Articles

Testing widely known biodiversity models on a dataset of >20,000 microbial community samples from a wide variety of ecosystems, the authors find that microbial abundance and diversity across scales is best predicted by a model of lognormal dynamics.

Survival of competing microbial species pairs predicts competition outcome between a greater number of species: species that coexist with each other in pairs will survive, species that are excluded by any of the surviving species will go extinct.

Mid-embryogenesis is highly conserved in animals. Using an approach that eliminated positive selection, a significant depletion was found in gene expression variation during nematode mid-embryogenesis, which shows the role of developmental constraints in determining this pattern.

Using updated phylogenies and the largest dataset to date, the authors find that primate brain size is better predicted by diet than any measure of sociality, suggesting a revision is needed to prevailing hypotheses explaining brain size evolution.

Environmental metabarcoding of soil samples suggests that protists comprise the greatest eukaryotic diversity in tropical rainforests, and are dominated by phyla that parasitise arthropods and other animals.

A mathematical model coupling malaria epidemiology and socioeconomic–demographic factors related to land-use change identifies the different kinds of malaria dynamics that arise early on with land-use change.

Isolates of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii adapted to a decade of chronic warming in outdoor mesocosms have higher competitive fitness than ambient controls, due to greater photosynthetic capacity and reduced susceptibility to photoinhibition

Analysis of multiple species of sponge-dwelling, snapping shrimp reveals pair-forming, communal and eusocial species, suggestive of evolution of eusociality via a ‘family-centred model’, paralleling insects and vertebrates.

The evolutionary origin of the enzyme-catalysed Krebs cycle is unclear. Here, the authors identify non-enzymatic intermediates that replicate key elements of the cycle, suggesting that inorganic catalysts may have driven the origin of metabolic processes.

Domesticated animals are great models to understand how diversity is generated. Here, the authors show that patterns of cranial shape variation in domestic pigeons mirror cranial variation in birds in general, suggesting that selection on conserved developmental mechanisms can generate tremendous diversity.

Comparative transcriptomic analysis of mitochondria-related organelles across Metamonada, a group of anaerobic microbial parasites, identifies a potentially new class of organelle in which ATP and hydrogen production are decoupled.

Tracking vegetation change in sub-Saharan Africa between 1992 and 2011, the authors reveal contrasting patterns in woody cover between drylands and humid zones, with decreases in both areas associated with high human population growth.

The distinctive mammalian middle ear evolved by separation of the primary jaw joint from the mandible, requiring breakdown of Meckel’s cartilage. Here, genetic and pharmacological manipulation of mice and opossums is used to mimic transitional forms found in Mesozoic mammals and gain insights into middle ear evolution.

Terrestrial animals can be classified into distinct biogeographic regions, but less is known about what shapes these global boundaries. Here, the authors identify geological and climatic factors that determine the separation of realms through time.

Use of public funding for conservation of resurrected species would lead to fewer extant species that could be conserved, and consequent net biodiversity loss.

Restoring degraded food webs is a major conservation challenge and different approaches have been used. Here, modelling is used to show that restoring species together rather than sequentially leads to faster and less variable ecosystem recovery.

As populations evolve in a constant environment, the rate of adaptation decreases. Here, experimental E. coli populations are used to show that global epistasis reduces the effect size of beneficial mutations as evolution proceeds.

A field study of young trees shows that complementarity among tree crowns in canopy space is a mechanism linking biodiversity with ecosystem productivity, and as such may contribute to diversity-enhanced productivity in forests.

Higher-order interactions (HOIs) are often assumed to be negligible in natural communities. Here, the authors present a framework for incorporating HOIs into diversity models and show that their inclusion can dramatically improve explanatory power.

Genomic data from over 100 populations of Timema stick insects are used to show the transition from an early phase of speciation involving localized genetic regions to later stages involving genome-wide differentiation.