Category: MIL-OSI

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Louise Gentle, Principal Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation, Nottingham Trent University

Birds sing the most around an hour before dawn, when the air is at its stillest. Theoretically, this enables sounds to travel further, making song up to 20 times more effective than if sung at midday.

With International Dawn Chorus day approaching, it’s time to take a moment to soak in the spring birdsong and notice the individual harmonies blending together.

International Dawn Chorus Day brings casual bird appreciators, ornithological experts and dedicated twitchers together in a celebration of birdsong. In our series, experts give their insights on nature’s chorus.

The dawn chorus is beautiful anywhere, but your local birdsong may sound rather different to nearby areas. Even in the same neighbourhood, birds of the same species don’t always sound exactly alike. I was recently teaching undergraduates about bird song, and they recorded blue tits singing around campus. The students found plenty of differences between individual birds. Some blue tits sang their classic song, which sounds a bit like they are saying “he-llo, I’m a little blue tit”. Some sang a more elaborate “he-llo, I’m a little blue tit, blue tit”, and some only bothered with “he-llo”.

Alongside individual differences, birds have regional differences in song. For example, the birdsong that sounds a bit like “my toe bleeds Be-tty”, commonly sung by the woodpigeon is, in some parts of the UK, “my toe bleeds Ju-li-a”, with an extra syllable to the final section of the song. These sorts of regional dialects have been reported in several British bird species including blackbirds and great tits.

However, one of the most interesting accents comes from farmland bird the yellowhammer, who typically sings birdsong that sounds like “a little bit of bread and no cheese please”. In the UK, the yellowhammer largely has two distinct dialects, differing in the final “cheese please” part of the song. In the east of England, “cheese” has a lower pitch than “please”, and this is reversed in south and west England.

Read more:
Why do birds sing?

The yellowhammer was introduced to New Zealand from the UK in the 1860s and 70s. But, unlike the UK, the New Zealand yellowhammers have around seven dialects, despite originating from the south of England. These five extra dialects have also been detected in birds across Europe, indicating that the New Zealand birds still sing the 19th century British dialects that have since disappeared in the UK. This is likely due to the large decline in the number of yellowhammers in the UK which caused some populations to go extinct. An ongoing project allows you to view a map of yellowhammer dialects or help with citizen science research on their song.

Most birds only sing one dialect, learned from parents or neighbours, resulting in a geographical mosaic of regional accents. Dialects often overlap but can dominate certain areas, essentially producing geordie, brummie, cockney and scouse birds.

Although some bird species have an innate ability to sing the song of their species (the cuckoo, for example), species with more elaborate song must learn to sing. Young birds inherit a template which they add to from listening to songs around them.

For example, chaffinches that have been hand-reared in isolation produce simple songs, whereas wild chaffinches learn complexities from their parents or immediate neighbours in their first weeks of life. Finer details of their song are acquired the following breeding season when they come into contact with neighbouring territory owners. Interestingly, corn buntings, a farmland bird, sing the same song as their nearest neighbour rather than their parents, seeming to learn most after dispersing from their nest.

Birds are also adapting to humans. In urban areas, wildlife is subjected to human-made noise such as cars and machinery. Consequently, urban birds now sing at a higher pitch than rural birds as higher-pitched songs carry better over low-pitch urban noise. And it’s not just the pitch of the song that has been altered.

Great tits sing shorter and faster songs in cities compared to forests, and blackbirds sing louder in urban areas. However, even when cities are quiet, like in the early hours, urban birds maintain these song features, which suggests that sounds echo off large buildings and don’t travel as far in urban areas.

Birds are singing earlier in response to traffic noise, with city blackbirds starting their dawn chorus up to five hours earlier than rural birds. The effect of artificial light also leads to an earlier start of dawn singing, with song thrushes starting ten minutes earlier, and robins and great tits 20 minutes earlier than in areas without street lighting. And, artificial light causes blackbirds to sing around an hour earlier than those exposed to natural light.

Scientists still have much to learn about the differences in birdsong within a species. When you hear birdsong, it’s easy to assume that it’s a male. And it is more usually males that sing. Females choose males with the best song so that his high quality genes will be inherited by her offspring. But female birds have been massively under-represented in archives and scientific studies. A 2016 analysis found that for 3,500 out of 4,814 species we don’t even have enough data to know whether or not the females of the species sing. As researchers take a closer look at female birdsong, we may learn of even more differences.

