Featured
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Article |
Evolution of a novel adrenal cell type that promotes parental care
The adrenal gland of the oldfield mouse (Peromyscus polionotus) has a recently evolved cell type that promotes monogamous-typical parenting behaviour and is not present in closely related species.
- Natalie Niepoth
- , Jennifer R. Merritt
- & Andres Bendesky
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News & Views |
Parental-care puzzle in mice solved by thinking outside the brain
Both parents of oldfield mice care for offspring, whereas in deer mice, mothers usually care for pups. The discovery of a type of adrenal-gland cell that is present in oldfield mice but not in deer mice helps to explain the difference.
- Jessica Tollkuhn
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Article
| Open AccessThe rise of baobab trees in Madagascar
We carried out genomic and ecological analyses of all eight extant baobab species, providing insights into their evolutionary history and recommendations for conservation efforts.
- Jun-Nan Wan
- , Sheng-Wei Wang
- & Qing-Feng Wang
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News & Views |
Balls of lightning and flames from the sky: can science explain?
A book cataloguing mysterious events challenges scientists to provide some answers, and Charles Darwin continues his investigations of crimes against primroses, in the weekly dip into Nature’s archive.
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Book Review |
How men evolved to care for babies — before society got in the way
An exploration of the evolution of male nurturing shows why, unlike fathers among other great apes, human dads are biologically wired to be hands-on parents.
- Kermyt G. Anderson
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Research Briefing |
A jawless-fish genome untangles the history of vertebrate genome multiplications
Clarifying how genome duplication and triplication events shaped early vertebrate genomes has presented a challenge in evolutionary biology. The genome of the jawless hagfish provides a missing piece of this puzzle.
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Correspondence |
Finding millennia-old ‘monumental’ corals could unlock secrets of climate resilience
- Simone Montano
- , Federica Siena
- & Giovanni Strona
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News |
Puppy-dog eyes in wild canines sparks rethink on dog evolution
The eyebrows of the African wild dog have scientists wondering whether other dogs can make the irresistible ‘puppy-dog eyes’ expression.
- Gillian Dohrn
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News & Views |
Streamlined skull helps foxes take a nosedive
Some fox species leap up and pounce head first into snow to capture prey that they hear below the surface. An analysis of the forces involved reveals how the shape of the skull has evolved to minimize damage from this behaviour.
- Mary Abraham
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Nature Podcast |
Dad’s microbiome can affect offspring’s health — in mice
Disrupting gut microbes increases risk of growth issues in the next generation, and understanding geographic variations in cancer rates.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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News & Views |
Resilience lessons from ancient societies are still relevant today
What lessons can we learn from the factors that govern the resilience of human populations? A large-scale analysis examining ancient societies around the world provides a detailed look at what drives sustainability.
- John Haldon
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Article
| Open AccessFrequent disturbances enhanced the resilience of past human populations
Analysis of population decline shows that frequent disturbances enhance a population’s capacity to resist and recover from downturns and that trade-offs exist when adopting new or alternative land-use strategies.
- Philip Riris
- , Fabio Silva
- & Xiaolin Ren
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Where I Work |
I strive to make the Great Barrier Reef more resilient to heat stress
Matthew Nitschke grows coral symbionts in a slowly warming tank to prepare reef life for climate change.
- James Mitchell Crow
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Research Highlight |
This giant extinct salmon had tusks like a warthog
Scientists initially thought that the outsized teeth were fangs, giving rise to the ‘sabre-toothed salmon’ nickname.
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News & Views |
Marsupial genomes reveal how a skin membrane for gliding evolved
A parachute-like skin membrane, the patagium, evolved independently in several marsupial species. Genomic analysis suggests that this trait came about through different changes to the regulation of the same gene.
- Darío G. Lupiáñez
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Article
| Open AccessEmx2 underlies the development and evolution of marsupial gliding membranes
Patagia—the mammalian gliding membrane—repeatedly originated through a process of convergent genomic evolution, whereby the regulation of Emx2 was altered by distinct cis-regulatory elements in independently evolved species.
- Jorge A. Moreno
- , Olga Dudchenko
- & Ricardo Mallarino
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Article
| Open AccessPhylogenomics and the rise of the angiosperms
Phylogenomic analysis of 7,923 angiosperm species using a standardized set of 353 nuclear genes produced an angiosperm tree of life dated with 200 fossil calibrations, providing key insights into evolutionary relationships and diversification.
