Nicola Jones

Here's my take on a great Science paper for Nature: how ivory hunting in Mozambique has driven the evolution of tusklessness in female elephants in that country. A fascinating story both in terms of the scientific detective work to track the genetic component of this evolutionary pressure, and in terms of what it means for the elephants. The trait is fatal for male offspring, so the elephant population will skew to having more females than males, and overall growth of the struggling population will be hindered. Plus... apparently tuskless elephants eat different plants, which could alter the entire ecosystem of the region. Amazing stuff! https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02867-y

 It was my great pleasure to edit this piece for publication in Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02818-7 The Congo is the world's second largest rainforest after the Amazon, yet receives so very little attention in both the media and from science budgets. These researchers make a persuasive case for investing $150 million in local science and scientists.

Here's a news piece on a paper that hammers home the importance of caring for watersheds and not logging the areas where salmon are spawning. Salmon across the Pacific Northwest are crashing: these researchers are helping to unpick why. https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/salmon-need-trees/

Here's a feature I wrote in record time (1 week!) for Yale Environment 360 on corals, pegged to the latest global assessment (it's bad, but not as bad as it could be) and rounding up the latest in conservation efforts (from electrically-stimulated reefs to probiotic smears and cloud brightening trials).  https://e360.yale.edu/features/finding-bright-spots-in-the-global-coral-reef-catastrophe