Next time you listen to a bird singing, see if you can hear the nuances in the dialect, or spot the difference between urban and rural birds.

Louise Gentle works for Nottingham Trent University.

– ref. Do birds have accents? The fascinating regional differences in birdsong – https://theconversation.com/do-birds-have-accents-the-fascinating-regional-differences-in-birdsong-278108

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Thomas Clements, Lecturer, University of Reading

At the time of the dinosaurs, the oceans were teeming with life. Below the waves, giant marine reptiles, such as the fearsome 4m (13ft) long mosasaurs, were the undisputed apex predators.

In artistic reconstructions of these ancient oceans, cephalopods – the animal group that includes squid, cuttlefish, octopuses, and their ancestors – are almost always portrayed as prey, often seen desperately swimming away from the jaws of a marine reptile to avoid becoming lunch.

However, a remarkable new fossil suggests our view of the ancient oceans is incomplete, and that giant octopuses, perhaps reaching as long as 19m (62ft), may have been the ones doing the hunting.

The fossil in question is a giant octopus jaw, belonging to a new species called Nanaimoteuthis haggarti. It is found in Late Cretaceous rocks of Japan, making it between 100 million and 72 million years old.

Like other cephalopods, octopuses have a hard beak that looks like a parrot’s bill, used to bite and tear prey, and this fossil example is enormous – larger than that of the famous giant squid Architeuthis.

Based on the shape and size of the beak, Shin Ikegami, from Hokkaido University, Japan, and colleagues, identify it as belonging to the Cirrata, a group of finned octopuses still found today in the deepest oceans. They estimate that the animal may have reached between seven and 19 metres in length. Details have been published in the journal Science.

If that upper estimate is even close to correct, Nanaimoteuthis, would represent the largest invertebrate yet described from the fossil record — an animal rivalling the largest marine reptiles in scale.

The authors also use the wear and damage on the octopus beak as indicators of ancient behaviour. Scratches and pits on the surface point to an animal hunting and crushing prey with bones or shells, not scavenging or feeding on soft-bodied organisms.

Additionally, the wear pattern is asymmetric, interpreted by the authors as evidence of a preference for chewing on one side over the other, a trait associated with higher cognitive function.

Far from being food, Nanaimoteuthis may have been one of the most formidable predators in its ecosystem, in an era we have long assumed was defined by vertebrate dominance.

That such a claim can be made at all is remarkable, because cephalopods almost never leave any trace in the fossil record. Unlike fish, marine reptiles, or even ammonites, most cephalopods have no hard parts like bones.

Octopuses, in particular, are almost entirely “skin bags” filled with water. When they die, they rot quickly, and even the few hard parts, such as the beak, are seldom preserved.

This creates a systematic bias that skews our understanding of ancient ecosystems: animals that preserve well dominate our reconstructions, and the animals that don’t, even if they were common among certain ancient ecosystems, are largely invisible to us.

Every fossil cephalopod, therefore, represents a vital piece of palaeontological information, giving us a fleeting glimpse into a lost world of squishy invertebrates.

But not all cephalopodologists are convinced by the size estimate, with the potential length of 19m in particular drawing scrutiny on social media.

Scaling cephalopod body sizes from beaks is not straightforward. The relationship between jaw dimensions and total body size varies considerably across cephalopod species, a problem compounded by the patchy data available for rarely caught deep-water cirrate octopuses.

Other researchers have also questioned the behavioural inferences drawn from the wear patterns, arguing that bite asymmetry can be caused by many factors, and that drawing conclusions about animal intelligence from a single specimen is premature.

It is also important to put this finding into context of the living relatives of Nanaimoteuthis. Modern cirrate octopuses are not known to swim after prey, typically hunting small invertebrates on the seafloor, raising questions about whether their giant ancient cousins would ever have encountered, let alone challenged, the formidable marine reptiles.

But step back from the debate over metres and scaling equations, and something fundamental comes into view. Our reconstructions of ancient ecosystems are shaped by what preserves (bones, shells, teeth) and often systematically blind to what doesn’t.

