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International trade poses a risk to many species, especially those threatened with extinction. A new assessment tool based on the IUCN Red List may help to improve transparency, oversight and regulation of the international trade in wildlife.
An analysis of millions of wildlife photographs has revealed that survival and colonization probabilities of mammals in protected areas are associated with people and what they do both inside and outside these areas.
Sex differences in physiology and longevity are widely observed. A study that manipulates heterochromatin content in Drosophila Y chromosomes shows no association between the length of the Y chromosome and longevity, thus challenging the hypothesis that Y chromosome-derived heterochromatin causes Y chromosome-bearing animals to live shorter lives.
An analysis of Y chromosomes from 29 primate species shows lineage-specific evolutionary strata as well as changes in the 3D structure, rearrangements and positive selection that have shaped the primate Y chromosome over the past 80 million years.
A study from Belize demonstrates how to set targets for coastal ecosystem conservation and restoration, and to quantify the resulting suite of benefits for achieving climate change mitigation and adaptation goals under the Paris Agreement.
Across taxa, increased temperature has been reported to generally reduce individual body size and change the body size structure of wild communities. Our research reveals that the effects of climate warming on the body size structure of stream fishes are also dependent on the intensity of other human pressures.
A quasi-experimental impact evaluation quantifies reduced forest loss, avoided social cost of emissions and potential carbon-offset revenue associated with India’s designation of protected areas as tiger-conservation reserves with enhanced protection.
A new genetic study provides strong support for the view that our species evolved from exchanges between several ancestral populations in different African regions.
Human genetic material can be inadvertently captured and enriched from environmental DNA samples. This has both legal and ethical implications for future research.
Gene–environment interactions have been found to shape ageing plasticity in the muscle tissue of migratory locusts through adaptive changes in lipid metabolic processes.
Machine-learning-based prediction of splicing in extinct hominin species highlights the effect of natural selection on splice-altering variants and reveals phenotypic differences with modern humans.
Efforts to document biodiversity have created large species datasets, but new research shows that field observations are biased towards particular regions, clades, traits and time periods, and do not accurately represent global biodiversity patterns. Although specimens are only infrequently preserved in natural history collections, they show relative congruence with expected biodiversity patterns and are vital for ecological research.
In cyanobacteria, the interaction between an orange carotenoid protein and its allosteric regulator evolved when a horizontal gene transfer event first brought the two proteins together. However, the surface compatibility between the proteins had already emerged. This finding implies that specific protein–protein interactions can evolve without the action of direct natural selection.
For a long time, the ecological niche concept was less popular for microbes than for other organisms. A new proxy for the ecological niche breadth of a microorganism, based on the variability of the communities with which it associates, enables investigation of the correlates of being a social generalist or social specialist.
Ensemble quotient optimization (EQO) uses patterns of variation in species abundance and ecosystem functions across microbial communities to identify microbial guilds in a systematic, objective manner. EQO is robust in recovering functional groups in soil, ocean and animal-gut microbial communities.
This Review discusses how sexual selection and sexual conflict shape genomes and transcriptomes and proposes an integrative approach combining behavioural ecology with developmental and genomic biology to answer open questions.
Unlike other North Pacific killer whales, Southern Resident killer whales have failed to thrive despite decades of conservation. Genomics combined with long-term observational records reveal inbreeding depression as a compelling explanation.
Using genome assemblies and comparative analyses, we identified evolutionary signatures of selection associated with repeated gains and losses of social behaviour in sweat bees. These signatures include changes in regulatory regions and young genes, as well as complementary patterns of positive and relaxed selection on proteins involved in juvenile hormone signalling.
This Review discusses challenges with detection and characterization of de novo genes and their mechanism of origin, and includes a curated list of de novo genes reported for humans.
