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A combination of phylogenetic analysis and functional assays reveals surprising diversity of taste receptors in the ancestors of vertebrates and their complex evolutionary history.
Humans are considered to be altricial (strongly underdeveloped at birth) with respect to other primates, but this observation is driven by the strong postnatal enlargement of human brains. We inferred that the developmental stage of human brains at birth does not differ substantially from that of other fossil hominins.
Humans have the highest evolutionary rate towards becoming more altricial across all placental mammals, but this results primarily from postnatal enlargement of brain size rather than neonatal changes.
Using a new phylogeny of Pseudosuchia (crocodile-line archosaurs), the authors use diversification analyses and information theory to show that the interplay of abiotic and biotic processes over hundreds of millions of years shaped evolutionary history and diversification dynamics in this clade.
The authors review methodological developments arising from the geosciences that are becoming increasingly key to interpreting the human evolutionary record.
An agent-based model suggests that bacteria use direct-contact systems for inhibiting competitors when the attacking strain is outnumbered, and long-range diffusion systems when the attacker is common. These predictions are supported by competition experiments with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which also show that strains can use both types of system in conjunction.
Species co-occurrences have long been used as proxies for interactions, but not all co-occurring species interact. A study now reveals that super-generalist consumers realize a higher portion of their potential interactions in bipartite networks.
Melanoma cell lines are used to identify the tumour characteristics that increase the chances of drug dependency, and mathematical modelling shows that this can be exploited for treatment using drug holidays with only measurements of total population size required for near optimality.
The canopies of European forests are being increasingly disturbed by drought and other drivers, many of which are associated with climate change. This Perspective discusses how such disturbances will lead to changed light conditions at the forest floor, with consequences for below-canopy biodiversity and functions.
Analysing ten bipartite networks of empirically sampled biotic interactions and the associated species’ spatial distribution, the authors model how network degree distributions can be predicted by accounting for the frequency of co-occurrences between species.
The authors used multiple lines of evidence including behavioural assays, quantitative genetics and transcriptomics to explore schooling behaviour in guppies. Both genomic and transcriptomic analyses indicated that genes involved in neuron migration and synaptic function played key roles in the evolution of schooling behaviour.
A spatial analysis of how transportation noise corresponds with ‘redlining’ categories of racial segregation in US cities is combined with a literature review of the effects of noise on urban wildlife.
Using deep learning to identify the assembly rules of microbial communities from different habitats, the authors develop a framework to quantify and predict the community-specific keystoneness of each species in any microbiome sample.
Nitrogen isotopic measurements from fossilized cycad leaves and ancestral state reconstructions suggest that N2-fixing symbiosis arose independently in the lineages leading to extant cycads at some point during or after the Jurassic.
Microbiomes show dynamic compositions and behaviours. The prediction of microbiome dynamics over time has proven difficult. Now, in an open system with relatively controlled environmental constraints, it is possible to correctly predict the future composition and dynamics of a resident microbial community.
Using high-resolution multi-omic data from biological wastewater treatment plants, the authors develop a method to forecast microbial community composition and function; the forecasting is accurate for 3 yr into the future.
The authors use a long-term evolve-and-resequence experiment in the flour beetle Tribolium castaneum to identify the genetic basis for variation in development time, finding that a deletion upstream of the enzyme Cyp18a1 is a main target of selection, and this allele accelerates development but trades off with fecundity.