While future investigations may test the size estimate or refine behavioural interpretations, this remarkable fossil shows that there may have been giants lurking in the vast, deep, and dark waters of the ancient oceans. We just couldn’t see them until now.

Thomas Clements does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Were enormous octopuses apex predators in ancient oceans? – https://theconversation.com/were-enormous-octopuses-apex-predators-in-ancient-oceans-281518

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rafeef Ziadah, Senior Lecturer in Politics and Public Policy (Emerging Economies), King’s College London

Municipal elections in the occupied West Bank and in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah on April 25 have been quickly framed by Fatah, the dominant faction within the Palestinian Authority (PA), as a sweeping victory.

But it’s worth taking a closer look at how the election was organised. Candidates were required to commit to the political programme of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which which includes the recognition of Israel, the renunciation of terrorism and the pursuit of a two-state solution. It was a condition that was widely seen as effectively excluding Hamas, which does not support these policies.

Hamas – which is understood to be preparing to hold elections for its leadership, which has been decimated during the 30-month conflict in Gaza – did not field candidates. A number of other groups, including the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Palestine People’s Party, FIDA, and Palestinian National Initiative, also opted not to field candidates in the election.

It’s important, when looking at the turnout and results, to bear this in mind. In the West Bank, turnout reached around 56%, but Fatah-affiliated lists were elected unopposed in 197 councils, roughly half of all municipalities in this round.

In the Gaza Strip, voting took place only in the central city of Deir al-Balah. Here, turnout was significantly lower, at around 23%, reflecting the mass displacement, incomplete voter registries and widespread loss of life. The Fatah-backed list won six of 15 seats. A list widely seen as aligned with Hamas secured two seats, with the remainder going to non-affiliated groups.

For the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, these municipal elections serve several purposes. They are presented as a way to reaffirm a political link between the West Bank and Gaza, and to signal a continued role in Gaza’s future governance. They also offer a platform promising reforms to the watching world at a moment when the PA faces pressure to demonstrate political legitimacy.

Read more:
Council elections take place for some Palestinians – but continuing mass displacement makes Gaza poll farcical

While regular municipal elections have been held in the West Bank, presidential and legislative elections have not been held since 2005 and 2006. In the intervening two decades, concerns over the concentration of power under Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas have intensified. In this context, the municipal elections represented a lower-stakes form of participation. It was a way to show electoral activity without reopening the broader question of national leadership.

Rather than a clear mandate, the results point to a constrained political landscape, shaped as much by exclusion and limited participation as by electoral competition. What these elections will change on the ground is unclear, particularly in Gaza, which remains stricken by 30 months of war.

Gaza in ruins

According to the UN, over 1.9 million people – between 80% and 90% of Gaza’s population – are displaced – six months into what is supposed to be a ceasefire. Families live in damaged homes, tents or overcrowded shelters, without reliable access to clean water, electricity, food or healthcare.

According to the World Health Organization, only 19 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals function even partially and nearly half of essential medicines have run out. Conditions in displacement sites are deteriorating. Around 81% of sites show signs of rodents or pests, affecting 1.45 million people and increasing public health risks.

A recent joint World Bank–EU–UN assessment estimates that the recovery and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip will cost more than US$70 billion (£52 billion). The restoration of housing alone accounts for US$18 billion in damage, while more than 68 million tonnes of debris will need to be removed before rebuilding can begin.

But reconstruction depends on access to materials, land and infrastructure and Israel continues to control all of these. Israeli authorities control the entry of aid into Gaza, funnel deliveries through a single crossing, impose inspection regimes that delay or halt shipments, and close crossings altogether. Aid entering Gaza fell by 37% in the three months to April 2026, as raids and other ceasefire violations continue.

Reconstruction without Palestinians

While the people of Gaza remain in these conditions, outsiders are moving ahead with plans to shape Gaza’s future. In November 2025, the UN Security Council endorsed resolution 2803, backing a US-led initiative known as the Board of Peace to oversee the territory. When it first met on February 19, the Board of Peace pledged around US$17 billion – including US$10 billion from the US and additional commitments from Gulf states such as the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Palestinians have no representatives on the Board of Peace, which is chaired by the US president Donald Trump, who also sets the agenda and calls meetings. Israel, however, does, as do Trump’s most prominent envoys, Jared Kushner and Steven Witkoff, who both have considerable business and real estate interests in the Middle East.

