15 May 2026

Today’s Future News explores an eggy extinction mystery. But first, catch up on the latest science news, including evidence that cuts to foreign aid set off a surge in violent conflict and how, when it comes to rainstorms, bigger isn’t better.

political economy | Science

Dismantling of USAID triggered a wave of violence across Africa

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was once the world’s largest provider of foreign aid. Between 2021 and 2024, the agency—which operated in more than 100 countries—is estimated to have saved some 91 million lives, about a third of which were children under five. But just days after President Donald Trump took office in 2025, his administration began rapidly dismantling the organization. The sweeping cuts dealt a “ tectonic” blow to clinical trials around the globe, devastated agricultural research, and triggered a “ bloodbath” for HIV/AIDS relief programs. According to one study, this sudden removal of foreign aid could lead to more than nine million preventable deaths by 2030. Now, new research published in Science suggests that the destruction of USAID has also unleashed a wave of violent conflict across Africa.

Scientists merged two datasets, one that mapped worldwide foreign aid disbursements and another recording violent events. Cuts to USAID, the team reports, were associated with significant increases in violent conflict, armed clashes, protests and riots across a large swath of Africa. The effects began immediately after USAID withdrawal, persisted for months, and were most pronounced in areas that had previously relied the most on aid from the United States. “With the USAID shutdown, there was a rapid increase in the likelihood of violence, the severity of violence, and the lethality of violence ,” study co-author Austin L. Wright told 404 Media.

As economist Axel Dreher wrote in a related Science Perspective, the findings reveal “the effect of a sudden and unexpected disruption,” which, beyond just removing resources, can open the door to civil unrest by interrupting ongoing initiatives and eroding trust in local governments. “A sudden cut can be destabilizing even if the aid program being cut was inefficient or unsustainable in the long run.”

Read the Science Paper

Read the Perspective

climatology | nature

Bigger, wetter storms are drying out the land

Over the past 40 years, annual rainfall has become more concentrated (blue scale) for much of the world and less concentrated (brown scale) in areas where rising temperatures have led to more rain and snow year-round. Corey lesk and justin mankin

After a long period of drought, a torrential rainstorm feels like sweet relief. But bigger, wetter storms may do more harm than good in the long run—leaving the land thirstier than ever before. When scientists analyzed global precipitation records from 1980 to 2022, they found that annual rainfall in much of the world has become more concentrated, leading to more intense storms interspersed with longer dry spells.

As the team behind the new study explains, soil can only soak up so much water at once. What’s left collects on the surface, where it more readily evaporates, leaving less water available for ecosystems even if overall precipitation increases. “Rainfall concentration is essentially asking the land to drink from a firehose ,” senior study author Justin Mankin said in a statement. Using an economic tool typically used to measure wealth inequality, the researchers determined that the United States west of the Mississippi and South America’s Amazon River basin experienced particularly high levels of rain consolidation over the past 4 decades. In contrast, precipitation has become more distributed in the Arctic, Northern Europe, and Canada—changes that likely reflect an overall increase in year-round snow and rain as the regions became warmer due to climate change.

Rainfall will become even more consolidated, the team predicts, as global temperatures continue to rise. An increase of 2°C, they report, could lead to abnormally dry land conditions for roughly a third of the world’s population. And that, in turn, could have economic consequences. “Precipitation, like wealth, exhibits a highly unequal distribution in the present day,” Mankin said, “and the expectation is that with global warming, inequality in both the economy and precipitation will increase.”

Read the Paper

toxinology | Science advances

‘Arsenal’ of peptides discovered in carpenter ant venom

At first, it was thought the sting of all hymenopterans—from bees to ants—came predominantly from formic acid, which was first identified in the venom of wood ants back in 1670. Since then, toxinologists have come to appreciate the diversity of toxins in this insect order, especially when it comes to peptides, including honeybees’ inflammatory melittin to bullet ants’ excruciating poneratoxin. But until now, the idea has persisted that ants in the subfamily Formicinae, which includes carpenter ants, rely almost solely on formic acid.

