Evolutionary ecology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    In nature, soil, pollinators, and herbivores are the main drivers of plant adaptation and diversification. This study reveals that the interaction between soil and biotic pollination causes divergent evolution where pollinators play a key role, leading to strong divergence among plants in different soils.

    • Thomas Dorey
    •  & Florian P. Schiestl
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Selection is expected to act differently on aposematic and cryptic species. Analysis of wing images revealed that camouflaged moths exhibit higher wing pattern variability than aposematic moths, supporting the theory that camouflaged species display more variability, consistent with anti-predator strategy.

    • Ossi Nokelainen
    • , Sanni A. Silvasti
    •  & Johanna Mappes
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phosphate-solubilising microorganisms can contribute to reduce the use of P fertiliser. Here, the authors use two artificial selection methods, environmental perturbation and propagation, to build phosphate-solubilising communities that retain P-solubilising capacity in hydroponic systems.

    • Lena Faller
    • , Marcio F. A. Leite
    •  & Eiko E. Kuramae
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Heterostylous plants have floral morphs bearing female and male sex organs at reciprocal heights. Here the authors show that, across angiosperms, heterostyly is associated with tubed flowers pollinated by long-tongued insects, supporting the Darwinian hypothesis about precise pollen transfer between heterostylous morphs.

    • Violeta Simón-Porcar
    • , Marcial Escudero
    •  & Juan Arroyo
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Scleractinian corals are important in both shallow and deep ecosystems. Here, the authors use global spatial distribution data with a phylogenetic approach to examine directionality and speed of colonization during depth diversification, finding an offshore-onshore pattern of evolution and that depth dispersion is associated with phenotypic innovations.

    • Ana N. Campoy
    • , Marcelo M. Rivadeneira
    •  & Chris Venditti
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Energetic tradeoffs help determine where individual traits confer a competitive advantage. Here, the authors grow ten Eucalyptus species at four common gardens along a rainfall gradient and show that 50 traits mostly vary as predicted, and that species in their native ranges generally outperform others in height growth.

    • Duncan D. Smith
    • , Mark A. Adams
    •  & Thomas J. Givnish
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ecogeographic rules link spatial patterns in phenotype and environment, potentially reflecting adaptation. This study identifies nine genes associated with body mass variation in song sparrow populations, supporting Bergmann’s Rule and highlighting the role of natural selection in local adaptation.

    • Katherine Carbeck
    • , Peter Arcese
    •  & Jennifer Walsh
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Little is known about how the evolution of gut microbiota is impacted by their surrounding community. Here, the authors examine the evolutionary ecology of the human gut microbiome, modelling resource competition to show that local evolutionary history can impact the structure and function of host microbiota.

    • Benjamin H. Good
    •  & Layton B. Rosenfeld
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The contribution of adaptive radiation to species and phenotypic diversity within major clades is not clear. Here, the authors use morphological and phylogenetic data for 1226 species of frogs, finding that less than half of families resemble adaptive radiation, but that adaptive radiation contributed to 75% of diversity.

    • Gen Morinaga
    • , John J. Wiens
    •  & Daniel S. Moen
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Marine heatwaves and mass bleaching mortality events threaten the persistence of coral communities on tropical reefs. This study demonstrates that the thermal tolerance of coral communities in Palau has likely increased since the late 1980s. Such ecological resilience could reduce future bleaching impacts if global carbon emissions are cut down.

    • Liam Lachs
    • , Simon D. Donner
    •  & James R. Guest
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Birds can adapt to temperature gradients by changing body size (Bergmann’s rule) or bill size (Allen’s rule), but many groups don’t conform to these patterns. Here the authors show that most bird families show subtle and complementary changes in bill and body size, while also being constrained by feeding ecology.

    • Justin W. Baldwin
    • , Joan Garcia-Porta
    •  & Carlos A. Botero
  • Article
    | Open Access

    In cancer, interactions between treatment-sensitive and resistant cells can influence the effectiveness of therapies. Here, the authors use experimental and mathematical models to explore interactions between ER+ breast cancer cell lineages that are sensitive or resistant to CDK4/6 inhibition, revealing the role of facilitative growth.

    • Rena Emond
    • , Jason I. Griffiths
    •  & Andrea H. Bild
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Seasons may impose different selection pressures on organisms. Here, the authors propose that species may either maximize gains during the growth season or minimize losses during winter, and provide empirical support of such seasonal specialisation in two closely related butterfly species.