Palestinian civil society organisations have warned that the Board of Peace excludes Palestinians from meaningful decision-making and undermines their right to self-determination. European governments have also raised concerns about the concentration of authority in the hands of the US president and the lack of oversight.

Control over funding is also taking shape. The Gaza Reconstruction and Development (Grad) fund is structured as a World Bank Financial Intermediary Fund, with the bank acting as “limited trustee”. In practice, this means the World Bank manages donor money but has no say in how the money is spent. But World Bank president Ajay Banga also sits on the Board of Peace executive board, placing the institution inside the political structure that sets priorities.

In documents related to the Grad, the World Bank describes this moment as an opportunity to “fundamentally reshape” Gaza’s economy through private investment. The vision, as has been widely covered in the media, is to transform Gaza into a “hub” in the Imec development corridor that links India to the Middle East and beyond. The rebuilt Gaza would include a major port, high-tech industrial development, data centres and tourism resorts. Little provision has been made for the restoration of Palestinian homes, healthcare or water and power infrastructure.

Read more:
Donald Trump’s vision for Gaza’s future: what a leaked plan tells us about US regional strategy

Recent discussions with the Dubai-based port operator and logistics company DP World appear to highlight Board of Peace priorities. In April 2026, representatives linked to the board explored bringing the company in to manage key parts of Gaza’s supply chains, including warehousing, tracking systems and the movement of both humanitarian and commercial goods.

The talks also included proposals for a new port in Gaza or on the Egyptian coast, as well as a free-trade zone. It’s a plan for market-led development in its most concentrated form, which envisages the reconstruction of Gaza to serve regional and global economic interests. It reflects external priorities, not the needs on the ground in Gaza.

Rafeef Ziadah does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Gaza: six months of ceasefire have left the territory in rubble and little vision for the future of its people – https://theconversation.com/gaza-six-months-of-ceasefire-have-left-the-territory-in-rubble-and-little-vision-for-the-future-of-its-people-281541

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Reetika Revathy Subramanian, Senior Research Associate, Global Development, University of East Anglia

Anusuyabai Pandekar and her daughter-in-law Mandabai sit facing each other beside a stone grindmill. The mill is still. No grain rests between its stones. No flour gathers at the edges. Instead it sits between them like an object from another time.

One of the women begins to sing. The other joins. The melody carries the rhythm of a labour no longer being done, cyclical and without clear beginning or end:

It is raining heavily, let the soil become wet.

Women go to the fields, carrying baskets of bhakri (bread).

The pre-monsoon rain is beating down on the fields.

Under the jasmine tree, the ploughman is working with the drill-plough.

Scenes like the one this song describes, once common across rural western India, now belong increasingly to the archive. Hand-grinding has given way to electric mills. The work that once informed these songs has thinned out, leaving behind recordings, fragments and memory.

Accounts of drought and environmental change rarely include such voices. In official records and news reports, what is measured often overshadows what is lived. Climate change is typically explained through numbers, including emissions targets, temperature thresholds and rainfall variability. This data is necessary. But it cannot capture how change is inhabited: how it settles into bodies, reshapes routines and presses into everyday life.

Long before climate science named the crisis, women were registering these shifts in another language – song.

Climate, labour and everyday life

Across the world, women’s work songs function as informal archives of environmental change. Emerging from repetitive labour – including grinding, pounding, planting and carrying – they register shifts in seasons, resources and survival long before these enter formal records.

I began to understand this during my doctoral work in 2020 and 2021. I was researching labour arrangements within the sugar industry in drought-affected regions of western India. Policy reports described rainfall deficits, groundwater depletion and crop loss. But women spoke instead of work – walking further for water, delaying planting and stretching food across uncertain seasons.

Their voices extended beyond conversation into an unexpected archive – The Grindmill Songs Project. First documented in the 1990s and now hosted by the People’s Archive of Rural India, the project brings together around 100,000 songs organised by people, places and themes. I used this archive alongside ethnographic interviews to trace labour, marriage and drought in the sugarcane industry, where women’s voices were largely absent from official records.

Here, labour and environmental strain were articulated with a precision often absent from formal accounts. Climate was not abstract; it was embedded in the rhythms of work.

