Non-native plant species adapt to natural ecosystems faster than expected

Study by Leipzig University and iDiv published in Ecology Letters

Universität Leipzig

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image: 

The non-native Canadian goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) in Europe, infected by the widespread native phytoparasitic microfungus Podosphaera erigerontis-canadensis, a member of the powdery mildew group with a broad host range. 

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Credit: Dr Ingmar Staude, Leipzig University

For a long time, scientists assumed that newly established plants in Europe served less often as food or hosts for native animals and fungi, since they share no common evolutionary history with local fauna and could therefore spread particularly aggressively. According to Staude, the study confirms this initial phase. However, the study also showed that this changes over time: after a few centuries, many of these plants are increasingly used by plant parasites. Unlike pollinators, plant parasites are usually highly specialised in native plants – which makes the findings all the more surprising, according to Staude. “We also observe in this context that the plant parasites interacting with non-native plant species tend, on average, to be more generalist and to exploit a broader range of host plants than those interacting with native species,” Staude explains. This means, on the one hand, that nature can adapt to new plants better and faster than previously assumed – but on the other hand, that native plant species are essential for maintaining the high diversity of highly specialised microherbivores.

“Our study is based on a data synthesis in which we combined various sources of information. We had access to a pan-European database documenting over 127,000 interactions between 12,000 plant species and 26,000 microherbivore species. We supplemented this data with additional information about the plants, including their distribution in Europe, time of introduction, geographical origin and relatedness to native species,” says Lara Schulte, who conducted the study together with Miriam Wahl as part of their bachelor’s theses at Leipzig University. “Using statistical models, we were able to investigate which of these factors determine how strongly non-native plants integrate into ecological networks,” adds Wahl.

The findings will make it easier to assess how new plant species become embedded in existing ecosystems. The study shows that ecological networks can adapt over time to changing floras – an important insight for understanding species migration, particularly as climate change progresses. “This knowledge can help to assess the risks posed by non-native species in a more nuanced way. In this way, the study will contribute to adapting conservation and management strategies to a changing species composition,” says Staude. 

In their research, the scientists examined how many different animals come into contact with non-native plants. They did not investigate which specific types of microherbivores are involved, how severely they damage the plants, or what implications this may have for native species. These questions could help to improve understanding in future of how non-native plants integrate into existing ecosystems.

Original title of the publication in Ecology Letters:

“Non-native plants attain native levels of microherbivory richness with time and range expansion”, DOI: 10.1111/ele.70247

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Journal

Ecology Letters

DOI

10.1111/ele.70247 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Non-Native Plants Attain Native Levels of Microherbivory Richness With Time and Range Expansion

Article Publication Date

5-Nov-2025

 

The growing crisis of chronic disease in animals

New research looks at the forces driving an increase in diseases like cancer and obesity in animals worldwide

Society for Risk Analysis

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmaiHerdon, Va., November 11, 2025 - From dogs and cats to dairy cows and sea turtles, animals around the world are suffering from various cancers, obesity, diabetes, and degenerative joint disease. Understanding the forces driving an increase in these non-communicable diseases (NCDs) chronic diseases is vital for both animal and human health. However, interdisciplinary research on NCDs in animals is lacking.  

 

A Risk Analysis study introduces an innovative conceptual model for improving the surveillance and management of these chronic animal diseases. Developed by animal scientist Antonia Mataragka of the Agricultural University of Athens, the study presents an evidence-based risk assessment model that can also inform public health, since both humans and animals are experiencing a rise in the same chronic conditions. 

 

Using data from published research on NCDs in animals, the study found that: 

• Genetic factors predispose certain animal populations to a higher risk of NCDs. Dogs and cats selectively bred for appearance, and livestock genetically optimized for productivity, experience a higher rate of diabetes and mitral valve disease. 

• Environmental exposures, nutritional imbalances, sedentary behavior, and chronic stress impact disease onset and progression across species. 

Examples include obesity in cats, gastrointestinal cancer in beluga whales, osteoarthritis in cows and pigs, and cardiomyopathy syndrome in farmed Atlantic salmon. Recent surveys document that 50–60% of domestic cats and dogs are overweight, driving an annual increase in feline diabetes. Osteoarthritis impacts around 20% of intensively reared pigs, while wildlife in polluted estuaries exposed to industrial effluents like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) show liver tumor rates of 15–25%. 

• Human-driven ecological change – including urbanization, climate disruption, land use conversion, and biodiversity loss – exacerbates the intensity and duration of harmful exposures.  For example, warming oceans and coral degradation have been linked to higher tumor prevalence in marine turtles and fish, while urbanization and heat stress contribute to rising obesity and diabetes rates in companion animals. Moreover, urban air pollution and chemical runoff are associated with endocrine and immune disorders in birds and mammals. 

