Volume 8 Issue 4, April 2024

The current and fervent uptick in the natural sciences of seeking to engage with Indigenous partners signals a change in attitudes towards Indigenous knowledge systems and Peoples as well as their rights, but comes with a substantial amount of risk, burden and peril. To aid scientists in conducting research ‘in a good way’, we offer key insights and guidance that are rooted in our own scientific training and communities of practice.

A large-scale coordinated experiment shows low seagrass resilience to tropicalization-induced herbivory beyond the tropics.

A meta-analysis of research on megaherbivore effects on ecosystems shows that large wild mammals influence heterogeneity in plant, soil and animal community responses.

Within-species adaptation of locomotor capacity in deer mice and defensive structures in stickleback fish is associated with changes in Hox gene regulation.

A cross-validation approach with acoustic and bird datasets from four regions shows that acoustic indices produce inconsistent and non-generalizable estimates of biodiversity.

Climate warming is triggering a steady increase in the mean thermal optimum of plant communities. We show that this increase reflects the dieback of cold-adapted species rather than the arrival of warmer-adapted species, with negative effects on local diversity and mutually cancelling effects on community heterogeneity.

We evaluate the drivers of intensification traps — the combined loss of biodiversity and crop production that results from too-intensive agriculture. Our results reveal the conditions under which these lose–lose situations emerge and highlight the strong ramifications of disregarding biodiversity in agricultural management.

Using over 200 chromosomal genomes to reconstruct 250 million years of evolutionary history, we define the 32 linkage groups (Merian elements) that were present in the ancestor of Lepidoptera. We chart the dynamics of chromosome fusion and fission that accompanied the global diversification of Lepidoptera.

The Red List of Ecosystems is a headline indicator in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. This Progress illustrates how the Red List of Ecosystems can be used by Parties to the Framework to contribute to its implementation and monitoring.

Cryptic lineages of morphologically similar but genetically distinct coral taxa occur in many reef systems. This Perspective discusses the relevance of this genetic diversity to studies of coral responses to climate change and to reef conservation and restoration.

Unpalatable plants can deter herbivory on palatable plants grown in the same vicinity, but managing unwanted herbivory by planting unpalatable plants is not time- or cost-effective. This paper shows that artificial odour, designed to mimic the informative volatile compounds of unpalatable plants, can deter herbivory on the target plants, offering a potentially useful management strategy

A new Lagerstätte from Montagne Noire, southern France, preserves a rare example of an Early Ordovician polar ecosystem.

Conducting a simulated turtlegrass herbivory experiment across 650 experimental plots and 13 seagrass meadows, the authors show that the negative effects of herbivory increase with latitude, driven by low levels of light insolation at high latitudes.

A meta-analysis of papers that relate reef fish abundance, biomass or species richness to proportion of living hard coral cover finds correlations that are predominantly positive but consistently weak.

Genome analysis of modern and historical elephant seals reveals impacts of a severe bottleneck on the genomes and fitness of individual seals, and the implications for recovery.

Analysing >14,000 pairs of plots over 10 years, the authors show that forest understorey plant communities increase their average temperature affiliations by 0.1 °C each decade. This increase was caused by the extinction of cold-adapted species, but with no visible effect on community heterogeneity.

A meta-analysis synthesizes the range of effects of megafauna on ecosystems, finding that megafauna significantly increase ecosystem heterogeneity and impact a wide range of ecosystem properties by altering soil nutrient availability, promoting open vegetation structure and reducing the abundance of smaller animals.

Analysing biogeographic patterns in soil viromes based on 1,824 soil metagenomes from sites around the world, the authors show that viral diversity rarely corresponds to overall microbial diversity, with soil texture and moisture being closely associated with viral diversity.

The authors use a simulation framework to assess how the dynamics of species’ diversification changed with ecological niche shifts under historical climate conditions. Modelling scenarios with niche conservatism resulted in higher rates of net diversification, recapitulating empirical biodiversity patterns.

Analysing changes in observations of birds, butterflies and plants in Great Britain over more than 50 years, the authors show that climate change and land conversion have led to increases in richness, biotic homogenization and warmer-adapted communities over both the long and short terms.

Conventional agricultural intensification can lead to ‘traps’ where production actually declines because of biodiversity loss. By integrating case study archetypes, literature review and simulations, the authors show what systems are at risk of traps and how these risks can be limited.

Analysis of 1,673 sequenced Saccharomyces cerevisiae isolates identifies 3,852 sequence blocks introgressed from Saccharomyces paradoxus, most of which are recent and clade-specific. By contrast, divergent Chinese strains of S. cerevisiae show little evidence of introgression but do share ancient polymorphisms with S. paradoxus due to incomplete lineage sorting.

Analysis of 210 lepidopteran chromosome-level genomes reveals stability of the 32 ancestral chromosomes and extensive reorganization, including fusion and fission events, in eight lineages over 250 million years of evolution.

Forest ecotypes of deer mice have longer tails than prairie ecotypes. This study shows that this difference is adaptive and involves changes in six genomic regions, one of which is an allele-specific reduction in Hoxd13 expression that leads to tail elongation.

Behavioural innovation provides a key adaptive advantage to wild populations, but it is unclear which experimental assay is the best predictor for innovation. The authors administered a battery of cognitive tests to 15 passerine species to show that performance in problem-solving tasks is most closely associated with innovations in the wild.

Ancient DNA from Soqotra, an island off the coast of Yemen, evidences a population history differing from other areas of the Arabian Peninsula and suggests there has not been complete population replacement throughout the region between the Pleistocene and Holocene.

A surprisingly rare, yet iconic taxon is Susannah Maidment’s choice.