forest oor wasn’t enough to fool the scientists who described Deroplatys xuzhengfai. Despite its best attempt at evading detection, this was one of three new praying mantids named from northern Borneo. All of the three new species are what are known rather simply as ‘dead leaf’ mantids, because they look exactly like dead leaves.

Unlike other, more familiar mantids that stalk leafy bushes and tree canopies in search of unsuspecting prey, these species inhabit the forest oor. As a result, they’ve swapped the colourful yellows and greens of their relatives for more camou aged browns and beige. But their mimicking goes further than just colour. If disturbed among the leaf litter, these mantids rock back and forth like a leaf caught in a light breeze.

The dead leaf mantids form part of the much wider order of mantises known as Mantodea. This contains about 2,400 species globally, which all tend to have the characteristic triangular head, bulging eyes and large, elongated forelegs that are superbly adapted to catching insect prey.

In fact, these insects are such highly adapted predators, they are the only invertebrate known to see in 3D. Scientists gured this out by putting the insects into tiny 3D glasses and then playing them lms and observing how they reacted to virtual ‘prey’ coming within striking distance.

HONEY BROWN HORSESHOE BAT Rhinolophus webalai

Bats are already one of the world’s most diverse groups of mammals – but more are still being found! The newcomers include Rhinolophus webalai, a horseshoe bat from eastern Africa.

There are 112 species of horseshoe bat, aerial insectivores that it through the skies of Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania and Australasia. Yet the huge number of species in this group is relatively new, with a third of all horseshoe bat species only being described in the past 20 years.

The reason for this is that they form something known as a species complex – this is when animals look similar, but are actually distinct species. It has only been thanks to relatively recent developments in technology that scientists have been able to identify subtle di erences in their echolocation and genetics. This is precisely what led to the description of this latest bat from Kenya. While looking at the evolutionary history of a species known as Rhinolophus landeri, scientists used DNA analysis to split it into four species – one of which was entirely new to science. They named it R. webalai after Africa’s foremost bat biologist, Dr Paul Waswa Webala.

3

CELEBRITY SNAKE Anguiculus dicaprioi

A new species of snake has been living in the shadow of the tallest mountains on Earth. After spotting a photo on Instagram, researchers identi ed the snake seen in the foothills of the Himalayas as a new one to science.

They decided to name it Anguiculus dicaprioi after the actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio, in honour of his work creating awareness about biodiversity loss and climate change. They’ve recommended its common name should be DiCaprio’s Himalayan snake.

The reptile grows to around half a metre in length, and is covered in beautiful metallic brown scales with a cream belly. Not only is DiCaprio’s Himalayan snake a new species, it’s an entirely new genus too. Scientists found it to be remarkably di erent from its closest relatives due to having a speci c pore in its skull.

The snake is found in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh in the western Himalayas. Its naming suggests the animals found in this part of the mountain range are more distinct than previously thought, and researchers hope it may spur other scientists to explore the region in more depth.

Not only is DiCaprio’s Himalayan snake a new species, it’s an entirely new genus too

4

LOST WORLD FROG

Stefania imawari

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle needed a location for a ‘lost world’, he chose the enigmatic attopped tepuis mountains of South America. While the tepuis may not be the last refuges of long-extinct dinosaurs, these geological marvels are home to some extraordinary wildlife.

Cut o from the humid rainforest below by sheer-sided cli s, each one hosts a unique community of animals and plants found nowhere else on Earth. These include new species of amphibians such as the frog Stefania imawari, discovered on the summit of Angasima-tepui in southern Venezuela. It has been named imawaria after the malicious spirits that inhabit the tops of the tepuis, according to Pemón traditional beliefs.

Little more is known about this species, which was found living among the exposed rocks and richly vegetated areas of the tepuis top. One female was even found living within the bromeliad Brocchinia hechtioides, which is unusual since this plant is thought to be carnivorous.

This frog was described alongside a second new species named Stefania upuigmae, which was found on the top of a nearby tepui called Upuigma. While the environment on the summit across these two mountains is similar, their isolation makes the two new frogs ‘microendemics’ – species whose range is limited to one highly speci c location.

about six years old and probably almost fully grown. It joins a growing menagerie of large iguanodontids described from the Isle of Wight.

In the past, any large herbivorous dinosaur of a similar type was simply thought to be Iguanodon. But now palaeontologists such as Dr Jeremy Lockwood, who helped describe this new species, are increasingly recognising that this was not the case. Over the past few years, a range of new related dinosaurs have been described, showing that the environment was not as homogenous as previously thought and was, in fact, a highly diverse, dynamic ecosystem.

It’s likely that, as more fossils are discovered and those already in collections are reassessed, more new species of iguanodontids will be uncovered.

THUNDERING IGUANODON Comptonatus chasei

The most complete dinosaur skeleton unearthed in 100 years is providing new insights into the UK’s ancient past. Named Comptonatus chasei, meaning the ‘Compton thunderer’, after the bay at which it was found, it would have roamed what would later become the Isle of Wight some 120 million years ago.

Back then, the landscape would have looked vastly di erent. The large herbivorous dinosaur lived in a forested environment, dominated by a wide, meandering river system, which would have faced both periodic ooding and forest res. It belonged to the group known as the iguanodontids, so its discovery is adding to our understanding of how diverse dinosaurs were in this region during the Late Cretaceous.

It’s thought Comptonatus would have weighed about the same as a modern American bison. As a large herbivore, it’s likely that the dinosaurs lived in herds and so would not only have helped to shape the environment, but also to feed the large predators that stalked them along river banks and among the trees. These would have included carnivorous theropod dinosaurs such as Vectiraptor, Riparovenator milnerae and Ceratosuchops inferodios.

The remains of Comptonatus were rst unearthed in 2013 by a local fossil hunter called Nick Chase, after whom the species was named. In total, 149 bones of the animal were recovered from the cli s of Compton Bay. Researchers suspect that at time of death, the dinosaur was

Almost 150 bones were unearthed. The completeness of Comptonatus’ skull helped to distinguish it from its relatives.

©John Sibbick

©Dinosaur

Not a snake or a worm, but a new species of legless amphibian known as a caecilian was described from the Tesoro Escondido Reserve, Ecuador. Now named Caecilia tesoro, some individuals are all grey, while others have a grey head but strikingly yellow body. Researchers are uncertain why there appears to be two di erent colour morphs within the species, but speculate that it could be related to the individual’s age.

Caecilians are a little known but incredible group of amphibians. While many people are familiar with newts, toads and frogs, the caecilians form an entirely separate group. All species have lost their limbs, and either live their entire lives in the water or underground. This is one of the reasons so little is known about them.

