Volume 1 Issue 5, May 2017

Despite the obvious influence of space on interactions, constraints imposed by the built environment are seldom considered when examining collective behaviours of animals and humans. We propose an interdisciplinary path towards uncovering the impact of architecture on collective outcomes.

The EvoKE project promotes formal discussion about the state of evolutionary education, outreach and policy in Europe. We talked to the organizing team (Xana Sá-Pinto, Héloïse Dufour, Inga Ubben, Tania Jenkins and Kristin Jenkins), about the first international EvoKE conference and future projects.

DNA sequencing is faster and cheaper than ever before but quantity does not necessarily mean quality. Towards a comprehensive understanding of the microbial biosphere, we need more reference genomes from single-celled eukaryotes (protists) across the full breadth of eukaryotic diversity.

Primates, especially humans, have large brains and this is thought to reflect our level of cognitive complexity or ‘intelligence’. Could this all be down to what we eat?

Morphology and gene expression in mid-embryogenesis are highly conserved across species of the same phylum. In nematodes, developmental constraints, rather than natural selection, explain how this pattern was established during evolution.

A tribute to Ilkka Hanski. Empirical data modelling shows that molecular variation at a candidate gene within populations has consequences for metapopulation size and persistence.

Three new bivalve genomes are resources for comparative genomics over broad timescales, providing a glimpse into the evolution of understudied marine animals and their adaptations to extreme environments.

The widespread occurrence of microscopic plastic particles in the ocean is of both and ecological and societal concern. Here, the authors review the biological impacts of interactions with microplastics in the marine environment.

The Nutrient Network is a globally distributed, coordinated grassland ecology experiment. Here, the first decade of this network is reviewed, including insights into ecosystem productivity, stability and the effects of herbivores and invasive species.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Moisture-driven environmental changes in the terminal Pleistocene contributed to megafaunal extinction across four continents, as indicated by stable isotope analysis. Stable grasslands in Africa help to explain maintenance of African megafaunal populations.

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.

Shoals of fish can more quickly solve a two-stage foraging task when individuals experienced in only one stage of each task are combined, demonstrating that pooling experiences can aid collective problem-solving in animal groups.

The evolutionary transition to cooperative breeding often involves high levels of monogamy and therefore indirect fitness benefits to helpers. Here, an alternative pathway is shown for cichlid fishes, involving direct fitness benefits derived from ecological factors such as group living.