Baruch Rinkevich

As climate change intensifies, political commitments to ecosystem recovery are expanding rapidly. For example, with the 2024 Nature Restoration Law1, the EU committed around €100 billion to habitat recovery through 2050, transforming restoration into a policy-driven practice. Yet a conceptual issue is emerging: marine restoration paradigms are being scaled up faster than the ecological understanding required to guide them.

Abstract Tissue and organ regeneration are common among aquatic invertebrates, yet these taxa and their potential as model organisms remain underexplored. We present evidence of extensive regenerative capabilities in aquatic invertebrates, highlighting examples of whole-body regeneration (WBR), a peak form of regeneration, where entire organisms regenerate from minute body fragments.

ABSTRACT The ecosystems known as Marine Animal Forests (MAFs), predominantly inhabited by sessile invertebrates, represent critical biodiversity hotspots under imminent threats from human activities and climate change.