But what is known about them is amazing. They have extraordinarily solid skulls, with fearsome looking recurved teeth, along with tiny, reduced eyes, which in some cases have been lost entirely. Instead, they have evolved little tentacles that emerge from their skulls, often beneath where the eyes should be, which are used as sensory organs. As if that wasn’t enough, some species also display parental care, with mothers peeling o their own skin to feed to their young.

Caecilians are amphibians that have no legs, tiny eyes and sensory tentacles

FLUKE

Parasites are vastly understudied but critically important. While we might associate them with disease, the majority of these organisms go about their lives entirely undetected. And that creates a problem, because it makes them exceedingly di cult to study.

While examining the DNA of a species of parasitic atworm, researchers discovered an entirely new species. The newly named Diplomonorchis fallax was found living in the intestines of a marine sh from the Gulf of Mexico known as the spot croaker.

It belongs to a type of parasite known as a trematode, which are frequently referred to as ukes. These are tiny atworms that typically infect the digestive tract of a host, but have been found in other organs. This new species is part of a group of trematodes known as the digenea, which usually have two suckers and require multiple hosts to complete their life cycle.

The true diversity of parasites is incredibly di cult to establish, as they are a vastly understudied group of organisms. This makes it hard to know how they are faring and which species are at risk of going extinct. By naming them, scientists can help to build this picture.

Internal digenea ukes primarily parasitise estuary and marine shes as adults.

©Dr

Peter Olson

This clearwing moth from Guyana was discovered with its hostplant in a house in Wales!

UNEXPECTED

One of the most unusual species described is a moth that was some 7,000 kilometres from home. It was found when an ecologist noticed an unusual insect itting around her living room in Port Talbot, Wales.

After taking a picture and posting it on Instagram, it was suggested that the moth might be a new species. This was con rmed when researchers at the Natural History Museum got hold of the specimen and compared it to those held in our collections. They eventually named it Carmenta brachyclados.

But the mystery of this new species was far from over, because it was found to be native to the rainforests of Guyana, in South America. How it turned up in Wales, in winter, ba ed everyone.

That was until they learned that the mother of the ecologist who found it had visited Guyana three months previously. It turned out that the mud on her boots contained a fragment of plant within which the larvae of the moth were growing. When the caterpillars matured, they emerged to nd themselves not in a humid tropical forest, but in a toasty Welsh living room.

SAURON’S PIRANHA Myloplus sauron 9

The Amazon rainforest is one of the most biodiverse regions on this planet, and yet it’s still turning up surprises. The latest is a new species of vegetarian piranha.

Scientists have named the sh Myloplus sauron, after Sauron from The Lord of the Rings, because it has a black band down its side and ame-red ns that are reminiscent of the villainous wizard’s all-seeing eye.

Despite its nefarious namesake and the ferocious reputation of its cousins, this sh belongs to a group, known as the pacus, that prefers to dine on plant material, favouring food like fruit and nuts. But even the character of the more carnivorous piranhas has been somewhat overblown. These sh are unlikely to attack, only doing so when starved of food or defending their nests.

Sauron’s piranha comes from the Xingu River in Brazil, but the building of a dam across the stretch of the water where the sh is found has put its future at risk. The naming of this new species, along with a raft of others from the river, highlights the critical need to keep describing new species.

The sh’s black stripe and orange ns reminded researchers of the aming eye of Tolkien’s villain.

©Mark H Sabaj

DEEP-SEA SCAVENGERS

Valettietta trottarum and Valettietta synchlys

The deep-sea abyssal plain is the largest single environment on our planet. Found roughly 5,000 metres beneath the surface, it stretches for thousands of kilometres across the Paci c Ocean. It has long been thought that not much lives on these vast, muddy underwater plains, but scientists are realising that it actually teems with life.

This year, they’ve described two new species of crustacean, known as amphipods, which have been given the formal names of Valettietta trottarum and Valettietta synchlys. A little like a marine woodlouse, these crustaceans live on the ocean oor, foraging for bits of food that have drifted down from the surface.

Measuring only around 10 millimetres long, they might not seem that important but, as scavengers, they help to clean up the biological material that lands on the seabed. The crustaceans also play a role in the carbon cycle that locks it away in deep-sea sediments.

Describing these species also has another function. The area of the Paci c in which the amphipods were found is being targeted for deep-sea mining, so it’s vital that scientists understand and name as many species as they can before any potentially irreversible activities start.

A little like marine woodlice, amphipods live

on the ocean floor

TINY ISLAND PIRATE Ero lizae

A number of new species of spider were described by our scientists, including Ero lizae. This tiny arthropod is one of two new pirate spiders found only on the mid-Atlantic island of Saint Helena.

Part of the UK Overseas Territories, Saint Helena is one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world. Its isolation means the island has developed a unique community of plants and animals. This is particularly true of the cloud forest that clings to its mountain peaks.

The forest is home to many endemic plants, such as black scale fern and the she cabbage tree, and is vital in providing over half of all the drinking water for the island. It is on one of those ferns that researchers discovered the new spider.

Rather than a reference to their swashbuckling island lifestyle, the arthropods are known as pirate spiders due to the groups’ practice of violently taking over the webs of other spiders, before killing their original occupants.

Very little of Saint Helena’s original cloud forest is left, but scientists hope the naming of a new species found nowhere else on Earth might help protect that which remains, and support further research to work out how these tiny pirates can be enabled to thrive.

Having been mistaken for a closely related species, the two new spiders have been hiding out on St Helena for decades.

The newly described species is the rst darwinopteran pterosaur found in Scotland, and only the second overall.

MISSING-LINK PTEROSAUR Ceoptera evansae

About 165 million years ago, the skies of what would become the UK were lled with the chattering of pterosaurs. These ying reptiles evolved into a huge range of species, including insect eaters, sh hunters and even lter feeders.

Last year, researchers named a new pterosaur from the Isle of Skye. Ceoptera evansae was discovered in 2006 when a few fragile bones were spotted poking out of a boulder at the base of a cli . The rock was painstakingly bathed in acid 29 times, over a period of 12 months, to wash o thin layers of rock. This technique was combined with CT scanning that allowed researchers to see inside the rock at what was not revealed by the acid.

Eventually they were able to reconstruct what was preserved within – the remains of a 1.6-metrewide pterosaur. It was only the second ying reptile to be discovered from all of Scotland.

