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Nature Ecology & Evolution is celebrating two years of publishing outstanding work from across the entire breadth of ecological and evolutionary subjects. This has included both fundamental advances and work with immediate applied significance. Topics have ranged across species, evolutionary timescales, geographical scales and ecosystem types. In addition, the journal’s Perspectives, Reviews and Comments have fostered discussion between scientific disciplines and with the wider world.
A directly dated Homo sapiens phalanx from the Nefud desert reveals human presence in the Arabian Peninsula before 85,000 years ago. This represents the earliest date for H. sapiens outside Africa and the Levant.
Evidence from starch grains, theobromine residues and ancient DNA demonstrate cacao use in the upper Amazon circa 5,300 years ago. This is earlier than previous evidence for cacao domestication in Mesoamerica.
A new titanosaurian sauropod, Mansourasaurus, is the most complete terrestrial vertebrate from the post-Cenomanian Cretaceous of the African mainland. Phylogenetic analyses reveal the existence of a titanosaurian clade inhabiting both Africa and Europe at this time and a faunal connection between the two continents.
Five laws derived from fossil data describe the relationships between species extinction and longevity, species richness, origination rates, extinction rates and diversification. These laws are crucial to the study of evolution and ecology.
Years before they conquered the Internet, cats colonized our sofas. But they haven’t spent the last ten thousand years just snoozing. A new study reveals that tamed cats swept through Eurasia and Africa carried by early farmers, ancient mariners and even Vikings. The researchers analysed DNA from over 200 cat remains and found that farmers in the Near East were probably the first people to successfully tame wild cats 9,000 years ago, before a second wave of cat domestication a few thousand years later in ancient Egypt.
A high-resolution local palaeoclimatic archive is correlated to the early Holocene human behavioural record at the British Mesolithic site of Star Carr. Despite environmental stresses at this time, intensive human activity persisted over centuries, suggesting resilience to climate change.
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.
Targeted enrichment of >1,000 ultraconserved elements and divergence time analysis resolves relationships among 120 major acanthomorph lineages and provides a new timescale for acanthomorph radiation in the wake of the K–Pg boundary.
The teeth of Mesozoic marine reptiles are used to establish a dietary guild system for the species of the Jurassic Sub-Boreal Seaway over about 18 million years, revealing that niche partition and spatial distribution that varied following sea depth enabled species coexistence, as with marine faunas today.
Ancient DNA from victims of a sixteenth-century disease in Mexico suggests that Salmonella enterica Paratyphi C (enteric fever) was responsible for a devastating epidemic that closely followed European presence in the region.
Multi-proxy data from Wonderwerk Cave reveal that both C3 and C4 grasses and prolonged wetlands formed major components of Early Pleistocene hominin palaeoenvironments in southern Africa, with regional trends distinct from contemporary ones in eastern Africa.