Research lab
The University of Exeter is a UK public research university whose scientists conduct studies in ecology, evolutionary biology, and animal behavior.
Researchers at five institutions say areas that sustain biodiversity outside conventional protected areas could help countries meet the 30-by-30 target. Governments meet at COP17 in Yerevan on Oct. 19 to 30, where the contribution of these areas will be assessed.
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A team led by the University of Exeter and City St George's found that Candida auris cells surviving antifungal drugs had copied their entire genome. The authors say that could lead to new ways to tackle a fungus on the WHO critical priority list.
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Ruth Thurstan of Exeter analysed 1,192 Good Housekeeping recipes and found variety narrowing toward five species, now about 80% of UK seafood eaten. The recipes record what one magazine showed readers. Getting from there to fisheries pressure needs catch and stock data from outside the study.
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Eight months of fieldwork by Julie Dayot ties Quichua acceptance of oil extraction in Ecuador to when harms and benefits arrive. The summary of her Geoforum paper explains the logic of saying yes but does not say how many communities did.
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Exeter-led researchers, writing in PLOS ONE, linked more Prevotella histicola on the tongue to faster responses on some tests in 60 healthy adults. With 30 people per country and no test of cause, the authors want larger studies to separate biology from noise.
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The International Diabetes Federation recognised malnutrition-related diabetes as type 5 in 2025, a form thought to affect up to 25 million people. That count stays an upper bound until diagnostic criteria, still being drafted, exist.
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Seychelles Islands Foundation and University of Exeter researchers put Aldabra's giant tortoises at about 180,000 in the first rigorous atoll-wide count. Older surveys missed tortoises hidden in scrub, the authors say, so part of the rise from the 1990s figure of 100,000 comes from the change of method.
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University of Exeter researchers found sudden stratospheric warmings make extreme electricity demand in northern and central Europe 1.5 to 3 times more likely. Because the cold tends to arrive a few weeks after the polar winds shift, energy providers get time to prepare for the demand spike.
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WWF's Living Planet Report 2026 finds monitored wildlife populations have fallen 73% on average since 1970. The report's case that conservation can work leans on bluefin tuna back in UK waters, credited to quota cuts, size limits and protected spawning grounds.
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Sea surface temperatures in the Pacific's Niño 3.4 region passed 30 degrees Celsius for the first time, preliminary data released Oct. 5 show. On the anomaly measures that remove global ocean warming, the event is already close to the strongest El Niño on record, Timothy Osborn of the University of East Anglia told Live Science.
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University of Exeter-led models project sperm whales in the southwest Indian Ocean losing 20% to 40% of suitable habitat by 2100. The authors say the refuges that persist are where protection should start, with boundaries redrawn as the rest of the habitat moves.
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University of Exeter researchers built a toolkit for low-carbon European holidays from workshops with 50 customers of Inghams and Inntravel. Its recommendations put much of the work of moving holidays onto trains on tour operators and government.
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Researchers from Exeter, ETH Zurich and James Cook University estimate that fire-driven ozone cuts Amazon carbon uptake by about 24% of the fires' emissions. They warn the strong El Niño now forming could push that hidden loss up again.
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Economists at Sussex and Exeter found an Ofsted downgrade cut a school's first-choice applications by 11%, over twice the roughly 5% gain from an upgrade. With schools funded at about £5,000 a pupil, the grade puts money at stake, though the study found enrolment moved less than applications did.
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Exeter's Kubo Macak says the 37 states with published cyber-law positions, most in the Global North, should state the legal weight they intend them to carry. His paper argues that states publishing nothing have no comparable way to explain their silence.
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Exeter and Essex researchers report in Nature that butterfly wing patterns in flight create motion illusions, widespread across about 400 European species. The finding is presented as helping explain why so few predators hunt butterflies on the wing, though the tests used bird-vision models and human volunteers.
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Fishtek Marine's two-year trial with 10 Cornish gillnet fishers found the Looming Eye Buoy cut seabird catch risk by 59% and a bird-of-prey kite by 71%. Both were tested on working boats, giving gillnet fleets a field-tested option for gear the RSPB says has resisted bycatch fixes.
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Male green swordtails in a University of Exeter experiment bred on-screen females more than 24% larger over nine generations of virtual mate choice. The method lets a two-screen test range over far more possible mates, on evidence from 23 fish watching video.
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Safa Donmez's Ankara team found a VR river scene plus classical music added about 4 mmHg to the drug-driven blood pressure drop in 130 emergency patients. By 60 minutes the groups matched, so hospitals would be adopting a faster first quarter-hour of care.
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Daniel Kattnig modelled a semicircular canal under the conditions most favourable to electromagnetic induction and found the bird's own thermal fluctuations leave a directional signal far too slow to steer by.
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