The climate crisis has a communications problem. How do we tell stories that move people – not just to fear the future, but to imagine and build a better one? This article is part of Climate Storytelling, a series exploring how arts and science can join forces to spark understanding, hope and action.

The water-guzzling sugarcane crop, around which the region’s economy turns, surfaced repeatedly in both speech and song. It appeared as a metaphor for happiness, for domestic violence, even for dowry; a substance moving between fields and households, binding labour, desire and coercion. Environmental stress did not stand apart from these concerns, but moved through them. As one song goes:

A daughter’s existence is like a sack of sugar

Father got his daughter married, he became a merchant

Another describes married life through the language of extraction:

Father says, daughter, how are you treated by your in-laws

Like a 12-year-old sugarcane crushed in the sugar-mill

A broader pattern emerges from this context. Across regions, environmental change is first encountered through its effects on labour, and only later abstracted into data. Comparable dynamics appear elsewhere. In west African farming communities, songs synchronise collective labour while expressing shared experience of seasonal uncertainty. In Malawi, during famine, women sang:

Koke kolole … pull, pull hard, pull the clouds –

why does the rain not come?

Our dead fathers, what have we done?

Forgive us … do you want us to die?

Send us rain.

Here, ecological crisis is framed as a breakdown within a moral and social order. Such songs interpret environmental failure through relationships between the living and the dead and between obligation and neglect.

On the Swahili coast, fishing songs similarly accompany sailing and net-making, embedding weather knowledge, labour discipline and social commentary within everyday maritime life. These songs accompany work, but they also organise it, giving rhythm to collective effort while encoding knowledge about seasons, risk and survival.

This relationship between labour and environment extends across very different histories. In the Caribbean, work songs bear the imprint of plantation economies shaped by extraction and environmental vulnerability. In Latin America, women’s traditions carry histories of colonial labour within their rhythms.

In Colombia’s San Basilio de Palenque, women still sing as they coax peanuts from rain-softened soil, gathering food, language and memory in the same gesture. Elsewhere, songs track movement itself: young men leaving with the dry-season wind, rivers in flood separating families.

Along cold North Sea coasts, herring workers, known as the “gutters”, sang Gaelic work songs in the 19th century while gutting fish at speed, their rhythms coordinating labour under harsh conditions. Beyond work, women also composed laments that dwelt on separation from men at sea.

Listening to climate differently

These songs describe hardship. But they also make it perceptible, situating environmental stress within labour, social relations and obligation. Climate change follows existing inequalities. In many contexts, its earliest effects are absorbed through women’s work, through longer hours, shifting responsibilities and increased strain.

Importantly, these songs were not intentionally composed as records of environmental change. They emerge from labour, relationships and survival. Yet because women’s work is so closely tied to land, water and season, environmental shifts are registered within them, often indirectly, as part of their lived experience.

Work songs therefore offer a distinct kind of record. Against archives that have historically privileged elite and male voices, they preserve forms of knowledge grounded in everyday labour.

But the conditions that sustained such singing are fading. Mechanisation and the decline of collective work have reduced the spaces in which these songs were produced and shared, with many now confined to ritual settings such as weddings and childbirth gatherings. As these practices decline, so too do the forms of knowledge embedded within them.

Listening to these songs does not replace data-driven, scientific knowledge about climate change. It complements it by making visible dimensions of change that are otherwise difficult to capture, including the reorganisation of labour, the strain on relationships and the uncertainty of survival.

Reetika Revathy Subramanian received funding from the Gates Cambridge Trust for her doctoral research at the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies (2019–2024), on which this article primarily draws.

– ref. What women’s work songs reveal about the changing climate – https://theconversation.com/what-womens-work-songs-reveal-about-the-changing-climate-280964

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Trudy Meehan, Lecturer, Centre for Positive Psychology and Health, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences

My ex once told me, mid-argument, that I was the most unempathetic person he’d ever met. It was a low blow. I’m a clinical psychologist. Empathy is literally my job.

What he probably didn’t know – and I was too “flooded” to explain at the time – is that when we argue with people we love, our brains can briefly turn against us.

