Evolutionary ecology articles within Nature

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study presents an approach to deal with spatial, temporal and phylogenetic non-independence in large-scale analyses of biodiversity change, improving trend estimation and inference across scales.

    • T. F. Johnson
    • , A. P. Beckerman
    •  & R. P. Freckleton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The prevalence of annual plants worldwide rises in response to hot-dry summers, year-to-year variations, and disturbances, potentially impacting the future of ecosystem services provided by perennials.

    • Tyler Poppenwimer
    • , Itay Mayrose
    •  & Niv DeMalach

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nearly 90% of global variation in species richness of birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles is shown to be explained by the joint effects of climate and the geographic structure (area and isolation) of climate.

    • Marco Túlio P. Coelho
    • , Elisa Barreto
    •  & Catherine H. Graham

  • Article |

    A numerical analysis of mutualistic interactions between species shows that indirect effects from species they do not interact with directly are the biggest source of variation and cause the largest decreases to species fitness.

    • Leandro G. Cosmo
    • , Ana Paula A. Assis
    •  & Paulo R. Guimarães Jr

  • Article |

    The high global temperatures of the Eocene and subsequent habitat reconfigurations might have been critical for the rise and retention of the highly productive, high-turnover fish faunas that characterize modern coral reef ecosystems.

    • Alexandre C. Siqueira
    • , Helen F. Yan
    •  & David R. Bellwood

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Analysis of two-million-year-old ancient environmental DNA from the Kap København Formation in North Greenland shows there was an open boreal forest with diverse plant and animal species, of which several taxa have not previously been detected at the site, representing an ecosystem that has no present-day analogue.

    • Kurt H. Kjær
    • , Mikkel Winther Pedersen
    •  & Eske Willerslev

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ant pupae secrete a fluid, derived from the moulting fluid, that elicits parental care behaviour, provides nutrients for larvae and must be removed for pupal survival.

    • Orli Snir
    • , Hanan Alwaseem
    •  & Daniel J. C. Kronauer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The diversity hotspots hypothesis attributes the overall increase in global diversity during the Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras to the development of diversity hotspots under prolonged conditions of Earth system stability and maximum continental fragmentation.

    • Pedro Cermeño
    • , Carmen García-Comas
    •  & Sergio M. Vallina

  • Article |

    Analyses of the genomes of cichlid species reveal that the combination of ecological opportunity, sexual selection and exceptional genomic potential is the key to understanding explosive adaptive radiation in cichlids.

    • Matthew D. McGee
    • , Samuel R. Borstein
    •  & Ole Seehausen

  • Article |

    Protected areas would need to expand to 33.8% of the total land surface to adequately represent environmental conditions across the habitats of amphibians, birds and terrestrial mammals, far exceeding the current 17% target.

    • Jeffrey O. Hanson
    • , Jonathan R. Rhodes
    •  & Richard A. Fuller

  • Letter |

    After the Cretaceous/Palaeogene mass extinction event, nannoplankton communities exhibited volatility for 1.8 million years before a more stable community emerged, coinciding with restoration of the carbon cycle and a fully functioning biological pump between the surface and deep sea.

    • Sarah A. Alvarez
    • , Samantha J. Gibbs
    •  & Andy Ridgwell

  • Letter |

    Mollisonia plenovenatrix, a small predatory arthropod from the Burgess Shale dated to about 508 million years ago, is morphologically close to horseshoe crabs, which suggests chelicerates arose as micropredators early during the Cambrian explosion.

    • Cédric Aria
    •  & Jean-Bernard Caron

  • Perspective |

    The recognition of adolescence as a distinctive period for biological embedding of culture, and mass education, are features of the globalization of cultures that are driven by transformations in labour, livelihood and lifestyle.

    • Carol M. Worthman
    •  & Kathy Trang

  • Letter |

    Analyses of a global dataset of plant root traits identify an ancestral conservative strategy based on thick roots and mycorrhizal symbiosis, and an evolutionarily more-recent opportunistic strategy of thin roots that efficiently use photosynthetic carbon for soil exploration.

    • Zeqing Ma
    • , Dali Guo
    •  & Lars O. Hedin

  • Letter |

    A dated phylogeny and spatial distribution data for Chinese angiosperms show that eastern China has tended to act as a refugium for older taxa whereas western China has acted as a centre for their evolutionary diversification.

    • Li-Min Lu
    • , Ling-Feng Mao
    •  & Zhi-Duan Chen

  • Letter |

    A study of more than 2,000 bird species shows that diversity in bill shape expands towards extreme morphologies early in avian evolution in a series of major jumps, before switching to a second phase in which bills repeatedly evolve similar shapes by subdividing increasingly tight regions of already occupied niche space.

    • Christopher R. Cooney
    • , Jen A. Bright
    •  & Gavin H. Thomas

  • Letter |

    Socially synchronized rhythms in shorebirds were assessed during biparental incubation under natural circumstances and were exceptionally diverse, often not following the 24-h day, whereby risk of predation, not starvation, determined some of the variation in incubation rhythms.

    • Martin Bulla
    • , Mihai Valcu
    •  & Bart Kempenaers

  • Letter |

    A species-wide study shows that the Hawaiian crow Corvus hawaiiensis is a highly proficient tool user, creating opportunities for comparative studies with tool-using New Caledonian crows and other corvids.

    • Christian Rutz
    • , Barbara C. Klump
    •  & Bryce M. Masuda

  • Letter |

    In wild Kalahari meerkats (Suricata suricatta), subordinates of both sexes respond to experimentally induced increases in the growth of same-sex rivals by raising their own growth rate and food intake.

