Analysis of North American landbirds compares their latitudinal, elevational and phenological responses to climate change. Species have tracked 33% of current temperature change, with phenological change accounting for the majority (64%) of this.

Socio-bioeconomies are essential to sustainable use and restoration of ecosystems and to justice and livelihoods for Indigenous and local people. This Perspective details the transformative changes that are needed across multifaceted existing barriers to enable socio-bioeconomies to be scaled out and up across the Amazon.

Geographic patterns in plant growth are probably influenced by soil abiotic and biotic conditions. Here, the authors assess the relationship of a composite soil health index to primary productivity and the underlying environmental predictors across major land-use types in Europe.

Analysis of gamete transcriptomes of sexual and asexual individuals of the brown alga Scytosiphon shows decay of female functions but no signature of relaxation of sexual antagonism in the evolution of asexual reproduction in this haploid sexual system.

Climate change is causing both greening and disturbances in high-latitude vegetation. Here the authors quantify patterns and trends of vegetation resilience in northwestern North America during 2000–2019 and link them to climate-driven land-cover changes and fire disturbance.

Human-driven landscape change may alter disease transmission among insect pollinators. Here, the authors show that species traits, flower-rich habitat and floral resource overlap with honeybees explain load and prevalence of viruses in wild bees and hoverflies co-occurring with honeybees.

A spatial taxonomic framework integrating genomic, morphological, ecological, life history and acoustic data is used to clarify the cryptic evolution of the taxonomically controversial mouse lemur complex, with a view to aiding future conservation of this and other similarly cryptic clades.

Analysis of northern elephant seal populations shows no evidence of inbreeding depression, probably because a recent extreme bottleneck purged much of the genetic load.

Large-scale, direct replications of ecological and evolutionary studies are difficult to conduct. This paper applies statistical methods to meta-analyses of ecological and evolutionary studies to estimate replicability.

Long-term warming of soils causes carbon loss, whereas chronic nitrogen enrichment causes carbon gain. Here, in an experiment that combined both factors, soil respiration was significantly higher than with either factor alone, without an associated decline in soil carbon.

National plans submitted ahead of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s COP16 in Columbia should prioritize action over empty ambition, and must integrate with other nations’ plans to constructively work towards global aims.

Theoretical biologist who ‘tamed’ mathematicians and tested the theory of evolution.

Cecilia Apaldetti’s palaeontological journey began with a turkey-sized dinosaur.

Climate change is causing an increase in extreme events, and this is a major concern for biodiversity.