When researchers compared the genomes of eight carpenter ant species, they spotted almost three dozen venom peptides—a veritable “arsenal” thus far unique to this subfamily of ants. Broadening their genetic search still wider, the team found these peptides—dubbed formicitoxins— in at least 20 other formicine genera.

These small proteins do all sorts of helpful things. “Some of the peptides demonstrate remarkable antifungal properties ,” said project leader Simon Tragust in a statement, which may explain why the ants spray their venom on their young. “While concentrated formic acid has strong immediate antimicrobial effects, the formicitoxins may serve as a persistent antifungal protective cloak after formic acid has lost its potency due to evaporation, dilution, or neutralization,” the team explained in the paper. Some formicitoxins were potent antimicrobials, which is especially intriguing given that carpenter ants are known to consume their own venom to modulate their gut microbiome.

Such properties aren’t just useful for ants—they’re highly sought for human purposes, too. “The Formicinae subfamily comprises over 3700 species, meaning that there is enormous potential for the discovery of more bioactive substances,” Tragust noted.

Read the paper

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Mapping the forces shaping global food systems

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future news

Two shelled cephalopods enter, but only one leaves. While this Late Cretaceous ammonite’s (right) lineage died out with the dinosaurs, relatives of the nautiloid (left) persist to this day. michael schmutzer

Did egg size doom the ammonites?

When a massive meteor struck Earth some 66 million years ago, dinosaurs weren’t the ones who suffered. The mass extinction event also wiped out huge swaths of marine life, including the spiral-shelled ammonites, a diverse group of cephalopods that had previously survived for 350 million years—and weathered multiple earlier mass extinction events. Meanwhile, their relatives, the nautiloids, endure to this day.

According to research presented this week at the EGU General Assembly, the difference between survival and extinction may have come down to egg size—but not in the way scientists thought.

At first glance, the ammonites seem like they should have come out on top. After all, this successful genus had diversified into thousands of species, evolved to survive in a variety of marine environments, and even lived through the Permian-Triassic extinction event, which was so devastating that it is commonly known as the Great Dying. “It’s a tragic story, because this incredibly diverse group made it through multiple mass extinctions, including the most dramatic mass extinction event in history ,” evolutionary biologist Michael Schmutzer said in a statement. The nautiloids, by contrast, were much less diverse, yet they were the ones that ultimately survived.

Some studies have suggested that the nautiloids’ large geographic distributions played a role in their success, making them better at responding to changing environment conditions and giving them places to seek refuge after the asteroid hit. Other scientists think reproduction strategy made all the difference. Ammonites laid huge numbers of tiny eggs, with only a few hatchlings surviving until adulthood, while nautiloids laid just a few big eggs. The hypothesis, Schmutzer explained, is that “having large, yolk‑rich eggs allowed nautilus embryos to develop longer and hatch at a larger size, which might have given them an edge when marine ecosystems collapsed and food was scarce.”

Hoping to unravel this evolutionary mystery, Schmutzer and his colleagues collected and analyzed a vast dataset—the largest yet assembled—for shelled cephalopods from the Late Cretaceous epoch, including information from museum fossils and published literature. Their work didn’t reveal a strong connection between geographic range and survival, but it did appear to turn the egg hypothesis on its head: The few ammonoid groups that managed to linger for a while after the asteroid impact, the team reports, were the ones with the smallest eggs.

Read the Paper Abstract

podcast

Fighting deepfakes, and using bacteria to deliver medicine inside the body

By SARAH CRESPI, Meagan Cantwell, Kai Kupferschmidt | 11 may 2026

On this week’s show: Escalating the fake-image arms race, and implanting encapsulated bacteria to deliver drugs.

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Et Cetera

Brain tumor tied to gene therapy

Scientists report that a boy’s brain tumor was caused by a successful gene therapy he received aged 13 months to treat a condition called Hurler syndrome. The mass was safely removed, and researchers stress that the risk from the adeno-associated virus widely used to deliver genes is low.