The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from different studies. Hundreds of reports of unusual species observations from around the world suggest that animals quickly responded to the reductions in human presence. However, negative effects of lockdown on conservation also emerged, as confinement resulted in some park officials being unable to perform conservation, restoration and enforcement tasks, resulting in local increases in illegal activities such as hunting. Overall, there is a complex mixture of positive and negative effects of the pandemic lockdown on nature, all of which have the potential to lead to cascading responses which in turn impact wildlife and nature conservation. While the net effect of the lockdown will need to be assessed over years as data becomes available and persistent effects emerge, immediate responses were detected across the world. Thus, initial qualitative and quantitative data arising from this serendipitous global quasi-experimental perturbation highlights the dual role that humans play in threatening and protecting species and ecosystems. Pathways to favorably tilt this delicate balance include reducing impacts and increasing conservation effectiveness.

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We studied zooplankton abundance and emergence patterns over coral reefs in the Gulf of Aqaba using highresolution acoustics (multibeam sonar, FTV, 1.6 MHz, and WH600 ADCP, 614 KHz), emergence traps, and an underwater pump, supplemented with field observations on feeding behavior of zooplanktivorous fish. The zooplanktonic community over coral reefs is a complex and highly dynamic mixture of pelagic plankton advected into the reef, larvae and eggs released by benthic animals, and demersal plankton. At sunset (0 Ϯ4 min, mean Ϯ95% confidence interval) acoustic back-scattering intensity and zooplankton biomass started to increase rapidly. In contrast with this ascent, the predawn decline began much earlier during the dark (82 Ϯ5 min before sunrise) and terminated before sunrise. This light-dependent diel behavior was highly consistent throughout the year, regardless of seasonal and environmental changes. Smaller zooplankters (500-700 m) ascended first and demersal zooplankton accounted for most of the increase in zooplankton soon after sunset. Surprisingly, the emergence of zooplankton occurred while large schools of diurnal zooplanktivorous fish were still foraging in the water column. However, at that time, prey-capture efficiency by the fish is greatly reduced and corals had not yet expanded their tentacles, producing an optimal window of opportunity of low risk for emergence.Diel vertical migration (DVM) is one of the most conspicuous features of zooplankton behavior, occurring in di-