Alive during the Jurassic Period, the pterosaur is an important nd as it bridges an evolutionary gap within the fossil record. The remains of these animals are rarely preserved, as their fragile bones are easily destroyed. This creates an arti cially patchy distribution and, until this discovery, this

The new pterosaur bridges an evolutionary gap within the existing fossil record

particular type of pterosaur had only been known from China. The new species helps redress this bias.

It belonged to a group known as the darwinoptera. Historically, it’s not been clear whether all the species in this group descended from a single common ancestor, or if they independently evolved similar characteristics. By studying the remains of Ceoptera, researchers were able to nally con rm that this is a group of closely related species.

The fossils are also helping to esh out what this region would have been like all that time ago. Skye is already known for a number of fossil remains from a range of species, including aquatic turtles, salamanders, ancient mammals and large lumbering sauropod dinosaurs. There are also the preserved footprints of other species, such as carnivorous theropod dinosaurs. Now we know more about what would once have been itting above their heads through those ancient skies. ●

SUPPORT OUR SCIENTISTS

With species around the world going extinct at a worrying rate, it’s vital the Museum’s scientists describe as many new species as possible, to create a record of the intricate web of life on this planet. Since 2015, we’ve shared the digital records of 5.9 million specimens, helping scientists around the world protect species and habitats. You can support our work at nhm.ac.uk/ support-us/give

bird? clever a Who’ s e

DID YOU KNOW?

Studies claim that by four months old, Australian ravens have full-blown cognitive skills. By the time they’re mature, they rival great apes.

Humans often underestimate the intelligence of birds, but research shows crows are even smarter than we thought. Some experts think corvids could be as clever as apes.

WORDS: JOSH DAVIS

Corvids - the group of birds that includes jays, crows, jackdaws and magpies – are known to be incredibly intelligent animals. They’ve been shown to plan, make tools and even hold grudges. Someone who’s witnessed their complex range of behaviours is one of the Natural History Museum’s Senior Curators of Birds, Hein Van Grouw. Crows are opportunistic omnivores, known to steal eggs and chicks from other birds’ nests and catch small mammals. Hein once witnessed a nest raid. ‘I knew there was a blackbird nest in the ivy. When a big carrion crow entered the foliage, the parent birds looked extremely anxious. I could hear their young calling frantically.’ Over the next 30 minutes, the crow systematically dived into the ivy, plucked out a edging and ew o to eat it. Eventually, just one baby blackbird remained. ‘The crow entered the ivy again but, this time, it didn’t come out,’ recalls Hein. ‘The young bird was screaming – in the end, the mother blackbird couldn’t help herself and ew in to protect her young.’ There was one nal squeak, then silence. The crow appeared with the dead female in its beak and ew o , before returning to the nest one last time to take the nal chick. ‘In my opinion, the crow was using the baby bird as bait,’ says Hein.

What is intelligence?

While it’s hard to draw too many conclusions from a single anecdote, what’s clear is that corvids have evolved a huge range of cognitive abilities often cited as being on a par with children and apes. These behaviours are often collectively referred to as ‘intelligence’, but one of the biggest issues is de ning exactly what we mean by this. Di erent psychologists and researchers have worked to di erent de nitions of intelligence depending on their subject, or what they’re ultimately trying to →

gure out. For example, intelligence could mean the ability to use logic, the capacity to plan, or self recognition. If we accept these abilities as markers of intellect, then this opens the door to many other species also displaying forms of intelligence.

These are the kind of sticky questions that Professor Nicky Clayton has spent the past two decades probing. A Fellow of the Royal Society and Professor of Comparative Cognition at the University of Cambridge, Nicky has been at the forefront of animal-cognition studies. Her work integrates biology and psychology to test

‘Crows are as clever as nonhuman great apes. We call them feathered apes’

fundamental questions about the evolution and development of intelligence. And a large part of this work has revolved around her study of corvids.

Initiative tests

The Hawaiian crow is a skilled tool user. It instinctively knows how to use a stick tool to extract food from a wooden log, without any form of training.

Jays are shy woodland birds. but you may see one in autumn burying acorns to eat later in the winter, when food gets scarce.

Corvids are typically medium- to large-sized birds that are colloquially referred to as ‘crows’. While in the UK there are only about seven species of corvid (plus one subspecies), globally there are roughly 140 found on every continent apart from Antarctica. These range from the more familiar jays, rooks and crows to the perhaps less well-known choughs, nutcrackers and treepies.

‘Together with my husband, Nathan Emery, I’ve argued for the mentality of crows,’ says Nicky. ‘We believe that when it comes to cognition, they’re as clever as the non-human great apes [chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans]. We refer to crows as feathered apes.’

When it comes to intelligence, Nicky tends to focus her research on aspects of problem-solving that go beyond simple trial and error. This is tested by training the birds to do one task, such as placing rocks into water to raise the surface level and retrieve a treat, and then getting the crow to

Know your crows: eight to spot

Corvids are intelligent and interesting to watch. There are eight di erent members of the crow family in the UK. See how many you can spot with our handy guide.

Carrion crow

One of the most familiar corvids you’ll spot in the UK. These highly adaptable birds can be found in both urban and country settings, often alone or in pairs, though during the winter they can form much larger ocks.

Hooded crow

The hooded crow is a subspecies of the carrion crow. They look di erent, with a light grey body, but a black head, wings and tail. In the UK, the hooded crow is largely restricted to Scotland and Ireland, but can be a common sight elsewhere in their range.

Raven

Similar in appearance to the crow, these birds are best distinguished by their sheer size. One of the biggest corvids in the world, they are also much chunkier than other species. They have a very thick, deep bill that’s perfect for predating anything they can catch.

Jackdaw

One of the smaller UK corvids, these birds can be recognised by their dark black-grey plumage, which is lighter around the neck, giving the impression that they are wearing a little black hat. Their eyes start o blue but change to white, contrasting sharply with the colour of their feathers.

Magpie

One of the UK’s most distinctive corvids, the magpie has dramatic black and white plumage with a blue-green metallic sheen. Common visitors to gardens and parks, they were the rst birds known to pass the mirror test, demonstrating self recognition.

Jay

Typically a bird of woodland and scrub, the colourful jay is easily recognised by its pinkish feathers and the ash of electric blue on its wings. It can be hard to spot as it rarely moves far from cover, but look for it hopping around the tree canopy, on the hunt for acorns and eggs.

Rook

Roughly the same colour but slightly smaller than the carrion crow, the easiest way to tell them apart is by the bare grey skin at the base of the beak in adults, giving them something of a gnarled look. They often form large ocks and breed in colonies.

