Create a list of articles to read later. You will be able to access your list from any article in Discover.
You don't have any saved articles.
Museum scientists published over 700 new pieces of research in 2023
Over the past 12 months scientists at the Natural History Museum have been incredibly busy.
Since January, scientists, students and scientific associates have contributed to an incredible 722 new research papers to science, on everything from deep sea diversity to marsupial evolution.
At the Natural History Museum, we are using our broad range of expertise and cutting-edge techniques to answer new questions that will provide solutions from and for nature. This year we announced ten research themes that provide a focus for our work so we can find solutions to some of the biggest global challenges.
Join us as we run through some of the most interesting, surprising and critical research published by our scientists this year.
Tackling the biodiversity crisis
The biodiversity and health theme aims to understand why environmental change increases our exposure to parasites, pollutants and pathogens. Plastic infiltrating our environment is a growing concern. We know that plastic has been found in the deepest ocean trenches and in human umbilical cord blood. This year, our researchers uncovered a new disease they’ve called ‘plasticosis’ caused by the ingestion of plastic by flesh-footed shearwaters on Lord Howe Island off the coast of Australia.
Pieces of marine plastic found in fleshfooted sheerwaters.
The biodiversity change theme aims to understand why biodiversity is changing, so we can halt and reverse its decline. Recent research has found that climate change and habitat loss will limit the reproduction of tropical crops like cacao, coffee, mangoes and watermelons. This poses a risk to food security all around the world. The cacao tree is notoriously difficult to grow and almost exclusively pollinated by a certain type of midge. But the shaded, damp environments that the midge prefers are becoming less common as cocoa production and climate change intensify.
Dr Joe Millard, who led the research, says, ‘Cocoa is experiencing a perfect storm of threats that mean it is at high risk of pollinator losses.’
Whilst trying to understand and slow the biodiversity crisis, our scientists are also exploring new approaches to harnessing the planet's natural resources and developing nature-positive solutions for a net zero society. The resourcing the green economy theme aims to develop sustainable solutions for achieving net zero and food security.
The global surge in demand for metals such as cobalt and nickel has created unprecedented interest in deep-sea habitats with mineral resources as countries look to become carbon neutral. The largest area of activity is a six million square kilometre region known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone - CCZ - in the central and eastern Pacific.
Baseline biodiversity knowledge of the region is crucial to effective management of environmental impact from potential deep-sea mining activities, but until recently this has been almost completely lacking. Thanks to Natural History Museum research, we know the area has high levels of biodiversity and is home to many small invertebrate animals known as ‘benthic metazoa’ living on the seafloor and in the water column directly above.
Closer to home, the UK nature recovery theme aims to reverse the trend of biodiversity decline and accelerate science-informed action for UK nature. Increasingly, the UK is seeing more species that are normally found in warmer places as the climate crisis allows them to make their homes here.
Our researchers have been involved in several interesting cases of possible adaptation to climates by moths in the UK. This year it included a South American species of moth Simacauda dicommatias now found at 26 sites around Cornwall, that might have been introduced in the nineteenth century.
Advancing technology
The advancement of DNA sequencing technology has given scientists an entirely new way to monitor nature and understand biodiversity. Genomics is one of our research themes that aims to understand and describe species by looking at their genetic makeup. One of the major projects we are involved in is The Darwin Tree of Life. This aims to sequence the full genomes of all animals, plants and fungi within the British Isles and this year sequenced its one thousandth genome, the purple bar moth.
A specimen of the purple bar moth, Cosmorhoe ocellata, from the collection.
Ian Barnes, the Darwin Tree of Life’s Principal Investigator, says, ‘While the Human Genome Project took 13 years, the Darwin Tree of Life Project is releasing a genome every day.’
‘Natural History Museum scientists are a central part of this team, and our expertise in collecting, identifying, recording and archiving genome-ready specimens from all over the UK has underpinned being able to reach this landmark of 1,000 species sequenced.’
Our phenomics and advanced analysis theme aims to develop and apply new scientific techniques to analyse the characteristics and chemistry of natural history specimens from deep time to the present day.
Marsupials have long been considered the intermediate step in evolution between egg-laying and placental mammals. But new research this year has changed that narrative.
Professor Anjali Goswami, a research leader at the Natural History Museum and senior author of the study, says, 'Using the dataset generated from the Museum’s historical collections, we have been able to flip what we know about mammal evolution on its head. How marsupials reproduce isn't an intermediate form between egg-laying and placental mammals, it's just a completely different way of developing that marsupials have evolved. 'The digital, data and informatics theme harnesses new technologies to increase access to natural history collection data. This year, the team evaluated the use and impact of digitised natural science collections held in the UK and how they contribute to scientific, commercial and societal benefits.
They found that over 2022, data from the Natural History Museum’s digital collection was downloaded every 3 minutes and 24 seconds and found its way into 2.2 scientific publications every day.
From past to present
Our collection of over 80 million objects underpins our research, allowing us to tell the story of how the Earth and its natural systems formed over the past 4.56 billion years. The evolution of planets and life theme aims to study natural history specimens to reveal the past, present and future of the solar system and life on Earth.
Recent research using detailed 3D reconstructions of fossils is helping scientists to understand more about an ancient species of bacteria that lived 407 million years ago. Due to research published in 2023 we now know that the cyanobacteria Langiella scourfieldii is the oldest species of the Hapalosiphonaceae known to have colonised land. It would have thrived in soils, freshwater and hot springs, much like its living relatives do today.
From the ancient past to the more recent, our collections and culture theme explores the changing narratives at the interface of natural history collections, science, and societies. Curator of Botany, Jacek Wajer has been collaborating to untangle the history of breadfruit using specimens from our herbarium collection. Breadfruit was brought to the Caribbean from Tahiti in 1793 to provide cheap food for enslaved people forced to work on British plantations.
Breadfruit specimens - Artocarpus altilis - from our botany collection.
By integrating local knowledge, historical documents, morphological and DNA analyses, the team identified eight major global breadfruit lineages, five of which are found in the Caribbean, confirming that virtually all breadfruit in the Caribbean originated from this single introduction 230 years ago.
Finally, the community science theme collaborates with the public to enhance data collection and scientific research. Community science also seeks to develops people’s science identities and personal sense of agency to use science as a foundation for change in their own lives and communities.
This was demonstrated in a recent publication on a project the Natural History Museum was involved with in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. In addition to the new seaweed data gained, participants showed renewed and positive attitudes toward science.
International reach
It’s not only our own scientists that have been using our collection to further scientific understanding; our digital collection containing 5.7 million specimens has been used by researchers around the globe to publish on topics from human health to extinction. Since 2015, the Data Portal has seen over 40 billion records downloaded over 770,000 download events and over 3,000 scientific papers cite our data.
Curators with the digitised UK butterfly collection.
Direct physical use of the collection is still essential to scientists from all over the world - in just a year, they visited the Natural History Museum to use the collection and libraries for over 6,000 days, and short-term loans of more than 45,000 items were provided by our expert curators.
Our unique collections and world-class expertise are helping to tackle the biggest challenges facing the world today.
