Tuesday, June 23, 2026

New global study reveals link between local-scale species changes and global extinction risk

University of St. Andrews

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Credit: University of St Andrews

New research from the University of St Andrews has shown that higher extinction risk is associated with higher frequency of decreasing local prevalence of species, in an analysis of one of the most comprehensive long-term databases ever created, BioTIME – a major tool to study biodiversity change also developed at the University of St Andrews.

Published today (23 June) in Nature Communications, researchers from the School of Biology alongside a team of international partners, analysed over 60 000 populations of 2362 species across 978 marine and terrestrial assemblages. These populations have been sampled comprehensively over at least 20 years.

An assemblage refers to a group of species from the same taxonomic group that co-occur within the same geographic location and time period, such as, a bird or fish assemblage. Analysing assemblage-level data allows us to systematically quantify change over time for many species and populations, and identify which ones might be faring better, i.e. assessing the “winners and losers” amidst ongoing global change.

The analysis matched each population’s temporal prevalence trend with each species’ extinction risk from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. The picture that emerged was of complex links between the two factors, but a clear signal also emerged that decreasing temporal trends were associated with higher extinction risk compared to the other trends. Overall, fewer than 10% of populations showed either increasing or decreasing prevalence over time

Joint lead Author, Dr Faye Moyes from the School of Biology at the University of St Andrews, said: “Our results highlight the importance of assemblage level monitoring in conservation strategies and shows the value of long-term time series such as those in BioTIME. “

Joint lead Author, Laura Antão, based at the University of Turku in Finland, added “We have assessed for the first time whether there is a consistent signal between population temporal trends and a species extinction risk status using assemblage monitoring data, rather than ‘dedicated’ species-level assessments. Finding a clear signal that decreasing prevalence is usually associated with a higher risk of extinction is a strong indication that we can detect impacts even for species that are not currently classified as at risk”.

As global environmental change continues to accelerate, extinction risks are rising and assemblages are being reorganised across taxa, biomes and realms. The team also revealed complex links between local temporal prevalence and extinction risk categories: some populations of threatened species could have stable or increasing trends, while non-threatened species could be decreasing. A better understanding of the processes that underpin such biodiversity changes is crucial for improving predictions and conservation strategies.

Professor Anne Magurran, a senior author of the study, added: “These temporal trends could serve as early‑warning indicators and help target both new monitoring efforts and conservation actions. For instance, stable populations of at-risk species are of key conservation interest, while declining trends might highlight species that are missing from extinction risk assessments”.

Professor Maria Dornelas added: “Because the task of assessing biodiversity change is gigantic, and we cannot travel in time to collect more data in the past, we want to use all information available. These two large biodiversity databases have only limited overlap and this study shows us how we can leverage both to expand our understanding of biodiversity change.”

ENDS

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-026-74132-7

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Linking species local trends from assemblage monitoring to global extinction risk

Article Publication Date

23-Jun-2026

Can use of popular weight loss medications reduce behaviors linked to violent crime?

Wiley

Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) are widely prescribed for diabetes and obesity, but studies have found evidence that the medications may also influence behavior, such as supporting impulse control and reducing substance use and alcohol consumption by potentially interacting with the brain’s reward and stress systems. New research in Criminology adds to this growing evidence.

When investigators analyzed data from a 2025 nationally representative US survey involving 821 adults who had ever used GLP-1 medications, they found that while impulsivity and alcohol use were strongly associated with committing violent crime, these associations were significantly weaker among current GLP-1 RA users compared with former users. So even when a GLP-1 RA user drinks or acts impulsively, the situation is less likely to escalate into engaging in violent criminality. More thorough analyses showed that this finding was especially consistent related to impulsivity, but less so with alcohol use.

The findings suggest that GLP-1 RAs may lessen the extent to which certain established risk factors translate into violent behavior.

“As GLP-1 medications become increasingly widespread, understanding their broader behavioral effects becomes an important public health and criminological question that requires careful study,” said corresponding author Daniel C. Semenza, PhD, of Rutgers University.

URL upon publication: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9125.70058

Additional Information
NOTE: The information contained in this release is protected by copyright. Please include journal attribution in all coverage. For more information or to obtain a PDF of any study, please contact: Sara Henning-Stout, newsroom@wiley.com.

About the Journal
Criminology is devoted to the study of crime and deviant behavior. Interdisciplinary in scope, the journal publishes articles that advance the theoretical and research agenda of criminology and criminal justice.

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Journal

Criminology

DOI

10.1111/1745-9125.70058

Article Title

GLP-1 receptor agonist use and violent crime among US adults

Article Publication Date

17-Jun-2026

Researchers link use of GLP-1 medications to lower risk of violence

A Rutgers study finds that treatments such as Ozempic and Wegovy may diminish the link between impulsivity and violent behavior

Rutgers University

The use of GLP-1 medications commonly prescribed for weight loss or managing diabetes may have effects that extend beyond metabolic health, including on behaviors linked to violence, according to Rutgers researchers.

Their study, published in Criminology, examined whether the use of GLP-1 receptor agonist medications, such as Ozempic and Wegovy, influences violent criminal behavior among adults by moderating the effects of impulsivity and alcohol intake.

Researchers analyzed data from a 2025 survey of 7,521 U.S. adults and focused their primary analyses on 821 individuals who had ever used a GLP-1 medication. The study compared current GLP-1 users with former users and examined whether medication use changed the relationship between violent behavior, impulsivity and alcohol use. Violent behavior was measured using a validated self-reported offending scale assessing behaviors such as fighting, assault and robbery.