Red-billed chough

The only member of the corvid family in the UK with garishly red legs and curved beaks. The chough was driven to extinction across much of the UK, but changes in coastal management practices and reintroductions are seeing these birds return to parts of their former range.

apply these techniques to a new task. ‘We give them a novel test, but now there are no stones,’ explains Nicky. ‘There are two kinds of items: one is heavy and sinks, the other is light and oats. The birds will spontaneously pop the heavy items into the jar. We tested kids as well, and children don’t pass this test until they’re aged eight.’

Tools, time and teamwork

Nicky argues that crows have been under the same selection pressures as apes, which is why they’ve evolved similar mental capacities, despite being separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution. These pressures can be boiled down to three main aspects: tools, time and teamwork.

The ability to use and craft tools enables the birds to access foods they ordinarily wouldn’t be able to reach. Being able to perceive time –knowing that there’s a past, present and future – allows the birds to plan. While teaming up with other members of their species means that collectively they can be more successful than any individual would be on their own.

All three of these aspects converge in their caching behaviour. This is when birds bury food to save it for later, such as in winter when nourishment is harder to come by. On the surface, this might seem like a fairly uncomplicated activity, but it actually requires quite complex cognition. ‘Caching is an interesting behaviour, because crows hide food and then rely on their memory to recover it days – if not months – into the future,’ explains Nicky. ‘They do something in the present that will only bene t them in the future. And to nd the food again in the future, they have to remember where they hid it in the past. So it’s a lovely model

system for looking at past, present and future, and it shows an awareness of other time periods.’

Above ‘One for sorrow, two for joy’ is a popular rhyme associated with the magpie – a bird of myth and legend

Right Jackdaws are known to be thieves, stealing other birds’ eggs and breaking into garden feeders, or ousting residents from their nests, as with this squirrel

Researching this behaviour, Nicky and her colleagues uncovered some extraordinary practices. For a start, they found that if another bird was watching when a crow cached its food, it would return at a later date to move it. But even this wasn’t quite as simple as it sounds.

Outsmarting thieves

The crows hiding food would be more likely to move the snack if the observer was a dominant crow. But they wouldn’t bother moving it if the observer was their partner. The birds were changing their behaviour based on who was watching, meaning they have some concept of ‘theory of mind’ This is the capacity to understand that other individuals have separate emotions, intentions and thoughts Essentially it’s about having an understanding of other minds.

Easily identi ed by the grey-white skin at the base of its long, pointed beak, the rook nests in raucous colonies called rookeries.

‘But the really cool thing we found was that only crows who have been food thieves in the past would move their caches to new locations,’ says Nicky ‘Naive birds, who hadn’t had the chance to steal anybody else’s cache, don’t do this. This means it’s not hardwired, and it’s not learned because it’s a one-o behaviour.

These individuals have drawn on their past experience of stealing another bird’s food and applied it to their own current situation.’ These examples clearly show that there’s more to the brains of birds than previously thought. But equally, there are still some aspects that we’re almost certainly missing This is because, as humans, we’re limited by our own bodies and how they work,

Myths and legends

With their ubiquity and intelligence, it’s no surprise that corvids feature in the myths and legends of many di erent cultures, where they are frequently depicted as tricksters or scoundrels. For example, in the Kulin nation of Victoria, Australia, the crow is known as Waang, Wahn or Waa. One of their stories tells how the crow brought re to humankind after stealing it from the Karatgurk women and accidentally setting the world a ame.

In northern Europe, the raven is frequently associated with the gods. In Norse mythology, Odin is accompanied by two ravens named Huginn and Muninn, who act as the god’s eyes and ears.

These stories even extend right through to the present, with a three-eyed raven playing a role in the mystical awakening of Bran Stark in the book series and TV show A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones

by how we think and behave. This means that it’s fundamentally impossible for us to truly know what non-human species are capable of.

Human limitations

‘We don’t see everything that’s out there,’ explains Nicky. ‘We don’t remember things terribly accurately, because our memories are liable to change each time we revisit them. And our minds are subject to false memories, so we imagine things that never actually happened. All these subjectivities within our cognition have been known for a while. But recognising exactly what our blind spots are, and how they’re shaped by the body we inhabit, is quite new.’

A good example of this is that we simply don’t experience the world in the same way as birds. For instance, while as primates we see three colours, birds see a fourth colour in ultraviolet light. Though we now know about these colours and can account

We don’t experience the world in the same way as birds – they see ultraviolet

for these di erences, we might be designing experiments to test intelligence that make sense to humans, but not to birds.

‘Think also about wings versus hands,’ Nicky suggests. ‘Think how they shape the way we embody the world, the way we interpret what we see and remember, as well as the way we interact with physical things in our respective worlds.’

Crow friends

Despite these fundamental di erences, profound and meaningful relationships can bridge this human-bird divide. Connections can be made, and understanding ourish.

DID YOU KNOW?

Crows can recognise individual human faces and associate them with kindness or danger. They remember them for years, hold grudges, and pass this information along to their friends.

In the past, Hein rescued injured birds. These included a jay who learned how to imitate the sound of the kettle and the telephone to lure Hein to his room. ‘Clearly, he could link things together and knew that a whistling sound would bring me downstairs,’ recalls Hein. ‘That was pretty clever. All he wanted was a bit of attention and company for a few minutes.’

Eventually, Hein was able to recognise when the noises coming from downstairs were made by the jay, but that didn’t stop him from humouring his feathered friend. ‘He couldn’t make two sounds at the same time, so if I heard a telephone or a kettle whistle without squawking, I’d know it was him. But I’d go downstairs anyway, just to please him.’ ●

©Nature Picture Library

Discovering Dorothea

In 1901 Dorothea Bate, aged 22, embarked on the rst of her trailblazing expeditions to the Mediterranean islands. Enduring hardship and danger, she discovered fossil remains of spectacular extinct species, many new to science.

Dorothea in 1930.

It was only with great reluctance that she would sit for this photograph.

WORDS: KAROLYN SHINDLER

The cave was in a small bay in the northeast of the island of Majorca. With an old sherman as her guide, Dorothea Bate scrambled over sharp, wet rocks along the shore, her boots and skirt hem wet with sea spray, her face stinging from salt and the unforgiving Mediterranean sun. The cave entrance was a small crevice, just above sea level, with a drop of at least two metres into a large-ish cavern. In the dim light of her lantern, she could just make out fragments of fossil bones embedded in the cave oor – all that survived of many more remains that had been destroyed by the sea.

As she painstakingly extracted the bones, they seemed to be all from the same species. ‘I fear a goat’, Dorothea wrote in her diary entry for 4 May 1909, ‘the common or garden?’ To her surprise she also found ‘some very small limb bones’ and just one small tooth, but that, she thought, ‘was a small rodent’s canine’. However, she noted that the stalagmite layer on the cave oor was so thick that it ‘makes me believe they are really old’.