- Alexandre R. Zuntini
- , Tom Carruthers
- & William J. Baker
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Article
| Open AccessNetwork of large pedigrees reveals social practices of Avar communities
Analysis of ancient DNA from 424 individuals in the Avar period, from the sixth to the ninth century AD, reveals population movement from the steppe and the prolonged existence of a steppe nomadic descent system centred around patrilineality and female exogamy in central Europe.
- Guido Alberto Gnecchi-Ruscone
- , Zsófia Rácz
- & Zuzana Hofmanová
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Nature Video |
AI and robotics demystify the workings of a fly's wing
New research unveils the workings of one of the most complex bio-mechanical structures in the natural world
- Dan Fox
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Spotlight |
I dive for fish in the longest freshwater lake in the world
Biologist Carolin Sommer-Trembo describes her fascination for fish and why she enjoys doing science in Switzerland.
- Nikki Forrester
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News & Views |
Surprise hybrid origins of a butterfly species
Mating between different species has often been considered an evolutionary dead end, but a study in longwing butterflies suggests that such hybridization could underlie the origins of a new species.
- Megan E. Frayer
- & Jenn M. Coughlan
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News & Views |
An exploration of how the insect-wing hinge functions
The hinge enables insects to control their wing movements, but how it works is hard to study. Multidisciplinary research, using imaging and machine-learning methods, now sheds light on the mechanism that underlies its operation.
- Tanvi Deora
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Article
| Open AccessHybrid speciation driven by multilocus introgression of ecological traits
Genomic studies of Heliconius butterflies provide evidence that Heliconius elevatus is a hybrid species, and that its speciation was driven by introgression of traits from Heliconius melpomene into the other parent, an ancestor of Heliconius pardalinus.
- Neil Rosser
- , Fernando Seixas
- & Kanchon K. Dasmahapatra
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Article |
Neural crest origin of sympathetic neurons at the dawn of vertebrates
Challenging the belief that sympathetic ganglia are an innovation of jawed vertebrates, a study reports the presence of sympathetic neurons in an extant jawless vertebrate, the sea lamprey Petromyzon marinus.
- Brittany M. Edens
- , Jan Stundl
- & Marianne E. Bronner
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Article
| Open AccessEmergence of fractal geometries in the evolution of a metabolic enzyme
Citrate synthase from the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus is shown to self-assemble into Sierpiński triangles, a finding that opens up the possibility that other naturally occurring molecular-scale fractals exist.
- Franziska L. Sendker
- , Yat Kei Lo
- & Georg K. A. Hochberg
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Article |
Cell-type-resolved mosaicism reveals clonal dynamics of the human forebrain
Using mosaic variant barcode analysis, clonal dynamics of specific cell types are deconvolved in the human forebrain.
- Changuk Chung
- , Xiaoxu Yang
- & Joseph G. Gleeson
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Book Review |
The comings and goings of ants: how are social skills shaped in an ever-changing world?
A colourful study of the natural history of ants that takes in dry deserts and lush forests aims to show that sociality is shaped by, and changes with, the environment.
- Seirian Sumner
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Book Review |
Survival of the nicest: have we got evolution the wrong way round?
How humans, animals and even single-celled organisms cooperate to survive suggests there’s more to life than just competition, argues a cheering study of evolutionary biology.
- Jonathan R. Goodman
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News Explainer |
Bird flu outbreak in US cows: why scientists are concerned
A virus that has killed hundreds of millions of birds has now infected cattle in six US states, but the threat to humans is currently low.
- Max Kozlov
- & Smriti Mallapaty
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Article
| Open AccessThe variation and evolution of complete human centromeres
A comparison of two complete sets of human centromeres reveals that the centromeres show at least a 4.1-fold increase in single-nucleotide variation compared with their unique flanks, and up to 3-fold variation in size, resulting from an accelerated mutation rate.
- Glennis A. Logsdon
- , Allison N. Rozanski
- & Evan E. Eichler
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Article |
Fossils document evolutionary changes of jaw joint to mammalian middle ear
A new morganucodontan-like species from the Jurassic in China shows evidence of a loss of load-bearing function in the articular–quadrate jaw joint, which probably had a role in the evolution of the mammalian middle ear.
- Fangyuan Mao
- , Chi Zhang
- & Jin Meng
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Article |
Jurassic shuotheriids show earliest dental diversification of mammaliaforms
A newly described fossil mammaliaform from the Jurassic period of China shows that the shuotheriids are allied to the docodonts, and provides details on the processes of tooth evolution in early mammals.
- Fangyuan Mao
- , Zhiyu Li
- & Jin Meng
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Article
| Open AccessComplexity of avian evolution revealed by family-level genomes
Using intergenic regions and coalescent methods to analyse the genomes of 363 bird species, the authors present a well-supported tree confirming that Neoaves experienced rapid radiation at or near the Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary.