    • Loke von Schmalensee
    • , Pauline Caillault
    •  & Philipp Lehmann
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cooperative disease defense is part of group-level collective behavior. Here, the authors explore individual decisions, finding that garden ants increase grooming highly infectious individuals when they perceive a high pathogen load and suppress grooming after having been groomed by nestmates.

    • Barbara Casillas-Pérez
    • , Katarína Boďová
    •  & Sylvia Cremer
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bergmann’s and Allen’s rules are speculated to describe alternative strategies of thermal adaptation. Here, Frӧhlich et al. explore global variation across avian species to show that the way in which relative length of beaks and tarsi co-vary with ambient temperature depends on body mass and vice versa.

    • Arkadiusz Frӧhlich
    • , Dorota Kotowska
    •  & Matthew R. E. Symonds
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Predicting which species will become invasive is vital because the harm they cause cannot always be mitigated once populations establish. Street et al. show that traded and introduced species have distinctive life histories with high invasion potential, helping to identify future invasion risks.

    • Sally E. Street
    • , Jorge S. Gutiérrez
    •  & Isabella Capellini
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The genetic determinants of long-distance migration in birds are largely unknown. Sokolovskis et al. tracked genotyped hybrid willow warblers from a migratory divide in Sweden and find that autumn migration direction is consistent with a dominant inheritance pattern of two large effect loci that interact through epistasis.

    • Kristaps Sokolovskis
    • , Max Lundberg
    •  & Staffan Bensch
  • Article
    | Open Access

    How highly inbred populations generate novel genetic variations upon which natural selection can act is unclear. Here, the authors reveal the effect of transposable elements on the genome-wide heterozygosity landscape across a natural inbreeding gradient of Arabidopsis lyrata and reducing the probability of inbreeding depression.

    • Hanne De Kort
    • , Sylvain Legrand
    •  & James Buckley
  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this study, the microbiota of multiple body sites from 101 marine fish species from Southern California were sampled and analysed. The authors compared diversity measures while also establishing a method to estimate microbial biomass. Body site is shown to be the strongest driver of microbial diversity and patterns of phylosymbiosis are observed across the gill, skin and hindgut.

    • Jeremiah J. Minich
    • , Andreas Härer
    •  & Eric E. Allen
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soil viral communities remain understudied. Here, Liao et al. retrieve a catalogue of around sixty thousand vOTUs through a systematic viromic pipeline, and uncover the response of soil viral communities to anthropogenic land use changes.

    • Hu Liao
    • , Hu Li
    •  & Jian-Qiang Su
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ornaments are often less elaborate in females than males. Regardless of such sex differences, this meta-analysis across mutually-ornamented birds supports that ornamental traits could equally act as adaptive signals in males and females.

    • Sergio Nolazco
    • , Kaspar Delhey
    •  & Anne Peters
  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study uses a compilation of 58 population genetic studies of 47 phylogenetically divergent marine sedentary species over the Mediterranean basin to assess how genetic differentiation is predicted by different dispersal models. Multi-generation dispersal models reveal implicit links among siblings from a common ancestor (coalescent connectivity) that could improve spatial conservation planning.

    • Térence Legrand
    • , Anne Chenuil
    •  & Vincent Rossi
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The relationship between virulence and pathogen clearance is not well understood. Here, using bacterial infections in Drosophila melanogaster as a model system, the authors demonstrate an approach to disentangle the drivers of virulence and assess their relation to pathogen clearance rate.

    • Beatriz Acuña Hidalgo
    • , Luís M. Silva
    •  & Sophie A. O. Armitage
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The expansion timing and dynamics of open vegetation are disputed. Here, the authors present a model of paleovegetation changes in North America, showing open vegetation beginning around 23 million years ago and accelerating at 5 million years ago to become the most prominent natural vegetation type in North America today.

    • Tobias Andermann
    • , Caroline A. E. Strömberg
    •  & Daniele Silvestro
  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Why do males typically compete more intensely for mating opportunities than do females and how does this relate to sex differences in gamete size? A new study provides a formal evolutionary link between gamete size dimorphism and ‘Bateman gradients’, which describe how much individuals of each sex benefit from additional matings.

    • Jonathan M. Henshaw
    • , Adam G. Jones
    •  & Lukas Schärer
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many island plant species share a syndrome of characteristic phenotype and life history. Cerca et al. find the genomic basis of the plant island syndrome in one of Darwin’s giant daisies, while separating ancestral genomes in a chromosome-resolved polyploid assembly.