Researchers call it emotional flooding or diffuse physiological arousal. Your heart hammers. You flush, sweat and shake. Adrenaline surges through you as though you are being chased by something that wants to eat you.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University in the US, describes the brain as being “locked in a dark, silent box” (your skull) with no direct access to the outside world. It can only work with signals from your senses, and it uses past experience to predict what those signals mean. So when my partner looked away during an argument – eyes down, head turned – my brain didn’t just register disconnection. It reached into my past and found my father, largely absent, largely disengaged and screamed – a threat.

If you’ve experienced a lot of conflict, rejection or trauma, your brain becomes a hair-trigger prediction machine, interpreting interpersonal friction as danger even when you’re perfectly safe. It’s trying to protect you. The problem is that once you tip into that negative emotional state, you also shift from “we” thinking to “me” thinking – fast. Empathy evaporates. You’re in survival mode, not relationship mode.

It would be convenient to blame all of this on my neurology, or on my ex for arguing in ways that made me feel threatened. But that’s not quite how it works. Our physiological states don’t exist in isolation. We regulate each other, pulling one another up or dragging each other under. Which means we carry some responsibility for what happens in each other’s nervous systems.

This gets particularly charged in the parent-child relationship. Parents are already stretched. When a child acts out, the most useful response is curiosity: what is this behaviour trying to communicate? But a flooded parent is far more likely to react harshly or defensively than with the openness a child actually needs.

So what can we do when the flood waters rise? The first thing is to get to know your own internal state in real time. Awareness alone can slow emotional reactivity. It won’t happen overnight, but learning to notice the early physical signs of flooding – the heat, the racing pulse – gives you a tiny window of choice before your brain takes over.

The second tool is what psychologists call cognitive reappraisal: consciously inserting a different story between the trigger and your response. When a colleague sighs and says: “Do we really need a meeting about this?”, your brain will offer you one interpretation immediately. Reappraisal asks: what else might be true here? This isn’t about suppressing your feelings – suppression actually increases flooding – it’s about widening the range of possible responses available to you.

When all else fails, the most powerful intervention is also the simplest: leave the room. Not by stonewalling or slamming doors, but by agreeing in advance on a word or phrase that means: “I need a break. I’m not abandoning you.”

The 20-minute rule

The break needs to be real – at least 20 minutes – long enough for your body to return to baseline, and spent doing something genuinely distracting rather than replaying the argument in your head. This works for parents too. Stepping away briefly and explaining to a child that you’re not punishing them but regrouping is a far better model than pushing through while flooded.

For those who find it hard to read their own physiological state, biofeedback can help. The researchers John and Julie Gottman, who have spent decades studying couples in conflict, used simple fingertip pulse oximeters (devices that measure pulse rate and blood oxygen levels) in their lab to track what was happening to people’s bodies during arguments. They went on to recommend using the same tools at home, as a concrete way of learning to self-soothe before the flooding takes hold.

None of this is about avoiding conflict. Friction is part of human relationships in every form – romantic, familial, professional – and trying to eliminate it entirely would be both exhausting and counterproductive. The goal is to stay present enough, and regulated enough, to keep hold of your empathy even when your brain is telling you to run.

My ex wasn’t entirely wrong. In that moment, flooded and frightened, I probably wasn’t empathetic. But I’d like to think I understand why, and that understanding, at least, is a start.

Trudy Meehan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why your brain turns against you during arguments – and what to do about it – https://theconversation.com/why-your-brain-turns-against-you-during-arguments-and-what-to-do-about-it-280538

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Manal Mohammed, Senior Lecturer, Medical Microbiology, University of Westminster

Bacteriophages, or phages, are viruses that infect and kill bacteria. These microscopic predators are found everywhere from soil and water to food and the human gut. Because they attack only specific bacteria, researchers are increasingly exploring them as tools for reducing harmful bacteria in humans and animals without disturbing helpful microbes.

That makes them especially interesting at a time of rising antimicrobial resistance. This is when bacteria evolve ways to survive drugs designed to kill them. It’s a global health threat driven in part by the overuse of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture. Unlike broad-spectrum antibiotics, which kill many different kinds of bacteria and can also disrupt helpful gut microbes, research has shown that phages may be able to remove harmful bacteria with less disruption to the wider microbiome.

This has led researchers to investigate phages both as nutraceuticals, dietary supplements intended to promote health, and as feed additives in livestock production. In both cases, the aim is similar: reduce harmful bacteria, support gut health and potentially cut reliance on antibiotics.

