A new Special Report published in the journal BioScience warns that long-term ecological and evolutionary research faces severe threats from lack of recurring funding and governmental/institutional support, to data manipulation and political interference, even as these studies become more crucial for addressing issues of broad societal importance, such as biodiversity loss and climate change.

Led by Vincent A. Viblanc of CNRS Écologie & Environnement in France, the report documents how “in early 2025, several leading environmental datasets maintained by national agencies in countries recently marked by electoral shifts were abruptly taken offline or replaced with curated versions that obscure or distort previously accessible information.”

The authors argue that “now more than ever, as manipulated facts and societal distrust in science are increasingly guiding mis- and disinformed politics, governmental programs are urgently needed to support data collection, establish data-grounded facts, inform political spheres, and refuel trust with society at large.”

The report highlights the CNRS SEE-Life program as a flagship model for institutional commitment to long-term science. Through sustained recurrent funding, SEE-Life support  79 long-term ecological studies across 28 French research centers and a network of over 100 international partners. Together more than 500 species across all major biomes are monitored, generating exceptional longitudinal datasets spanning 10 to 100 years, with unique longitudinal data ranging from 10 to 100 years of data. To date, the program has produced over 3000 publications and trained over 4900 scientists, including more than 800 PhD students and postdoctoral fellows, constituting one of the most comprehensive long term biodiversity data sets worldwide.

The authors emphasize the enormous economic stakes, noting that healthy ecosystems provide services “estimated at some US$125 trillion per year,” while biological invasions alone cost “US$1.288 trillion in 2017 value over 1970–2017.”

Long-term studies in ecology and evolution allow key insights into ecoevolutionary feedback loops and the mechanisms underlying organism, community, and ecosystem adaptation to global change. By promoting interdisciplinary research between research departments (e.g., life sciences in green and Earth sciences in blue), and networking across national (e.g., other research agencies, not shown) and international spheres (in orange), institutions play a key role in building global data frames allowing to understand and predict global biodiversity responses to change and enact meaningful political action at local, national, and international levels. Abbreviations: EBOCC, European Biodiversity Observation Coordination Centre; eLTER, Integrated European Long-Term Ecosystem, Critical Zone and Socioecological Research Infrastructure; GBIF, Global Biodiversity Information Facility network.
Long-term studies in ecology and evolution allow key insights into ecoevolutionary feedback loops and the mechanisms underlying organism, community, and ecosystem adaptation to global change. By promoting interdisciplinary research between research departments (e.g., life sciences in green and Earth sciences in blue), and networking across national (e.g., other research agencies, not shown) and international spheres (in orange), institutions play a key role in building global data frames allowing to understand and predict global biodiversity responses to change and enact meaningful political action at local, national, and international levels. Abbreviations: EBOCC, European Biodiversity Observation Coordination Centre; eLTER, Integrated European Long-Term Ecosystem, Critical Zone and Socioecological Research Infrastructure; GBIF, Global Biodiversity Information Facility network.

The authors warn that “when long-term data becomes a target, our ability to understand—and respond to—global environmental change is profoundly compromised.”

The full report is available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf175

Journal

BioScience

DOI

10.1093/biosci/biaf175 

Method of Research

Meta-analysis

Article Title

Science at Risk: The Urgent Need for Institutional Support of Long-Term Ecological and Evolutionary Research in an Era of Data Manipulation and Disinformation

Article Publication Date

5-Jan-2026