Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
By analysing the abundance distributions of two key plant functional traits in global dryland communities, the authors identify a scaling relationship that quantifies how much trait diversity is required to maximize local ecosystem multifunctionality.
Gene flow between wild and farmed salmon is known to be widespread. Here, the authors show that introgression with domestic conspecifics has demographic consequences for wild Atlantic salmon by altering fitness-related life history traits.
Analysis of soil microbial communities from five cities on three continents finds that urbanization is linked to the convergence of archaeal and fungal communities, and loss of ectomycorrhizal fungal diversity and abundance.
Analysis of pathological elements on bones found in the Rancho La Brea tar pits reveals differences in the distribution of traumatic injuries in extinct sabre-tooth cats and dire wolves, which may reflect their different hunting behaviours.
Thanks to phylogenomics, reconstruction of the tree of life is now possible, yet different datasets and methods can yield contradictory relationships. Here, the authors quantify phylogenetic signals and show that contentious relationships can be supported by a tiny amount of data.
Genome sequences of a deep-sea vent and a shallow-water mussel species are compared. The former has expanded gene families for protein stabilization and removal of toxic substances and has a more complex immune system.
Chromosomal inversions can promote speciation. Here, the authors identify a young inversion that has captured ecologically important genetic variants in a hybrid zone of the plant Boechera stricta, promoting local adaptation and incipient speciation.
The genome of the scallop Patinopecten yessoensis is sequenced. This bivalve mollusc has a slow-evolving genome with features such as karyotype and Hox gene expression that may be close to that of the ancestral bilaterian.
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.