    • Elise Huchard
    • , Sinead English
    •  & Tim Clutton-Brock

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    Whole-genome sequencing of the seagrass Zostera, representing the first marine angiosperm genome to be fully sequenced, provides insight into the evolutionary changes associated with a transition to a marine environment in this angiosperm lineage.

    • Jeanine L. Olsen
    • , Pierre Rouzé
    •  & Yves Van de Peer

  • Article |

    The authors found that the key elements of plant form and function, analysed at global scale, are largely concentrated into a two-dimensional plane indexed by the size of whole plants and organs on the one hand, and the construction costs for photosynthetic leaf area, on the other.

    • Sandra Díaz
    • , Jens Kattge
    •  & Lucas D. Gorné

  • Letter |

    By quantifying the colouration of all approximately 6,000 species of passerine birds, certain life-history traits such as large body size and tropical distribution are found to increase ornamentation in both male and female birds, whereas cooperative breeding increases it in females only, and sexual selection diminishes it in females more than it increases it in males.

    • James Dale
    • , Cody J. Dey
    •  & Mihai Valcu

  • Article |

    Description of a well-preserved 125-million-year-old fossil of a triconodont mammal from Spain, which extends the record of mammalian soft-tissue preservation back into the Mesozoic era.

    • Thomas Martin
    • , Jesús Marugán-Lobón
    •  & Angela D. Buscalioni

  • Letter |

    This large comparative phylogenetic study across angiosperms shows that species that are herbaceous or have small conduits evolved these traits before colonizing environments with freezing conditions, whereas deciduous species changed their climate niche before becoming deciduous.

    • Amy E. Zanne
    • , David C. Tank
    •  & Jeremy M. Beaulieu

  • Letter |

    Wild Soay sheep rams with large horns have more offspring, yet there is considerable genetic variation at RXFP2, a locus strongly implicated in horn size (with different alleles conferring either large or small horns); this study finds that although the larger horn allele leads to more offspring, the smaller horn allele leads to increased survival, meaning heterozygous rams (which develop medium-sized horns) have high reproductive success and survival, providing a rare example of heterozygote advantage.

    • Susan E. Johnston
    • , Jacob Gratten
    •  & Jon Slate

  • Letter |

    A numerical model of salt marsh evolution shows that competition between mineral sediment deposition and organic matter accumulation determines the net impact of climate change on carbon accumulation in intertidal wetlands.

    • Matthew L. Kirwan
    •  & Simon M. Mudd

  • Letter |

    Analyses of strontium elemental and isotopic ratios in fossil teeth show that Australopithecus africanus—the presumed ancestor of early Homo and Paranthropus robustus—had a much more varied diet than Homo and Paranthropus; this sheds light on the diet and home ranges of fossil hominins.

    • Vincent Balter
    • , José Braga
    •  & J. Francis Thackeray

  • Letter |

    Delay in the hibernation emergence date of female Columbian ground squirrels in Canada over 20 years is related to climatic conditions other than increasing temperature, and as years of later emergence are associated with decreased individual fitness, plastic responses to climate change may be associated with declines in population viability.

    • Jeffrey E. Lane
    • , Loeske E. B. Kruuk
    •  & F. Stephen Dobson

  • Review Article |

    There is evidence that human influence may be forcing the global ecosystem towards a rapid, irreversible, planetary-scale shift into a state unknown in human experience.

    • Anthony D. Barnosky
    • , Elizabeth A. Hadly
    •  & Adam B. Smith

  • Letter |

    Three-dimensional reconstruction and modelling of limb joint mobility in the early tetrapod Ichthyostega is used to provide insights into an important step in vertebrate evolution—the transition from swimming to walking.

    • Stephanie E. Pierce
    • , Jennifer A. Clack
    •  & John R. Hutchinson

  • News Feature |

    Shape-shifting coyotes have evolved to take advantage of a landscape transformed by people. Scientists are now discovering just how wily the creatures are.

    • Sharon Levy

  • Review Article |

    Pathogenic fungi are increasingly contributing to the global emerging disease burden, threatening biodiversity and imposing increasing costs on ecosystem health, hence steps must be taken to tighten biosecurity worldwide to reduce the rate of fungal disease emergence.

    • Matthew C. Fisher
    • , Daniel. A. Henk
    •  & Sarah J. Gurr

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A reference genome sequence for threespine sticklebacks, and re-sequencing of 20 additional world-wide populations, reveals loci used repeatedly during vertebrate evolution; multiple chromosome inversions contribute to marine-freshwater divergence, and regulatory variants predominate over coding variants in this classic example of adaptive evolution in natural environments.

    • Felicity C. Jones
    • , Manfred G. Grabherr
    •  & David M. Kingsley

  • Letter |

    A theoretical model shows how sexual selection, on its own, can maintain biodiversity, provided that two realistic assumptions are met: that carrying capacity varies spatially, and that females searching for mates incur costs in doing so.

    • Leithen K. M’Gonigle
    • , Rupert Mazzucco
    •  & Ulf Dieckmann

  • Letter |

    A quantitative mixing model coupled with new isotopic carbon data from Mongolia, northwest Canada and Namibia reveals that Neoproterozoic era carbonate isotopic anomalies can be accounted for by a primary perturbation to the surface carbon cycle, making other explanations unlikely.

    • D. T. Johnston
    • , F. A. Macdonald
    •  & D. P. Schrag

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