Volume 1 Issue 8, August 2017

Cancer evolution is central to poor outcomes of cancer therapies, enabling tumour progression and the acquisition of drug resistance. Joint efforts of evolutionary biologists, oncologists and cancer researchers are necessary to understand the principles of cancer evolution and to derive therapeutic strategies that can control it.

Increasingly, the pathogens that pose the greatest threats to humans are those that evolve to escape prior immunity and pharmaceutical interventions. In response, we need to employ evolutionary thinking to manage infectious disease.

Evolutionary biologist who proposed the handicap principle.

Across land, air and water, larger animals are generally faster, but only up to a certain point. A new study provides a unifying explanation for why this might be so.

Feedbacks between biological and economic systems can lead to persistent poverty traps for the world’s rural poor. A combination of economic, ecological and epidemiological modelling helps unravel how these feedbacks and traps occur.

Genomes of multiple independently transitioned obligate symbionts reveal lineage-specific gene loss and unexpected gene retentions.

The remarkable diversity in sperm morphology and performance in zebra finches is generated by a supergene on a sex chromosome and maintained by a heterozygous advantage.

Our understanding of how species diversity is maintained depends on spatial scale. Here, the coexistence–area relationship is developed to understand scale dependence and increase community ecology’s contribution to biodiversity conservation.

Bisulfite sequencing is widely used to study genome-scale DNA methylation. In this Review, the authors discuss methodological and statistical considerations related to bisulfite sequencing that are particularly relevant when studying non-model organisms.

The evolution of complex adaptations poses conceptual challenges. Here, the authors discuss adaptive and non-adaptive scenarios in the evolution of complex adaptations and propose molecular mechanisms that provide access to new adaptive paths.

A new palaeobotanical method analyses molecular signatures of fossil leaf cuticles to reveal hitherto obscure phylogenetic relationships, for example between Nilssoniales and Bennettitales; Ginkgoales and Leptostrobales.

The Pliocene marine megafaunal extinctions caused functional diversity loss, which was not mitigated by newly evolved taxa in the Pleistocene. This paper points towards an abrupt loss of productive coastal habitats as a key extinction driver.

The mechanisms underlying changes in biodiversity and productivity across scales are poorly understood. Here, the authors show that negative density dependence among conspecifics explains changes in β-diversity of trees across western North America.

Maximum speed could scale with body mass, but the largest animals are not actually the fastest. A general scaling law explains this with a hump-shaped relationship due to a finite limit on acceleration time.

Predator–prey interactions in a Zambian national park reveal the interaction between types of risk: strong prey vigilance responses to locations with high long-term risk when short-term risk was high, but not when short-term risk was low.

The authors predict biodiversity loss under potential future agricultural change. Agricultural expansion threatens species richness and abundance worldwide (up to one-third in some areas), often with little overlap between protected areas and high-risk expansion areas.

A dataset of >1,000 arthropod species collected in >100 grasslands along productivity gradients to assess the reaction of individual species to productivity changes shows that arthropod conservation can be improved without reducing overall production.

Exposure of coral reef fishes to environmentally relevant levels of crude oil reveals widespread impairment of cognitive functions related to habitat settlement and antipredator behaviours, in addition to elevated mortality and reduced growth rates.

Feedback between biological and economic systems may lead to persistent poverty traps. Coupling dynamic population ecology and economic growth models reveals how to build for resilience in human health and subsistence.

Insights into genome reduction during endosymbiosis are gained by comparing genomes of related endosymbiotic and free-living Polynucleobacter strains.

Sperm morphology is remarkably variable yet its genetic architecture is poorly known. Now, sperm morphology variation in zebra finches is shown to be largely explained by an inversion polymorphism on the Z chromosome acting as a supergene.

It is unclear how variation in sperm traits is maintained in nature. Here, the authors show that an inversion on the Z chromosome of zebra finches affects sperm morphology and fertilization ability and suggest that overdominance maintains the inversion polymorphism.

It is unclear how sex differences affect macroevolutionary patterns. In live-bearing fishes, the environment influences female morphology, while male morphological variation is primarily associated with sexual selection.

Little is known about the evolution of neural induction mechanisms in chordates. Here, the authors show that the dorsal blastopore lip of the cephalochordate amphioxus is homologous to the vertebrate dorsal organizer and that it promotes neural induction through Nodal–Activin signal.

In rangeomorphs of the Ediacaran period, first appearing 571 million years ago, growth of branch internodes declined as their surface area decreased relative to volume, suggesting nutrient-dependent growth.

Plants can induce anti-herbivore defences through the synthesis of proteins that reduce feeding. Induction of these defences in tomato plants also reduces herbivore damage by promoting cannibalism among insect larvae.