“The strongest finding in the study was that the well-established link between impulsivity and violent behavior was substantially weaker among current GLP-1 users compared to former users,” said Daniel Semenza, the lead author of the study as well as the director of research at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at the Rutgers School of Public Health and an associate professor with the Rutgers School of Public Health. “As GLP-1 drugs become increasingly widespread, it is important to understand all of their potential behavioral effects, including those relevant to public safety,” Semenza said.

Researchers found that higher impulsivity and alcohol use were strongly associated with violent behavior overall, but those relationships were significantly weaker among current GLP-1 users. The association between impulsivity and violent behavior was about 62% weaker among current users compared with former users. The relationship between alcohol use and violent behavior was about 52% weaker among current users, although those findings were less consistent across sensitivity analyses.

“Our findings are consistent with these medications working like cognitive behavioral therapy, weakening the path from impulse to action rather than eliminating impulsivity itself,” said Christopher Thomas, an assistant professor at Rutgers University-Camden and the coauthor of the study.

The study was observational and cross-sectional, meaning causal conclusions cannot be drawn, the researchers said. They emphasized the need for future longitudinal and experimental studies to determine whether GLP-1 medications reduce violence risk and to better understand the mechanisms involved.

Journal

Criminology

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

GLP-1 receptor agonist use and violent crime among US adults

Article Publication Date

17-Jun-2026

britannicahttps://www.britannica.com › biography › Cesare-Lombroso

UT San Antonio study: As FDA approved semaglutide for weight management, calls to poison control centers skyrocketed in the U.S.

Prior to 2021, poison control centers nationally received roughly 1,000 to 1,500 cases per year. After mid-2021, these volumes nearly doubled, and by 2023 poison centers logged more than 8,000 GLP-1RA-related calls

University of Texas at San Antonio

When semaglutide’s popularity exploded following FDA approval for weight management in 2021, so too did a wave of calls to poison control centers.

At the time, Jordan Miller ’25 was a UT San Antonio undergraduate student. She set out to discover if the spike in calls was a result of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s expanded approval or simply a coincidence.

Originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes, Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists (GLP-1RAs) became a cultural phenomenon after the FDA first approved them for chronic weight management in 2021. As sales soared, poison control centers across the country were also experiencing a massive increase in incoming calls — and there was a clear category that stood out.

“One of them was this quite odd category of semaglutide,” said David Han, Miller’s research mentor and Romo Endowed Professor in the UT San Antonio Department of Statistics & Data Science. “We suspected that the call volume was skyrocketing because of the misuse and mishandling of this drug and that it may be attributed to the FDA approval of this drug for weight management.”

Under Han’s guidance and supported by the Provost’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Miller and Long School of Medicine colleagues Robert S. Miller, Pharm.D, senior specialist in poison information, and Shawn M. Varney, MD, professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and medical director of the South Texas Poison Center, studied the data.

Jordan Miller later presented the team’s findings at UT San Antonio’s Los Datos conference, where she took home first prize.

Most cases stemmed from unintentional dosing or therapeutic errors rather than deliberate misuse, but the UT San Antonio researchers found the massive increase jarring nonetheless.

“In that figure that tracks the increase by specific drug, I wasn’t expecting semaglutide to be so incredibly dominant,” Jordan Miller recalled. “I figured that it would lead the pack, but it was staggering. On the other hand, it makes sense with all the media attention.”

Han says the research is a living example of what data science is meant to do — moving beyond numbers and into the world.

“This work demonstrates the quantified impact of these drugs on public health,” he said. “Statistics, data science, analytics, machine learning and AI are meant to help people. We use them to transform data from any field into meaningful insight and informed action. Without that focus, it becomes hollow – numbers without real impact.”

The project by Miller, now a UT San Antonio graduate student in mathematics, began with a simple question she almost didn’t ask.

“You lose nothing by asking,” she said. “If you have a professor, you really get along with or admire, you lose nothing by asking them what they’re working on or if they have space for a research assistant. I got really lucky with Dr. Han saying, ‘I’m here to help — you pick what you want to work on.’”

Miller’s research confirmed that the FDA’s semaglutide approval was a clear inflection point. The volume and nature of calls before and after approval told two very different stories. The pool of people using GLP-1RA drugs to treat diabetes is one thing; the population now using them for weight loss is an entirely different scale.

“When the GLP-1[RA] drugs are being sold to diabetic patients, that’s a completely different story versus when the drug is used for weight management,” Han explained. “So, we had to quantify this evidence to show that it stemmed from the FDA approval and how to contain the risk. We need to better educate the public because how this drug behaves in our body and its long-term safety are not yet fully understood.”

The errors driving the spike in calls to poison control centers were, in many cases, preventable. Semaglutide is a weekly injection, not a daily one. Patients are also supposed to begin at a low dose before gradually increasing their use. Two of the most common mistakes were captured in the data. Patients were injecting daily instead of weekly, and they were starting at the full dose immediately.

“Can you imagine something you’re supposed to trickle up to, and you’re going full blast and seven times more often than you’re supposed to?” Jordan Miller said.

The solution, both Miller and Han agree, lies in education—from the prescriber’s office to the pharmacy counter.

The team’s research was featured as the cover story in Significance, a flagship magazine of the Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association. It is also published in the Journal of Medical Toxicology, the official journal of the American College of Medical Toxicology.

Journal

Journal of Medical Toxicology

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Tuesday, June 23, 2026

New global study reveals link between local-scale species changes and global extinction risk

Journal

DOI

Subject of Research

Article Title

Article Publication Date

Can use of popular weight loss medications reduce behaviors linked to violent crime?

Journal

DOI

Article Title

Article Publication Date

Researchers link use of GLP-1 medications to lower risk of violence

Journal

Method of Research

Subject of Research

Article Title

Article Publication Date

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UT San Antonio study: As FDA approved semaglutide for weight management, calls to poison control centers skyrocketed in the U.S.

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