And they were. What Dorothea had discovered was very far from a common or garden goat. It was, in fact, a new species – a tiny, goat-like antelope, with shortened limbs and extraordinary front teeth usually only found in rodents. She named it Myotragus balearicus – mouse goat of the Balearics. It is unique to Majorca and Menorca and has given rise to research (and argument) on the scale of a small industry because of what it reveals about evolution, climate change and the e ects of humans on habitats. It became extinct about 4,035 years ago after surviving for about ve million years.

An instinctive natural historian

Dorothea Minola Alice Bate was born on 8 November 1878 in Wales, and spent her childhood roaming the beautiful countryside near her home. She used to laugh that her education was only brie y interrupted by school, but she was an instinctive natural historian, noting the birds, plants and insects she observed on scraps of paper, some of which have survived.

She sent essays and illustrations to the children’s pages of a magazine her mother subscribed to – sometimes winning a prize and often being commended for her work. By the time she was 17, Dorothea’s ornithological articles were being published in national journals.

By 1898 she wanted more, and on an autumn morning marched into the Natural History Museum and demanded a job. She was one of the rst women to work there as a scientist. It was an almost wholly male preserve, a place of black frock coats and top hats. Whether it was through her charm, innate ability, or both – they may have been aware of her articles – she was allowed into the Bird Room. Here she sorted bird skins into species with assurance and skill.

Above North of the Cova de la Barxa in Majorca, where Dorothea rst discovered Myotragus, are the Cova de los Colombs, where she discovered more specimens. This is her photograph, with the shermen whose boat she used.

You can see the quirkily beautiful and intriguing Myotragus balearicus in the Preparators’ cabinet on the balcony above Hintze Hall.

The Bethleham excavation pit where Dorothea discovered spectacular fossil remains. The scale of the pit is astonishing.

How to shrink an elephant

Put it on an island. But why does a four-metre -tall animal evolve into one just a metre high?

Islands have been called evolutionary laboratories where extraordinary things happen. Small animals become larger – known as giganticism, while large ones become smaller, called dwar sm. It’s known as the Island Rule. This occurs all over the world, but the fossil record of Mediterranean islands is particularly rich in these animals, especially elephants, mammoths, hippos and the Balearics’ Myotragus.

Dorothea Bate was fascinated by why and how animals should adapt like this –whether it was environmental change, climate, diet, lack of predators – or what? And so are today’s researchers.

It’s possible that on mainlands, great or small size acts as a defence against predators.

For some reason, these predators did not make their way to Mediterranean islands. As the islands were so mountainous and food less plentiful, hippos and elephants began to adapt – successive generations becoming smaller and stockier.

For small animals, the absence of predators meant there was less need to be tiny.

Dormice evolved to become as large as squirrels, swans became possibly too large to y and there were giant tortoises.

Dorothea’s family had recently moved to the Wye Valley and it was there that she rst discovered the excitement – and dangers – of fossil-hunting.

In a cave high in the cli s above the river, she discovered tiny ice age fossil mammal bones, which she brought to the Museum.

Palaeontologists there helped her identify them and encouraged her to publish her ndings in the Geological Magazine in 1901. So began her 50-year career of international distinction at the Natural History Museum.

In 1901 Dorothea was invited by family friends to Cyprus, and the Museum saw an opportunity.

No one, it appeared, had ever looked for the extinct fauna of Cyprus. Dorothea Bate, at 22 years old,

1898

The life of Dorothea: a pioneering fossil hunter

Nineteen-year-old Dorothea Bate talks her way into working in the Museum’s Bird Room. She is one of the rst women to work as a scientist in the Museum. ①

1900–01

She discovers fossilised bones of ice age birds and small mammals in Merlin’s Cave in the Wye Valley. Museum palaeontologists encourage her to publish her ndings.

1901–4

Dorothea explores for fossil bone caves in Cyprus and Crete ④. Her remarkable discoveries include extinct species of pygmy hippos, pygmy elephants new to science and a tiny mammoth, described in 2012. ②

1909–11

Dorothea makes three visits to the Balearic Islands. In Majorca and Menorca she discovers the bizarre extinct goat-like antelope she names Myotragus or mouse-goat. It is unique to the Balearics. ③

1924

She is appointed Curator of Fossil Mammals and Birds at the Museum, even though she’s a temporary scienti c worker - women are not permitted to join the sta until 1928. She never does.

1920s–30s

Dorothea works on fossil fauna from the Mount Carmel caves excavated by archaeologist Dorothy Garrod. She constructs a chart illustrating the changing climate over 100,000s of years of human occupation of the caves.

1934–7

Dorothea excavates a site in Bethlehem. Her spectacular discoveries include remarkably primitive elephantid fossil remains.

1930s–1940s

Dorothea’s reputation is international. Fossil bones are sent to her for her unrivalled expertise in describing not only the species, but suggesting the climate and environment as well.

1948–51

Aged 70 she is appointed O cer-in-Charge to run the Museum’s o -shoot museum at Tring, Hertfordshire.

1951

On 13 January, Dorothea dies. She fades from view, but since the 2000s there has been a growing recognition of her scienti c and historical importance, her exceptional fossil collections being of great value to current researchers.

A journey through time

The discovery of Dorothea’s diary from 1909 o ers insight into her remarkable life.

Dorothea kept diaries and notebooks for all her travels, which are now priceless records of how she made her discoveries and the extraordinary hardships she endured in pursuit of her profession. They are preserved in the Natural History Museum’s Library and Archives.

Her Majorca diary for 1909 is a new and exciting discovery. It was found during the recent cataloguing of a previously uncatalogued box of palaeontology manuscripts in the Museum Library, in an inconspicuous brown envelope and is an old, black, accounts book. Dorothea used whatever was to hand to record her travels and her work, and she had been doing that from childhood.

An elephantid tooth that Dorothea and a workman were excavating.

the tiniest mammoth ever to evolve and its four-metre-high ancestor.

would be the rst fossil-hunter – male or female –to explore systematically the limestone caves of the island. Her success there was just the beginning. From 1901 to 1911, Dorothea explored Cyprus, Crete and then the Balearics, revealing the main extinct species of the islands. In Cyprus and Crete she discovered extraordinary extinct mini species, among them pygmy elephants and hippos about a metre high. In Crete she discovered what, on the information then available to her, she thought was a pygmy elephant and its full-sized ancestor, but in 2012 was shown to be

Above Dorothea Bate with a workman excavating an elephantid tooth from a Bethlehem pit.