 

“As environmental changes accelerate disease emergence, the absence of early diagnostic systems further delays the detection of NCDs in animals,” says Mataragka.  “While organizations like the World Health Organization provide extensive data on NCD mortality in humans, similar detailed statistics for animals are scarce. This indicates the need for more comprehensive research and enhanced surveillance in veterinary health to better understand and address these issues.”   

 

The study quantifies NCD prevalence in different species, dissects mechanisms linking risk factors to NCD emergence, and outlines mitigation strategies at four levels: individual, population (herd), ecosystem, and policy. It shows that climate change, habitat loss, pollution, and dietary imbalances are among the leading forces that lead to increased vulnerability to NCDs among companion animals, livestock, and wildlife.  

 

Mataragka’s conceptual model is a unique synthesis of the One Health and Ecohealth approaches that both recognize interconnections between humans, animals, and the environment (but often work in parallel rather than together). This model illustrates how NCDs arise from the interaction of biological susceptibility (genetic predisposition) with broader socio-ecological forces, including environmental exposures and human-driven ecosystem change. 

 

Mataragka hopes that her interdisciplinary model will lead to more integrated surveillance of animals, humans and environments - revealing shared NCD drivers and providing early warning to help lower the incidence of these diseases.  

 

 

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About Society for Risk Analysis 

The Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) is a multidisciplinary, global organization dedicated to advancing the science and practice of risk analysis. Founded in 1980, SRA brings together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers from diverse fields including engineering, public health, environmental science, economics, and decision theory. The Society fosters collaboration and communication on risk assessment, management, and communication to inform decision-making and protect public well-being. SRA supports a wide range of scholarly activities, publications, and conferences. Learn more at www.sra.org. 

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Journal

Risk Analysis

 

Male pregnancy: a deep dive with seahorses

In seahorses, males are the ones to bear offspring. A research team led by Konstanz evolutionary biologist Axel Meyer examined the cellular basis for "male pregnancy".

University of Konstanz

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmailReversed sex roles: In seahorses, it is the males who carry offspring to term. The females lay their eggs into a special brood pouch on the bellies of the males where they are fertilized by the male’s sperm. In the brood pouches, embryos are provided with nutrients and oxygen from the males' bodies until the males give live birth to small seahorses (viviparity). But how does this work? A German-Chinese research team led by evolutionary biologist Axel Meyer from the University of Konstanz and working in collaboration with Liu Yali and Lin Qiang from the South China Sea Institute for Oceanography in Guangzhou studied the genetic and cellular mechanisms behind this sex-role reversal. They uncovered that unusual hormonal processes and unique immunotolerance strategies allowed this to evolve.

The brood pouch – an evolutionary innovation
From an evolutionary perspective, the brood pouch is an extraordinary innovation – along with "male pregnancy". In seahorses, the brood pouch fulfils the tasks of the uterus and placenta. During pregnancy, the male’s pouch tissue changes and builds a structure similar to the mammalian female placenta.

It is surprising how this works, and the researchers studied the process with comparative genomic methods using RNA analyses on a cellular basis. They compared the cells and cellular signals in the placentas of mammals with those in the brood pouches of male seahorses. In all other cases of live birth, female hormones play a key role in the development of pregnancy structures and embryos. Yet, as Axel Meyer and his team have now shown, male pregnancy in seahorses interestingly takes place without these typical female hormones.

"Our research confirms that androgens – that is: male sexual hormones – play a central role in the development of embryos in the brood pouches, instead of female hormones", Axel Meyer explains. "Androgens induce the thickening and vascularization of the abdominal skin layer to produce a structure similar to a mammalian placenta. This is an interesting difference to the development in the female uterus of mammals, including humans, that is typically driven by female hormones".

Studying the immune system also yielded surprising results. For live birth, it is critical that the immune system of the mother – or, in this case, the male seahorse – does not identify embryos as foreign bodies and reject them immunologically. Typically, the gene foxp3 fulfils this task as a key gene in the immune system of many viviparous species. Surprisingly, however, precisely this gene is missing in the case of male seahorses. Yet, no autoimmune reaction takes place in which the male’s body rejects the embryonic seahorses. Axel Meyer suspects that seahorses employ an unusual immune tolerance strategy in which male hormones could again play a decisive role: "Androgens often have an immunosuppressant effect, which means they suppress the immune response. This could contribute to this unique immunotolerance."