    • José Cerca
    • , Bent Petersen
    •  & Michael D. Martin
  • Article
    | Open Access

    In 1948, Bateman asserted that sexual selection is driven by the sex difference in gamete numbers. Lehtonen presents mathematical models broadly validating this controversial claim, while pointing out selection can be reversed under some conditions.

    • Jussi Lehtonen
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The effect of biotic interactions among reef corals on macroevolutionary patterns is unclear. Here, the authors study the rich coral fossil record, finding that reef coral diversity experienced potentially biotic interaction-driven evolutionary rate changes, and that Staghorn corals affected fossil diversity trajectories of other coral groups.

    • Alexandre C. Siqueira
    • , Wolfgang Kiessling
    •  & David R. Bellwood
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Traits that facilitate adaptive responses to novel environments may facilitate global radiations. Here, the authors describe diversification dynamics of crows, finding that their global radiation coincides with high rates of phenotypic and climatic niche evolution.

    • Joan Garcia-Porta
    • , Daniel Sol
    •  & Carlos A. Botero
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quaternary climatic oscillations had a large impact on European biogeography. Using genomic data, machine learning, and approximate Bayesian computation, this study outlines a general scenario in which Quaternary climatic oscillations shaped the evolution of European steppe biota in a congruent way, emphasizing the role of climate underlying patterns of genetic variance at the biome level.

    • Philipp Kirschner
    • , Manolo F. Perez
    •  & Peter Schönswetter
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The importance of learning for brood parasites is explored using cuckoo catfish. The catfish increase their parasitism success as they gain experience, mainly by improving their social coordination and timing of intrusions to cichlid host spawnings.

    • Holger Zimmermann
    • , Radim Blažek
    •  & Martin Reichard
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors show that captive populations of zebra finches, which have been kept in isolation for up to 100 generations, have diverged in song dialect. When individuals singing different dialects are mixed, mating is assortative for song dialect.

    • Daiping Wang
    • , Wolfgang Forstmeier
    •  & Bart Kempenaers
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rapid adaptation will facilitate species resilience under global climate change, but its effects on plasticity are less commonly investigated. This study shows that 20 generations of experimental adaptation in a marine copepod drives a rapid loss of plasticity that carries costs and might have impacts on future resilience to environmental change.

    • Reid S. Brennan
    • , James A. deMayo
    •  & Melissa H. Pespeni
  • Article
    | Open Access

    ‘Here, the authors use dummies of different Morpho butterfly species and sexes to investigate behaviour in patrolling butterflies, finding strong reproductive interference between species despite limited gene flow. They finally show that interference is mitigated by temporal partitioning, hence promoting the coexistence of sympatric Morpho species.’

    • Camille Le Roy
    • , Camille Roux
    •  & Violaine Llaurens
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Herbivore cooperation between insect pests can result in substantially greater damage to crops but also constitutes a good target for improved pest control. Liu et al. reveal how the brown plant-hopper and the rice striped stem-borer obtain mutual benefits when feeding on the same rice plant.

    • Qingsong Liu
    • , Xiaoyun Hu
    •  & Yunhe Li
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Insect acquisition of insecticide resistance represents a serious problem for agriculture. Here, authors reveal an insect symbiotic bacteria that degrades insecticide fenitrothion into a non-insecticidal but bactericidal compound, which is subsequently excreted by the insect host.

    • Yuya Sato
    • , Seonghan Jang
    •  & Yoshitomo Kikuchi
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The microbiomes associated with reef corals are complex and diverse. Here, the authors investigate fire coral clones naturally occurring in distinct habitats as a model system to disentangle the contribution of host genotype and environment on their microbiome, and predict genomic functions based on taxonomic profiles.

    • C. E. Dubé
    • , M. Ziegler
    •  & C. R. Voolstra
  • Article
    | Open Access

    There are many hypotheses for why the tropics are more biodiverse than higher latitudes. Phylogenomic analyses of 21 montane birds finds that tropical birds disperse less and have more genetically structured populations than their counterparts at higher latitudes, possibly due to a larger elevational climate gradient in the tropics

    • Gregory Thom
    • , Marcelo Gehara
    •  & Fábio Raposo do Amaral
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Anthropogenic change, such as urban heat islands, present challenges to biodiversity that can be overcome through phenotypic plasticity. Unlike their ancestral counterparts, urban lizards have fewer maladaptive gene expression responses to higher temperatures in a common garden experiment, suggesting the evolution of adaptive plasticity.

    • Shane C. Campbell-Staton
    • , Jonathan P. Velotta
    •  & Kristin M. Winchell