Volume 5 Issue 1, January 2021

As a result of identity prejudice, certain individuals are more vulnerable to conflict and violence when they are in the field. It is paramount that all fieldworkers be informed of the risks some colleagues may face, so that they can define best practice together: here we recommend strategies to minimize risk for all individuals conducting fieldwork.

Monoculture plantations have been promoted for the restoration of the world’s forested area, but these have not contained or reversed the loss of biodiversity. More innovative incentive policies should be implemented to shift the planet’s forest restoration policies from increasing the area of forests per se to improving their biodiversity.

Cranial variation in South African specimens of Paranthropus robustus illustrate temporal changes that suggest how the morphology of this hominin fossil species related to its palaeoenvironment and microevolutionary processes.

Outlining a conceptual framework of climate-driven fast, slow and abrupt ecological change that integrates palaeoecology, contemporary ecology and invasion biology, the authors argue that the focus of theory and practice needs to shift from managing states to managing rates of change.

A monospecific aggregation of multituberculate mammals from the Late Cretaceous of Montana suggests an early origin for multigenerational group living and burrowing behaviour among mammals.

An approximately 2-million-year-old male Paranthropus robustus cranium from Drimolen Main Quarry in South Africa refutes influential ideas of sexual dimorphism in this taxon and instead suggests local microevolution within robust australopiths.

Based on a tree-diversity experiment, the authors introduce and test an approach to quantify net biodiversity effects on stem biomass in young forests using airborne spectroscopic imaging.

Starting from the vibrational modes of water molecules, the authors derive five major spectral niches in aquatic ecosystems using a radiative transfer model. They then predict the global distributions of these spectral niches using remote sensing and validate the predictions with metagenomic data on the distribution patterns of cyanobacterial pigments.

An analysis of plant diversity and stoichiometric niches in herbaceous ecosystems across northern Eurasia reveals that phosphorus fertilization and increases in relative phosphorus availability associated with current measures to reduce nitrogen deposition may seriously threaten plant species of high conservation concern.

A meta-analysis of 126 published studies shows that exposure to artificial light at night induces strong responses for physiological measures, daily activity patterns and life history traits.

The authors introduce the term demographic competence to describe the ability of a host population to maintain endemic infections, and use models to explore the interaction between population regulation and host–pathogen life history traits.

Combining phylogenomics with analysis of gene duplication to reconstruct the steps during eukaryogenesis the authors show that the Asgard archaea-related host already had some eukaryote-like cellular complexity, which increased further upon mitochondrial acquisition.

Phylogenetic comparative methods applied to datasets of body size in five major vertebrate clades show that rates of speciation and morphological evolution are positively related at broad macroevolutionary scales but with heterogeneity in the strength and direction of these associations at finer scales.

The role of the metabotropic gamma-aminobutyric acid B receptor (GABA_BR) in neural differentiation is well known in vertebrates. Here, the authors show that GABA_BRs plays a role in neurogenesis and development in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis.

Human farmers have traded greater productivity for higher crop vulnerability outside specialized cultivation conditions. This study shows a similar trade-off in fungus-farming ants.

A model of sexual reproduction creates a theoretical framework for the evolution of indiscriminate sexual behaviour, showing that it is the optimal strategy under a wide range of conditions, and supporting the hypothesis that same-sex sexual behaviour can be maintained by selection for indiscriminate sexual behaviour.