Lovely image of a Chachi treefrog (Boana picturata) featured in the cover of the latest Nature magazine!

The cover image is by Timo Metz. The article he contributed to in this issue is Open access too:

Metz, Timo, et al. “Biodiversity resilience in a tropical rainforest.” Nature (2026): 1-8.

About the cover image (from nature):

The way back

With around 60% of tropical forests already lost or severely degraded, restoring this type of habitat has become a key strategy for conservation efforts. Although tree recovery has been studied, a comprehensive view of biodiversity recovery in restored tropical forests has been lacking. In this week’s issue, Timo Metz, Nico Blüthgen and colleagues aim to bridge that gap with an analysis of recovery across a range of species covering 16 taxonomic groups. Working at Jocotoco’s Río Canandé Reserve in Ecuador, the researchers compared naturally regenerated forest with untouched areas across multiple study sites. They found that although it takes several decades for full recovery to occur, abundance and diversity within a restored forest showed 75% similarity to an original forest within 30 years. The team notes that many species, such as the Chachi treefrog (Boana picturata) shown on the cover, are very sensitive to changes in their habitat and so can be used as an indicator for forest recovery.

Cover image: Timo Metz.