August 2026 Science Summary

Hi all,

As always - If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://subscribe.sciencejon.com (no need to email me).

In addition to a handful of science papers below, check out this fascinating but scary article about a recently discovered contagious form of cancer in catfish (New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/science/contagious-cancer... Nature article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10828-6).

AI TAKE ON A PAPER ABOUT WILDLIFE RESPONSE TO PEOPLE, PART 2
My July 2026 summary asked 3 AI tools (native Claude, Copilot using ChatGPT, and Elicit) for key points of a paper I summarized which were not obvious in the abstract. This month I got access to one more science AI tool (LeapSpace). Here's what it had to say:
"Three non-obvious points from the full paper are: (1) the species-level effects were often interactive, with human presence influencing wildlife more strongly in less modified habitats; (2) the authors could separate individual behavioral plasticity from species composition effects by comparing the same animals across 2019 and 2020; and (3) the paper’s applicability is narrower than the headline result suggests because it relies on GPS-tracked mammals and birds plus human-mobility data that are not broadly accessible and are often too coarse for fine-scale behavior"
JF note: the first point above is clearly stated in the abstract (boo), the third point is true but was stated more clearly by elicit (which broke it into two separate points), but the second point is a good one that all three other tools missed (although I included it in my own summary).
Another JF note: I just started experimenting with a Copilot agent to read a science paper and produce "warning labels" where it identifies a potential problem meriting human review, including a conflict between the abstract / results / discussion (or between text, tables, and figures), what appears to be inappropriate generalization of the findings, and many more. If anyone is keen to collaborate on this email me and we can exchange ideas on the instructions and see if we can come up with something good enough to be useful.


GOOD NEWS ON MANGROVES:
Zhang et al. 2026 brings a bit of welcome good news: from 2010-2023 mangroves expanded on net! This means mangrove conversion and thinning / degradation have recently have been more than offset by regeneration and expanion into the sea. They found that relative to 1984, by 2010 2% of global mangroves had been lost, but that 1984-2023 showed a net loss of just 850 km2 (although with substantial uncertainty). On the other hand, replacing old mangroves with new can still result in the loss of carbon and biodiversity, and regional or local losses. So the net gain since 2010 is good news, but also hides 6,275 km2 of gross losses to mangroves since 2010. Note that 1984-2010 is twice as much time as 2010-2013, so to get loss and gain rates be sure to convert everything to change per year.


CLIMATE ADAPTATION:
Nippert et al. 2026 argues that grassland managers should stop using binary thinking and trying to fight all woody encroachment (which is not feasible anymore). Instead they recommend a shift to thinking about how to manage grasslands for biodiversity and productivity within what is realistic, ideally before woody encroachment becomes established. For a variety of reasons, fully reversing the encroachment of shrubs can be really hard or even impossible (especially for clonal species that resprout well and/or recolonize quickly). But shifting the composition and extent of encroachment is more feasible. They suggest using the RAD (resist, accept, direct) framework, and recognizing that a resist strategy may be too expensive in some cases (see Fig 3 for alternative options to consider). A focus on biodiversity, structural complexity, and feasibility of different management options (often using a mix of fire, grazing, and cutting, including herbicide in some cases) can help managers identify the best management options for their context. Thanks to Chris Helzer (one of the co-authors) for sending this my way, it sounds like it's spurred a lot of tough but important conversations.

de Castro Borba et al. 2026 looked at the vulnerability of the beautiful ipê trees (see above) to climate change, and found that:
1. The Pantanal is currently more suitable for purple ipê than yellow (Fig 2)
2. Under the most likely climate scenario (SSP2-4.5), the Pantanal will be much less suitable for purple ipê even by 2041-2060 (Fig 3, upper left panel, ignore the bottom 3 which won’t happen). As that happens, they predict that as it dies back and become spread out farther, it will be less connected and those lose access to relatively tolerant genes.
3. Yellow ipê will be roughly equally suitable (Fig 4, upper left panel) – some places a little better and some a little worse.
They didn’t look at corridors and seem pretty negative on the potential for purple ipê to adapt in the Pantanal.


FIRE MANAGEMENT:
Nunes et al. 2026 interviewed ranchers and traditional communities (mostly riverside fishers) spread all over the Pantanal about fire management during the 2019-2020 megafires. The finding that stuck out to me was that cattle ranchers are much more likely to report having handled fire management themselves (or w/ the help of neighbors) since they generally have more access to equipment and people w/ fire experience, while communities are more prone to report having asked for help from the government for fire management. Their multivariate model (table 2) didn't find significant differences from any variables other than social group (ranchers or traditional community members). But they ALSO note that based on observations during 2019-2020 fires, ranchers could be underreporting their reliance on government (wanting to emphasize their autonomy, and/or seeing government as negative despite potential support). Either way - collaboration and integrated fire management is likely to yield the best outcomes.


REFERENCES:
Curd, E. E., Hart, S. F. M., Lubkowitz, J., Tracy, K. M., Milazzo, L., Bodnar, M., Jones, T., Henderson, M. J., Emerson, P., & Dragon, J. A. (2026). Brown bullhead catfish melanoma represents a novel transmissible cancer. Nature, June 2025. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10828-6

de Castro Borba, F., de Souza Bezerra, C., Souza Tomaz, J., Marques, M. J., Vieira Capucho, H. L., Freitas-de-Souza, S., Ferreyra-Ramos, S. L., Lopes, R., Salvino Gadelha de Meneses, C. H., & Gomes-Lopes, M. T. (2026). A modeling framework to assess climate vulnerability and future distributions of tropical tree species: a case study on Brazilian ipês. Bosque (Valdivia), 47, e4709. https://doi.org/10.4206/bosque.e4709

Nippert, J. B., Ahlering, M. A., Fuhlendorf, S. D., Helzer, C. J., McMillan, N. A., & Ratajczak, Z. (2026). Rethinking grassland management in the Great Plains during the era of woody plant encroachment. BioScience, 76(6), 554–562. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biag033

Nunes, A. V., Chiaravalloti-Neto, F., Soresini, G., Lorenz, C., Semedo, T. B. F., Chiaravalloti, R. M., Libonati, R., Toma, T. S. P., Damasceno-Junior, G. A., Lucena, R. F. P., Tomas, W. M., Anderson, L. O., Magalhães, H. F., da Rosa Oliveira, M., Pereira, A. de M. M., Berlinck, C. N., Fernandes, G. W., & Roque, F. O. (2026). Institutional dependence and social inequalities as drivers of collaborative wildfire response networks in the Pantanal wetland. Journal of Pyrogeography, 100015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pyro.2026.100015

Zhang, Z., Murray, N. J., Song, X. P., Bunting, P., Worthington, T. A., Fatoyinbo, L., Mao, D., Jia, M., Arifanti, V. B., Aung, T., Htay, S. S., & Friess, D. A. (2026). Unexpected expansion and regrowth in Earth’s mangrove forests over the past four decades. Science, 392(6802), 1082–1087. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aec9773

Sincerely,

Jon

P.s. The picture above is of a purple ipê tree as described in the paper by de Castro Borba et al. 2026