Above left Dorothea’s recently discovered 1909 Majorca diary, now preserved with her papers in the Museum’s Library and Archives. Note: Page (5 May 1909) records her discovery of the all-important Myotragus skull in Cova de la Barxa (last line).

The Balearics revealed Myotragus, the little mouse goat that lived nowhere else in the world. Among her many other fossil discoveries was a dormouse the size of a squirrel, and a dwarf deer. Why, on islands, large animals should become smaller (known as dwar sm), and small ones become larger (giganticism) was a subject Dorothea pursued all her life (see box, overleaf).

Mediterranean magic

Dorothea’s courage as she climbed treacherous mountains and sea-battered cli s is astonishing. There were no convenient signs saying ‘this way to the bone cave’; she had to discover everything for herself. Roads were few and, in the remote areas where she worked, accommodation was often scarce and ea infested. She travelled by ‘a variety of quads’ as she called them – mule, pony and donkey – or by shing boat, and she was horribly seasick.

Dorothea explored alone, hiring local men as guides and interpreters, and to do heavy digging or to set the gunpowder or dynamite when the only way she knew to get through a rock oor was to blast it open. She contracted malaria in Cyprus, scarletina in Majorca and nearly starved in Crete. In Bethlehem, in the 1930s, she worked under threat of political unrest. Time and again she put her science before her health and wellbeing.

She funded her expeditions with grants from such eminent bodies as the Royal Society and by selling her fossils, mainly to the Museum but also

to other institutions. A collection of 60 Myotragus bones was recently discovered in the collections storeroom at the Manchester Museum. It’s thought they had been overlooked for 100 years. Dorothea had sold them in 1914 for £10.

The First World War ended Dorothea’s solo expeditions, but the fearless explorer became a pioneering and innovative scientist. Working on a huge range of fossil fauna over the years, she

acquired an unrivalled expertise. Women were not permitted to join the sta until 1928, but she never did. She was always an uno cial (or temporary) scienti c worker. Yet because of her ability, in 1924 she was appointed Curator of Fossil Mammals and Birds. In 1948, aged 70, she became o cer-in-charge of Tring, the o shoot museum in Hertfordshire.

A new stage of life

In the 1920s and 1930s, Dorothea collaborated on excavations at Mount Carmel in Israel with the archaeologist Dorothy Garrod, and at Bethlehem with the geologist Elinor Wight Gardner. Recent investigations into the Bethlehem fossils suggest that the fossil elephantids she discovered are so primitive they are rede ning our understanding of the early dispersal of animals out of Africa.

Dorothea Bate is important both historically and scienti cally. She was a trailblazer at a time when few women worked in the professions, and those who did often confronted real opposition. She inspired those who worked in the same eld, and she taught younger scientists to look at the implications of a bone or artefact, not just the object itself – to use their scienti c imagination. Her collections are of lasting value to current research, particularly as modern analytical techniques reveal extraordinary new information.

When Dorothea died on 13 January 1951, the Keeper of Geology at the Museum, Wilfred Edwards, expressed the profound sorrow felt by so many: ‘Dorothea’s death is a very great loss to the scienti c world in general and to the Museum in particular. For myself, I have lost one of my best friends.’ Today, Dorothea’s pioneering spirit, her indomitable courage and her spectacular fossils inspire many leaders in the eld she made her own. ●

Left

A fearless and trailblazing paleontologist, Dorothea Bate contributed many specimens to the Museum’s collections.

Buy the book

Discovering Dorothea: The Life of Pioneering Fossil-Hunter

Dorothea Bate by Karolyn Shindler, republished in 2017, is available from all good bookshops.

Above Dorothea (front, right) with the sta of the Museum Geology Department, 1938.

©Alamy

Standing up for nature Hija Uledi

‘We call coral reefs

invertebrates that live here and carrying out surveys to assess the rate of bleaching.

the

‘rainforests of the seas’ as they support so much life’

Hija Uledi calls himself a coral farmer, because he helps to restore the coral reefs around Mnemba Island in Zanzibar in his role as a Senior Community & Conservation Ranger for Oceans without Borders.

How did you get your job and what does it entail?

When I left school, my plan was to become a teacher or work in science or environmental conservation.

After I completed a diploma in intercultural relations, I saw an advertisement for the Community & Conservation Ranger role – the deadline was the next day, but I knew I had to apply right away. I didn’t have the experience, but I had the passion!

Why are coral reefs so important?

Corals are crucial because they support so much marine wildlife. Organisms from tiny worms to huge whales rely on reefs to survive. Healthy coral reefs around the world support 25 per cent of ocean life by providing shelter and food, even though they make up less than one per cent of the ocean’s surface area.

Corals produce algae on the margins of their polyps, which is fed on by bacteria and microbes. These are then eaten by small animals such as crabs, shrimps, snails and worms. These in turn feed the small reef sh, which attract larger predators. Some sh also raise their young within the safety of the corals.

Worldwide, tens of millions of people depend on coral reefs for food and for their livelihoods. Many coastal communities rely on the critically important ecosystem services provided by coral reefs – they not only sh for a living, they use seaweed to make herbal medicines and other useful goods, and earn a living from tourism. Reefs also protect coastal areas from storms by reducing the power and impact of waves before they break on the shore. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia can reduce the height of waves by up to 75 per cent, which diminishes the devastating impact these waves can have on the coastline and their communities.

What challenges do coral reefs face?

After three interviews I found out I’d been selected to work as a Ranger on Mnemba Island, Zanzibar, and I started the very next day. That was 2021. I’ve been here ever since.

My role involves many di erent things, including conserving the natural coral reefs, monitoring and protecting sea turtles, measuring the elevation and erosion of the beach, and maintaining our coral nursery and arti cial reefs.

A big part of my role is monitoring the coral around the island, counting the sh and

Coral bleaching is a big problem. Healthy corals are brightly coloured due to microscopic algae called zooxanthellae that live in their tissues. Rising water temperatures and increases in UV radiation cause heat stress in corals, making them expel the zooxanthellae. Without the algae, the corals’ tissues become transparent, exposing their white skeletons.

This is devastating for the health of the reef –bleached corals are not dead, but they are more at risk of starvation and disease. If the water →

©Dr Camilla Floros

‘I love being in the ocean, helping to restore the reef local islanders depend on.’

©Dr Camilla Floros

temperature stays high, the coral won’t let the algae back and ultimately it will die. Climate change means bleaching events are likely to become more common. Coral bleaching can be exacerbated by outbreaks of the voracious crown of thorns star sh.

