Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here.
Credit: Britta Jaschinski, Every Crime Leaves a Trace, 2025, Wildlife Crime Lab, Institute of Zoology (IOZ), London, UK. Earth Photo 2026 Award
Photographer Britta Jaschinski works with border-force operations and wildlife crime units across Europe to document elements of the illegal poaching trade. This striking image of a handprint on the shell of a green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) confiscated at London Heathrow Airport, UK, was one of Jaschinski’s winning entries in the 2026 Earth Photo Awards.
See more of the month’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team.
The demand for lithium has skyrocketed amid a boom in technology that uses rechargeable batteries. The conventional lithium-extraction methods used in Chile and Argentina are inefficient, damage ecosystems and impact local Indigenous communities, say researchers. But a wave of new techniques could make the process greener. The methods use electrochemical processes or heat to extract lithium from naturally occurring brine. These options use less fresh water than existing techniques, and could extract the metal at higher yields, but will require significant investment to scale up.
Viral DNA found in the mummified remains of two people in Chile has confirmed that Orthopoxvirus variola — the virus that causes smallpox — was brought to the Americas by European colonizers. The DNA revealed an unknown smallpox variant, which appeared to have split off from a European variant around the thirteenth century. The variant had fewer genes than did samples found in seventh-century Viking settlements, which suggests that the virus might have shed genes as it adapted to human hosts — a mechanism that related viruses might also be using today.
The wildfires blazing across France and Spain could mark a shift in southern Europe’s fire patterns. As human-induced climate change drives rising temperatures, the region’s fire regime is starting to resemble that of notoriously combustible places such as California, say researchers. The success of fire-suppression efforts has reduced overall wildfire activity in Europe since the 1980s. But the fires in France and Spain this year suggest that hot, dry fire weather is catching up, says meteorologist and study co-author Raúl Cordero.
Reference: Scientific Reports paper
Source: European Forest Fire Information System
Features & opinion
A tick-induced allergy to meat is on the rise. The condition causes symptoms ranging from mild stomach pain and vomiting to life-threatening anaphylaxis, with no treatment or cure currently available. Researchers say that climate change and rising populations of deer, which often carry ticks, are contributing to the rise in cases, but there is much they still don’t understand. “We’re still casting in the dark, but it is our responsibility to find something that works for people” in need of treatment, says immunologist Benjamin Casterline.
A museum visitor is reminded what climate grief feels like in The past is an open can of worms: a stimulated-memory exhibition.
Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes the story of how Los Angeles cleaned up its air and a study of the power of ignorance.
The discovery of hundreds of structures hidden in the Amazon rainforest might redefine the true scale of a civilization that researchers now call the Aquiry. Researchers used a sensing technology called lidar to peek through the rainforest’s dense vegetation, revealing almost 400 ‘earthworks’ that were previously unseen. Taking these structures into account, the team now propose that the total human population of the Aquiry civilization was between 1.25 and 3 million in around ad 200.
Nature Podcast | 20 min listen
Subscribe to the Nature Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube Music, or use the RSS feed.
Today, Leif Penguinson is staring into Boca do Inferno — mouth of hell in English — on the coast of Cascais, Portugal. Can you find the penguin?
You’ll have to wait a little longer than usual for the answer, which will be in the Monday 10 August edition of the Briefing. As usual, all thanks to Briefing photo editor and penguin wrangler Tom Houghton.
This newsletter is always evolving — tell us what you think! Please send your feedback to [email protected].
Thanks for reading,
Jacob Smith, associate editor, Nature Briefing
• Nature Briefing: Careers — insights, advice and award-winning journalism to help you optimize your working life
• Nature Briefing: Microbiology — the most abundant living entities on our planet — microorganisms — and the role they play in health, the environment and food systems
• Nature Briefing: Anthropocene — climate change, biodiversity, sustainability and geoengineering
• Nature Briefing: AI & Robotics — 100% written by humans, of course
• Nature Briefing: Cancer — a weekly newsletter written with cancer researchers in mind
• Nature Briefing: Translational Research — covers biotechnology, drug discovery and pharma