How phages work

Phages work very differently from antibiotics. Rather than killing a broad range of bacteria, each phage typically infects only particular bacterial species or closely related types of bacteria.

When a phage encounters its target bacterium, it attaches to the cell and injects its genetic instructions. The virus then replicates inside the bacterium until the cell bursts. This releases new phage particles that go on to infect other bacteria.

This precision is one reason phages are attracting attention as a possible way to fight harmful bacteria. Unlike broad-spectrum antibiotics, which can disrupt entire communities of microbes, phages may be able to remove particular harmful bacteria without the same wider effects on the microbiome, according to studies of phage-microbiome interactions and research on antibiotic-associated microbiome disruption.

That raises the possibility that phages could be used not simply to kill bacteria, but to shape communities of microbes in ways that support health. Researchers have explored their potential in food safety, agriculture and human health.

In recent years, researchers and biotechnology companies have begun exploring phages as dietary supplements for humans. The idea is that people could ingest phages to reduce harmful gut bacteria in the hope of restoring balance in the gut microbiome, the community of microbes that lives in the digestive system.

Early findings are encouraging, though still preliminary. For example, one human clinical study found that a commercially available phage product targeting E. coli reduced levels of the bacteria in the gut without causing major disruption to the rest of the microbiome.

Other work has examined phage products designed to support digestive health by targeting bacteria associated with digestive discomfort or dysbiosis, an imbalance in gut microbes. A randomised controlled trial of a phage-based supplement reported improvements in digestive symptoms among participants with mild digestive issues.

This is still an emerging field, and the evidence remains limited. But the results so far suggest phage-based nutraceuticals could eventually form part of diet-based approaches to improving gut health.

There are already signs of commercial interest. In the US, phage products have been approved for certain food safety uses, such as reducing bacterial contamination on foods. Phage-containing supplements are already on sale.

Public acceptance, however, may prove just as important as scientific progress. Because viruses are usually associated with disease, researchers and manufacturers will need to explain clearly why these “good viruses” are different. They occur naturally, they are highly specific and they target bacteria rather than human cells.

Improving animal health through feed additives

Phages may also have an important role to play in livestock production. Farm animals often carry disease-causing bacteria such as Salmonella, Campylobacter and harmful strains of E. coli. These bacteria can harm animal health and contaminate food products. They can contribute to food-borne illness in humans.

Phage-based feed additives are being developed to target these bacteria in livestock. By incorporating phages into feed or drinking water, farmers may be able to reduce harmful bacteria while preserving beneficial microbes that support digestion and the immune system.

Experimental studies have produced promising results. In poultry, phage supplementation has been shown to reduce the presence of Salmonella and Campylobacter, two of the most common causes of food-borne infection worldwide. Research in pigs has also found that phage treatments can reduce harmful E. coli infections, improving gut health and growth.

Phages are also being investigated as alternatives to antibiotic feed additives used to prevent diseases such as liver abscesses – pockets of infection in the liver – in cattle. Because phages replicate only when their target bacteria are present, their effects may naturally taper off once those bacteria are gone, making them a potentially useful way to control infection.

Despite promising research, bacteriophage supplements are not yet widely authorised as feed additives in the UK. Regulators require extensive evidence of safety, stability and effectiveness. Because phages are biological entities that can evolve alongside bacteria, agencies must also consider whether they remain genetically consistent over time and what effects they might have on other microbial communities in the environment.

Even so, regulatory progress is emerging elsewhere. Phage-based food safety products targeting disease-causing bacteria such as Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella have already been approved in several countries. This includes the US, where they are already being used in food safety applications.

More recently, European regulators authorised the first bacteriophage-based feed additive designed to reduce Salmonella in poultry. That marks an important step towards broader adoption of the technology.

Interest in bacteriophages reflects a wider shift in how microbes are understood in relation to health. If research continues to advance, and regulation keeps pace, phage-based nutraceuticals and feed supplements could become part of a new generation of more targeted ways to shape the microbiome, supporting both human health and more sustainable agriculture.

Tiny though they are, these bacterial viruses may end up playing a significant role in how we manage harmful bacteria.

Manal Mohammed does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Bacteriophages: meet the viruses that hunt superbugs – https://theconversation.com/bacteriophages-meet-the-viruses-that-hunt-superbugs-278440