One individual star sh can eat approximately 400cm2 of coral a day, leaving visible scars in the reef. When numbers are high, they can dramatically reduce the extent of the coral. The star sh also eats corals that survive heatwaves, which can prevent or reduce the rate at which a reef can adapt, compounding the e ects of coral bleaching.

My life in a nutshell

Aside from conservation, agriculture is my life. My family and I grow bananas, cassava and rice.

My favourite sh to see when diving is the frog sh. It really looks like a frog!

I often see sea slugs – nudibranch – when diving. They’re amazing animals. They incorporate stinging cells from their prey into their own bodies as a defence against predators.

My favourite corals are the most beautiful ones.

What’s being done to protect the reef around Mnemba Island?

Like all coral reefs, the corals around Mnemba Island were under pressure from humans. So in 2021, our conservation team established a coral nursery project and arti cial reef. The rangers maintain and nurture this coral garden, using it as a living laboratory for reef restoration.

If we notice corals that are not doing so well, we cut them out and put them in an ice box to transport them to a new location. This can be stressful for the corals – changing location means a change in oxygen and water conditions. But after we leave them to relax for a short time, we can plant them out into our nursery or directly into an arti cial reef. After just a few days, we see the coral begin to recover; soon, we can’t even tell which coral we’ve planted recently and which coral was there before!

Tell us about your work with local communities

It’s important that the local community is a positive stakeholder in the work we do, so education about our coral-restoration work is important. At rst, the community thought it was impossible that we could replant coral in a new area. But as they visited our sites and saw coral growing where there was no coral before, they acquired greater awareness of what we’re doing. Now, rangers overhear local boat captains talking about coral restoration and describing

‘If we see coral that’s not doing so well, we cut it out and plant it in our nursery. After just a few days, we see the coral begin to recover’

the positive impact our arti cial reefs have on shing. They’re becoming ambassadors for the importance of protecting the coral!

Tell us about your work monitoring sea turtles

Two species of sea turtle visit the island – greens make up 95 per cent; the rest are hawksbills. They come to the island’s beaches at night to lay their eggs in the sand – this is something that visitors to the island like to watch.

After we’ve seen a turtle lay her eggs, we carefully check to see if she has been tagged

by us. If we’ve tagged the turtle before, we make a note of which individual has visited, and add a reminder to look out for the same turtle in the future. Turtles return to the same beach to lay their eggs and one individual might return four or ve times during the same breeding season. Their job done, the females leave the beaches but we keep an eye on their nests to see when the young hatch. It usually takes about 55 days for the turtle hatchlings to dig their way out of the sand. Then they race to the sea, dodging predators such as the crabs and seabirds that lie in wait. We protect them and help them get to the sea safely, and then count how many eggs hatched and how many were unsuccessful.

What is the Wildlife Ranger Challenge?

Above: We clean and record all the corals in the nursery. The sh help us to clean the arti cial reef.

Top left: I’ve had a keen interest in the environment and in helping communities since my school days. I am now so proud to be a Marine Ranger and to be part of the growing community of nature guardians.

the essential work that wildlife rangers carry out. We develop many skills and knowledge as rangers, and we’re all stronger together when it comes to the conservation of terrestrial and marine systems. All the funds raised by the Challenge support conservation e orts by improving the working conditions and welfare of wildlife rangers, and providing training and equipment.

Why are you optimistic about the future of the oceans?

The Wildlife Ranger Challenge is organised by Tusk – an organisation that initiates and funds wildlife conservation programmes across Africa – and the Game Rangers Association of Africa. It’s an annual event that raises funds for, and awareness about,

Bottom left: The job of a Marine Ranger is an important one: if you protect nature, you protect yourself.

‘Marine life is resilient. I believe the ocean could bounce back if we work together to tackle the threats before it’s too late’ ●

Every day, we rangers see the damage caused by climate change and other human activities to the health of the ocean. But thanks to the work of conservationists, marine rangers, local communities and governments, I am hopeful that our collective action will help the ocean to recover. For example, we can create arti cial coral reefs that are exactly like natural coral reefs in terms of their biodiversity. Marine life is surprisingly resilient, and I believe the ocean could bounce back if we work together to tackle the threats before it is too late.

A l t for

Nearly 150 years ago, Richard Owen, the Superintendent of the Natural History Collections at the British Museum, had a vision. He pictured a ‘cathedral to nature’ that would celebrate the richness and abundance of life on Earth, inspire the public and fuel scienti c research. Owen’s vision was realised magni cently. Today, the Natural

History Museum houses more than 80 million specimens and is one of the world’s most important natural history collections. Over 200 million visitors have been inspired by the natural wonders on display, while thousands of scientists work tirelessly behind the scenes to classify and understand the world around us.

Today, nature faces threats Owen may never have imagined over a century and a half ago. In 2020, the Museum

change

With changes afoot both inside and out, we aim to make the Natural History Museum the beating heart of our ambitious mission to create advocates for the planet.

Natural

History

Museum:

Our story so far 1 2 3 4

1753

Parliament buys the collection of the late Sir Hans Sloane, who collected natural history specimens while travelling. The British Museum is built to display it to the public.

1863

Richard Owen, Superintendent of Natural History Collections, dreamed of a new building to accommodate the British Museum’s growing nature collection. It took four years to win approval from the trustees, in 1863.

1865

Little-known architect Alfred Waterhouse is appointed to bring Owen’s vision to life. He combined Gothic Revival and twelfth-century Romanesque architecture with lavish decoration inspired by nature.

1873–1881

The Museum took nearly eight years to build. Relocating the zoological specimens from the British Museum in Bloomsbury took 394 trips by horse and cart, spread over 97 days.

5 3

declared a planetary emergency and shifted its focus to pioneering science-based solutions for and from nature. We have the reach and the power to engage a global audience with this mission, and we have made it our goal to create new generations of advocates for the planet.

Our collections are full of knowledge and secrets that could bene t life on our planet, just waiting to be unlocked by our scienti c expertise. We’ve raised over £400 million to secure their future by establishing a new collections and research centre, and through taking the lead on

→

1881

On 18 April 1881 the British Museum (Natural History) opens its doors to the public. It was known as the Natural History Museum (though it wasn’t until 1992 that it o cially took the name). Owen insisted the Museum be free and open to all.

1905

A replica cast from the type specimen of Diplodocus carnegii found in the US, ‘Dippy’ arrives at the Museum in 36 packing cases. The 292-bone skeleton is unveiled to the public in a lavish ceremony, including King Edward VII, on 12 May.