- Josefin Stiller
- , Shaohong Feng
- & Guojie Zhang
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News |
Scientists made a six-legged mouse embryo — here’s why
A rodent with two extra limbs instead of genitals shows the crucial role of a gene pathway in determining the fate of a primordial structure.
- Sara Reardon
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Article
| Open AccessRevealing uncertainty in the status of biodiversity change
This study presents an approach to deal with spatial, temporal and phylogenetic non-independence in large-scale analyses of biodiversity change, improving trend estimation and inference across scales.
- T. F. Johnson
- , A. P. Beckerman
- & R. P. Freckleton
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Obituary |
Estella Bergere Leopold (1927–2024), passionate environmentalist who traced changing ecosystems
The trailblazing palaeobotanist investigated how climate change affected Earth in the past — and firmly believed science should be used in its defence now.
- Cathy Whitlock
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Nature Careers Podcast |
‘Hopeless, burnt out, sad’: how political change is impacting female researchers in Latin America
Already feeling invisible and unappreciated, the election of far-right administrations in Argentina and elsewhere are unsettling for women in science.
- Julie Gould
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News & Views |
Birds convey complex signals in simple songs
The quality of a bird’s song during courtship can influence whether a male is selected as a mate. An innovative approach using machine learning offers a way to analyse the characteristics of birdsong.
- Kate T. Snyder
- & Nicole Creanza
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Article |
The hidden fitness of the male zebra finch courtship song
A detailed analysis of male song structure in zebra finches shows how females use particular features of songs as indicators of male quality in species that learn only one song.
- Danyal Alam
- , Fayha Zia
- & Todd F. Roberts
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Article |
Adaptive foraging behaviours in the Horn of Africa during Toba supereruption
The archaeological site Shinfa-Metema 1 in the lowlands of northwest Ethiopia provides early evidence of intensive riverine-based foraging aided by the likely adoption of the bow and arrow.
- John Kappelman
- , Lawrence C. Todd
- & Sierra Yanny
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News & Views |
The 50th anniversary of a key paper on how bird flight evolved
For a century, scientists pondered whether bird flight evolved by animals gliding down from trees or by creatures running and flapping from the ground up. A landmark 1974 paper reset the debate to focus on the evolution of the flight stroke instead.
- Kevin Padian
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News & Views |
Whales make waves in the quest to discover why menopause evolved
Why do several species of whale experience menopause, and why does the phenomenon occur at all? Analysing whale data might help to answer these questions and shed light on why menopause evolved in humans.
- Rebecca Sear
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Article
| Open AccessThe evolution of menopause in toothed whales
A comparative analysis tests competing evolutionary hypotheses in toothed whales in which menopause has evolved many times as females extended their overall lifespan but not their reproductive lifespan, increasing their opportunity for intergenerational help without increasing intergenerational reproductive competition.
- Samuel Ellis
- , Daniel W. Franks
- & Darren P. Croft
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Nature Video |
Bumblebees show behaviour previously thought to be unique to humans
The bees learn how to complete a two-step puzzle too complex to solve independently, by watching other bees.
- Dan Fox
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News & Views |
Ancient skin sported intricately patterned scales
The discovery of 285-million-year-old fossils of intricately patterned animal scales indicates that evolutionary tinkering of armoured skin started at the dawn of life on dry land as aquatic vertebrates adapted for terrestrial survival.
- Maksim V. Plikus
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News & Views |
Bees and chimpanzees learn from others what they cannot learn alone
It has been argued that human culture rests on a unique ability to learn from others more than we could possibly learn alone in a lifetime. Two studies show that we share this ability with bumblebees and chimpanzees.
- Alex Thornton
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News |
Will these reprogrammed elephant cells ever make a mammoth?
The de-extinction company Colossal is the first to convert elephant cells to an embryonic state, but using them to make mammoths won’t be easy, say researchers.
- Ewen Callaway
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Article
| Open AccessSelfish conflict underlies RNA-mediated parent-of-origin effects
In Caenorhabditis tropicalis, selective expression of genetic alleles from one parent but not the other can arise from maternally inherited small transcripts acting via the PIWI-interacting RNA host defence pathway.
- Pinelopi Pliota
- , Hana Marvanova
- & Alejandro Burga
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News |
Oldest known animal sex chromosome evolved in octopuses 380 million years ago
Result reveals for the first time how some cephalopods determine sex.
- Carissa Wong
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