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Discover new research from across the sciences and highlights from the world's longest-running journal archive.

18/12/2025

As 2025 begins to draw to a close, we’re excited to reveal our most popular papers of the year! 🎉

From gulls eavesdropping on human conversations and wild fish recognising divers, to the first ever recordings of shark noises and cockatoos mastering city drinking fountains, take a look at some of the incredible research published in our journals over the past year: https://royalsociety.org/blog/2025/12/popular-papers-2025/

18/12/2025

Human-driven disruptions of the carbon cycle threaten the planet’s ability to store CO₂, worsening climate change. Coastal ecosystems such as mangroves and seagrasses are recognized as vital carbon sinks, but new research highlights an overlooked ally: mussels and their microbial partners. Researchers found that Mytilus edulis hosting endolithic phototrophs can absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere during tidal air exposure. The findings suggest that these mussel–symbiont associations act as weak but functional carbon sinks, temporarily offsetting metabolic CO₂ losses. While not comparable to seagrasses or kelp forests, they nonetheless provide a context-dependent mechanism of CO₂ fixation in coastal systems.

Read the article in Biology Letters:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2025.0498

17/12/2025

The latest issue of Philosophical Transactions A is the second of a two-part issue highlighting recent advances in quantum-like research. This issue is devoted not only to work on the mathematical aspects of quantum theory and quantum field theory, but also includes studies which focus on quantum algorithms. Read the full issue: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/issue/383/2310

17/12/2025

Human interactions are fundamentally sequentially organised. For example, the answer: “Good”, is responsive on the question “How are you?”. This sequence organisation appears across languages and may have even preceded the evolution of language. Comparative studies have predominantly focused on sequences produced by a single individual in one modality. Here, researchers investigated mother-infant interactions in chimpanzees including both signals and actions. The results showed that a large part of turns are predicted by the preceding turn and that interactions can be divided in eight clusters or 'conversation topics'. These results open up new research avenues to investigate the interactional foundation of language.

Read the article in Proceedings B:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2025.2271

16/12/2025

The evolution of ‘modern’ kangaroos and wallabies (macropodines) was driven by Australia drying-out around 15–10 million years ago. Dorcopsoides fossilis, known only from an ~8-million-year-old central Australian locality called Alcoota, is the oldest fossil macropodine and is key to understanding kangaroo evolution. Researchers compared recently uncovered limb-bone fossils with living kangaroos to investigate its movement and preferred habitat. Though Dorcopsoides fossilis is similar to slow-moving wallabies like the quokka, features it shares with larger, faster kangaroos indicate it was in-part adapted to open habitats. The findings demonstrate that the ‘modern’ kangaroo body-plan is considerably older than 8 million years.

Read the article in Royal Society Open Science:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.251591

16/12/2025

Hawaiian monk seals are one of the world’s most endangered marine mammals, with only about 1,600 left. Although much is known about their biology, little is known about how they communicate underwater. A team of researchers collected over 4,500 hours of passive acoustic data across the Hawaiian Islands and identified more than 23,000 HMS vocalizations. They discovered 25 distinct calls, including 20 never described before. Many were combinations of simpler calls, a unique finding among seals. Understanding Hawaiian monk seals' vocalizations provides valuable insight into their behavior and helps guide conservation efforts as these rare animals face growing threats.

Read the article in Royal Society Open Science:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.250987

15/12/2025

How do ants find their way in the dark? Many insects use patterns of polarised light in the sky as a built-in compass. Researchers studied two Australian bull ant species: the nocturnal Myrmecia midas and the daytime Myrmecia tarsata. By rotating the sky’s polarised-light pattern with a special filter, they tested whether ants would in turn adjust their headings. The night-active M. midas followed the moon’s pattern even under a thin crescent moon, while M. tarsata detected it only under bright, near-full moons. These results reveal how nocturnal ant’s dim-light eye adaptations allow nighttime navigation using a moonlight compass.

Read the article in Royal Society Open Science:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.250975

14/12/2025

Can you distinguish between images of real and AI-generated faces? AI-generated faces are difficult to detect and are often judged as more realistic than real faces. Researchers measured whether participants could accurately judge faces as 'real' or 'not real'. The participants were super-recognisers (people who have exceptional face recognition skills), and control participants (people who have typical face recognition skills). It was found that super-recognisers were better at detecting the synthetic faces than control participants, who were at chance frequency at best. With a short training procedure, super-recognisers performed above chance frequency, suggesting that they may be useful in real-world synthetic face detection scenarios.

Read the article in Royal Society Open Science:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.250921

14/12/2025

Eco-innovative dyeing of cotton with upcycled pineapple peel waste-derived natural dye. A new study demonstrates that pineapple peel waste, an abundant byproduct of fruit processing, can be upcycled into a sustainable natural dye for cotton fabrics. Optimized alkaline extraction produced high pigment yields and generated a thermally stable, finely dispersed dye powder. When applied to cotton, the dye exhibited strong coloration and enhanced durability, particularly with environmentally safe mordants and cationization treatments. Beyond reducing reliance on synthetic dyes, this approach valorizes agricultural residues, mitigates environmental waste, and advances circular economy principles. The findings highlight a practical and scalable pathway toward greener and more sustainable textile colouration.

Read the article in Royal Society Open Science:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.251200

13/12/2025

Many animals have more than two eyes. Among the most extreme examples are systems consisting of tens or hundreds of apparently identical photoreceptive units dispersed across the entire body surface, often lacking a clear neural processing hub. These include the mantle eyes of scallops and the radiolar eyes of fan worms. Chitons are unusual marine animals with hundreds of tiny eyes embedded in their shells. These eyes were assumed to be identical, but high-resolution 3D scans showed they actually get bigger as chitons grow. A single chiton can have shell eyes that differ fourfold in light sensitivity. And it is very likely that other animals with distributed vision also have to manage variation in eye size as well as number.

Read the article in Biology Letters:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2025.0481

12/12/2025

The Chinese alligator (Alligator sinensis), an endemic Crocodilia species in China, is currently listed as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List. Its distribution is primarily confined to the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, where habitat degradation has intensified due to recent regional economic development. To protect the remaining wild population, the Chinese government established nature reserves. Currently, population recovery of the Chinese alligator relies on the captive-bred individuals released into these nature reserves. To evaluate the habitat suitability and utilization of Chinese alligator, researchers analysed movement rates and home range within a core habitat of nature reserve, concurrently assessing habitat suitability and carrying capacity. Results indicate unsuitable habitat and climate drastically reduced the spatial and temporal utilization of the habitat, and conservation strategies should prioritize enhancing habitat quality and paying attention to the survival requirement and migration of the Chinese alligator during the active period within nature reserves.

Read the article in Biology Letters:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2025.0513

Image credit: Greg Hume

12/12/2025

A better understanding of how cultures evolve—how information is transmitted and modified, how individuals make decisions, how culture interacts with our biology and other species—is a pressing issue in an increasingly interdependent world where our cultural activities are causing rapid, and drastic social and environmental changes.

Philosophical Transactions B recently published a theme issue on ‘Transforming cultural evolution research and its application to global futures’. In this blog post, Guest Editor Professor Rachel Kendal at Durham University tells us how this issue came about, and about some of the important highlighted research: https://royalsociety.org/blog/2025/12/diversifying-cultural-evolution-research/

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