The Darwin Centre opens to the public. It houses the Museum’s historic collections and the unique Cocoon structure displays plant and insect collections. With state-of-theart research facilities, it is used by more than 200 scientists.

2017

The redeveloped Hintze Hall is opened. Dippy is replaced with a 25.2-metre blue whale skeleton, named Hope (below). It is intended to be a reminder to visitors that humanity has a responsibility to protect the biodiversity of our planet.

To protect Museum collections and enhance research, a bespoke facility is being created at Thames Valley Science Park near Reading. The project is one of the largest moves of natural history specimens globally.

2024

The Museum’s new gardens open, allowing visitors to explore the story of how life on Earth has changed since the days of the dinosaurs. Visitors can also experience how nature can thrive in urban spaces.

a national project to digitise natural science collections across the UK. We’ve transformed the Museum’s gardens and grounds into a haven for wildlife and people. We have also expanded this work to connect people with nature beyond the Museum’s walls by launching the National Education Nature Park to help young people experience the natural world, and extended our in uence by delivering award-winning global advocacy programmes.

Thanks to you, we can develop solutions from and for nature, accelerate scienti c discovery and create more advocates for the planet.

Together, we can inspire curiosity, foster sustainability, and create lasting impact

for future generations

Work is already under way to bring our vision to life. Last summer, we unveiled our magni cent new gardens to visitors and, over the coming years, we’ll relocate 28 million specimens to our new site at Thames Valley Science Park, freeing up space in galleries that are currently used for storage.

Our aim is to bring these magni cent spaces, which have long been closed to the public – some since before WWII –back to life. We also plan to restore and renew our existing public galleries and to open new routes around the Museum to enhance visitors’ experience and sustainably increase our capacity.

Transforming

the Museum

This spring sees the opening of Fixing Our Broken Planet, a new gallery

featuring the environmental challenges facing our planet and highlighting the Museum’s positive, science-led solutions. Our previous 2021 exhibition, Our Broken Planet, attracted over one million visitors; the new gallery will build on that to ensure even more visitors leave feeling informed and inspired about what they can do for the planet.

Also under way is a new permanent gallery dedicated to our youngest audiences and their adults, inspiring curiosity about the natural world and building a lifelong connection to nature. Specimens and playful exhibits will help children understand their role within ecosystems and foster an appreciation for the importance of a healthy planet.

Each new gallery will present an opportunity for us to work more

sustainably, expressing our commitment to build less, build light and build wise. Beginning with Fixing Our Broken Planet, the Museum is working to improve and innovate with sustainable design and construction – including object plinths made from 3D printed recycled clay, built with modular parts and without using any nails – by measuring our impact and improving our sustainability with each new gallery.

We need your help

To realise our vision and complete the transformation of the Museum, we need to raise an additional £150 million. Your support will enable us to breathe new life into four existing galleries, open two magni cent new galleries and showcase the wonders of nature to an additional one million visitors each year.

We’ll also engage 10 million school children, families and changemakers through local, national and global programmes, and create over 100 million advocates for the planet. This will ensure the Museum remains a beacon for protecting, preserving and restoring the natural world long into the future. ●

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Help us transform your Museum

As a member, your support allows the Museum to continue our important work. Here are some other ways you can get involved…

1

Upgrade your membership

Patrons support our important work to create advocates for the planet and get to experience the Museum in unparalleled ways. From private views, tours, talks and opportunities to go behind the scenes, the Patrons Circle is designed to bring you closer to our collections, curators and scientists. Contact us at patrons@nhm.ac.uk

Become a Legacy Pledger

2

A gift in your Will ensures you can have a lasting impact on the future of our natural world. For Will wording advice, and to ensure you receive tailored updates from the Museum, please contact legacies@nhm.ac.uk. Thank you for considering the gift of a lifetime.

Become a business partner

3

Partnerships with the Museum o er companies a unique opportunity to enhance their brand while supporting science and education. Collaborate on innovative projects, engage with diverse audiences and contribute to our vital research. Together, we can inspire curiosity, foster sustainability and create lasting impact for future generations. Please contact us to explore the possibilities by emailing corporate@nhm.ac.uk

To nd out more about NHM150 or discuss being part of this exciting transformation, please contact Director of Development Jennifer Cormack at development@nhm.ac.uk

Hidden women

The written history of the Natural History Museum is dominated by men. At rst glance, it may seem that no women worked here at all – but that couldn’t be further from

the truth.

WORDS : KATHRYN ROOKE, INTERIM MUSEUM ARCHIVIST

The Natural History Museum opened in 1881, but it wasn’t until 1928 that women were classed as ‘o cial employees’. Yet delve into the archives and you’ll nd evidence of many women working ‘uno cially’ behind the scenes.

Grace Edwards is among them. A vicar’s daughter from Leicestershire and an incredible entomological artist, Grace had the talent to depict her tiny subjects almost as though they had been photographed.

She worked ‘uno cially’, which meant she could not depend on the security of a monthly payslip, but instead was paid ‘by piece’. You won’t nd her name recorded in sta lists, yet the archives show Grace worked regularly for the Museum between at least 1903 and 1939.

Grace’s work was not just life-like, it was also lifesaving. She illustrated Ernest Edward Austen’s important book, Illustrations of African BloodSucking Flies other than Mosquitoes and Tsetse-Flies, published in 1909, and, as WWI progressed, her role became more signi cant than ever.

The Museum’s Archive holds material relating to its history including architectural plans, expedition reports, research notes and correspondence, specimen records and sta photographs.

She was commissioned to make a series of posters and to sculpt a collection of giant wax models to educate the public about the dangers of mosquitoes, lice and ies.

These insects were a real threat to soldiers overseas, spreading diseases including malaria, but poor hygiene also made them a health risk at home.

Forty thousand posters were printed and posted across the country and indeed the world. They magni ed ‘one of man’s greatest enemies’ to a scale few people had ever seen, explaining the precautions that should be taken against disease. Her models were exhibited in what is now Hintze Hall, where they were impossible for visitors to miss.

From 1903 to 1926, Grace Edwards prepared illustrations and models of insects. She’s also known for her watercolor paintings of ies, such as this horse y (below).

Grace passed away aged 91. Little is known of her life outside of the Museum, but she was one of many women working on ‘ladylike’ tasksmounting botany specimens, typing up research and producing artwork. Less celebrated than their male colleagues, this work was nonetheless invaluable and paved the way for women in science. Today we can proudly say that across the Museum, 61 per cent of sta identify as female. O

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Our Archives are open to the public by appointment, 10.00–16.00 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. For more information, please email: archives@nhm.ac.uk THE MUSEUM IN ACTION