Evolutionary insights
The genetic and cellular characteristics of brood pouches provide fascinating insight into the evolutionary development from species that lay eggs to species with live birth. "The different evolutionary stages within the family Syngnathidae make seahorses an exceptional model for studying evolution from oviparous (egg-laying) ancestors to viviparous reproduction." Presumably, an early step was the development of "sticky eggs" that attached to the males' bodies, which, at the time, did not yet have brood pouches. The next evolutionary step was the development of the males' brood pouches to hold and protect the eggs and supply them with nutrients. "Thanks to our research, we now have a better understanding of the genetic, molecular and cellular mechanisms behind this remarkable evolutionary experiment – pregnancy evolved repeatedly in female mammals and male seahorses, but by different genetic and hormonal pathways", Axel Meyer concludes.

 

 

Key facts: Embargoed until Tuesday, 11 November 2025, 11:00 CET (10:00 London Time, 05:00 US Eastern Time) Original publication: Yali Liu, Han Jiang, Yuanxiang Miao, Wenli Zhao, Ralf Schneider, Liduo Yin, Xinyue Yu, Haiyan Yu, Xuemei Lu, Enguang Bi, Luonan Chen, Axel Meyer, Qiang Lin, Cellular and molecular mechanisms of seahorse male pregnancy, Nature Ecology & Evolution 2025 DOI: 10.1038/s41559-025-02883-5 Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-025-02883-5 Joint research project of the University of Konstanz with the South China Sea Institute for Oceanography (Guangzhou), the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Kiel and the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. Press contact: Professor Axel Meyer, Professor of Zoology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Konstanz, phone +49 7531 88-4163, email: axel.meyer@uni-konstanz.de

 

 

Note to editors:

You can download photos here:

 

1. https://www.uni-konstanz.de/fileadmin/pi/fileserver/2025/wie_die_maennliche_schwangerschaft_1.jpg
2. https://www.uni-konstanz.de/fileadmin/pi/fileserver/2025/wie_die_maennliche_schwangerschaft_2.jpg

Caption: Male Korean seahorse (Hippocampus haema) in the act of birth, releasing its young from the brood pouch.

Copyright: Jinggong Zhang

 

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Journal

Nature Ecology & Evolution

DOI

10.1038/s41559-025-02883-5 

Article Title

Cellular and molecular mechanisms of seahorse male pregnancy

 

Study sheds new light on how hormones influence decision-making and learning

Experiments uncover estrogen’s role in boosting dopamine and cognition

New York University

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Researchers have long established that hormones significantly affect the brain, creating changes in emotion, energy levels, and decision-making. However, the intricacies of these processes are not well understood. 

A new study by a team of scientists focusing on the female hormone estrogen further illuminates the nature of these processes. In a series of experiments with laboratory rats, it finds that the neurological mechanisms underlying learning and decision-making naturally fluctuate over the female reproductive cycle due to previously undetected molecular changes related to dopamine, which broadcasts the “reward” signals that guide learning throughout the brain.

The work is reported in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

“Despite the broad influence of hormones throughout the brain, little is known about how these hormones influence cognitive behaviors and related neurological activity,” says Christine Constantinople, a professor in New York University’s Center for Neural Science and the paper’s senior author. “There is a growing realization in the medical community that changes in estrogen levels are related to cognitive function and, specifically, psychiatric disorders.”

“Our results provide a potential biological explanation that bridges dopamine’s function with learning in ways that better inform our understanding of both health and disease,” adds Carla Golden, an NYU postdoctoral fellow and the paper’s lead author.

The study, which also included researchers from NYU Grossman School of Medicine’s Neuroscience Institute and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, examined the neurological activity of laboratory rats in response to a series of experiments. 

In them, the rodents successfully reached a “reward”—in this case, a water source—after learning the significance of audio cues, which signaled the water’s availability and volume. 

Overall, the rats’ learning capabilities were enhanced when estrogen levels were increased. This happens, the authors write, because estrogen boosts dopamine activity in the brain’s reward center, making reward signals stronger. 

By contrast, when estrogen activity was suppressed, curbing its ability to regulate dopamine, learning capabilities were diminished—and pointed to a potential connection between hormone levels and symptoms of neuropsychiatric disorders. Importantly, the researchers note, cognitive decision making was not affected by estrogen activity—the effect was specific to learning.

“All neuropsychiatric disorders show fluctuations in symptom severity over hormonal states, suggesting that a better understanding of how hormones influence neural circuits might reveal what causes these diseases,” observes Constantinople. 

This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (DP2MH126376, F32MH125448, 5T32MH019524, 1S10OD010582-01A1), the National Cancer Institute (P30CA016087), NYU Langone Health, and the Simons Foundation. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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Journal

Nature Neuroscience

DOI

10.1038/s41593-025-02104-z 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Estrogen modulates reward prediction errors and reinforcement learning

Article Publication Date

11-Nov-2025