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After generating a dataset on plumage colouration for over 4,500 bird species, the authors show that tropical species are more colourful than temperate species, confirming a long-held but difficult-to-prove belief.
Enabling mutations do not affect current protein function but affect future mutational possibilities. The authors explore the nature of enabling mutations in a bacterial toxin–antitoxin system.
Using 84 plant–hummingbird networks from across the Americas, the authors show that the balance between climate change-induced extinction, coextinction and colonization varies both with geography and network structure.
A new taxon of molgophid recumbirostran from the Carboniferous of Illinois, Nagini mazonense, suggests that the forelimb-first pattern of limb reduction that characterizes modern snakes also occurs early on in amniote evolution.
Analysing the transposition dynamics of synthetic and natural transposons that encode resistance to different antibiotics, the authors show that stronger antibiotic selection leads to a higher fraction of cells carrying the resistance on plasmids.
The authors use experiments and model simulations to show that among a community of eight grassland plant species, pairwise plant–soil feedbacks are more likely to be positive in high-precipitation conditions and negative in dry conditions.
Analysing a newly assembled genome of the gelada, an endemic Ethiopian monkey that lives in high altitudes, the authors identify a novel karyotype and genomic elements associated with high-altitude adaptation.
Analysis of wild orangutan calls demonstrates that different degrees of sociality across populations are associated with different ‘vocal personalities’.
The evolutionary history of amniote limb muscles remains unclear. Here the authors study the embryonic development of forelimb musculature in six species of amniotes and show that early splitting patterns of embryonic muscle masses are highly conserved across Amniota.
Studying four examples of the transition to co-sexuality in brown algae, the authors show extensive convergent changes in gene expression driven by selection, and greater similarity of co-sexual gene expression profiles to those of ancestral females than to those of ancestral males.
The innate immune system affects viral evolution. Here, the authors use experimental evolution to ask how different immune pathways impact viral genetic diversity and virulence using Drosophila melanogaster and its natural pathogen Drosophila C virus.
Species that hibernate generally have longer lifespans than expected based on their body size. The authors show epigenetic ageing patterns from a natural population of hibernating yellow-bellied marmots consistent with the hypothesis that ageing is suspended during hibernation.
Tadpoles with experimentally manipulated microbiomes have reduced activity of mitochondrial enzymes and altered metabolic rates, resulting in altered thermal sensitivity of locomotion and reduced thermal tolerance and survival.
Population size influences mutation supply but may also influence what types of mutations eventually become fixed. Here, Schenk et al. show that small and large experimentally evolving bacteria populations predictably fix different types of mutations, with greater antibiotic resistance emerging in large populations.
The authors use tree-ring width data across the extratropical Northern Hemisphere to show that earlier growing season onsets lead to enhanced tree radial growth in cold humid but not in dry areas.
Evidence of ostrich eggshell artefacts, long-distance transport of marine shells and heat treatment of stone tools in a marginal southern African environment 92–80 thousand years ago suggests that innovation among early human groups was sensitive to ecological variation.
Associations with mycorrhizal fungi can affect many aspects of plant ecology, including the structuring of plant communities at large spatial scales. Here, the authors use forest inventory plot data to show that tree species diversity is highest in plots with mixed presence of arbuscular and ectomycorrhizal fungi, while plots with dominance by either fungal type have lower diversity.
Genomic analysis of an Alpine whitefish radiation before and after human-driven lake eutrophication that led to the extinction of one species through hybridization shows that substantial parts of the genome of the extinct species persist within surviving species due to introgressive hybridization.
Constructing a fitness landscape from the fitness of Escherichia coli carrying single point mutants in VIM-2 β-lactamase across environments with different ampicillin concentrations and the antibiotic resistance of each variant, the authors show that the evolution of β-lactamases can be predicted based on the selection pressure in the environment.
Forests tend to be comprised of tree species that mostly associate with either arbuscular or ectomycorrhizal fungi. The authors show that positive feedbacks maintain this biomodal distribution of dominant mycorrhizal associations across US forest inventory plots.