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Comparing the brain anatomy of fossil hominins and extant primates, the authors determine that strong covariation between different areas of the brain in Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis evolved under higher evolutionary rates than in any other primate. Strong covariation is present in juvenile and adult H. sapiens, and in juvenile but not adult great apes.
Comparative analysis of human and macaque brain transcripts together with experiments in mice and in a cortical organoid model show the de novo emergence of a hominoid-specific protein-coding gene implicated in brain development. The evolution of RNA nuclear export signals enabled a new protein to become translated from an ancestral long-noncoding RNA locus.
Studying human-specific de novo genes originated from long non-coding RNA, the authors reveal molecular mechanisms that facilitate nuclear export of these young genes, and show experimental evidence for the role of one such gene in brain development.
The authors resample a plant–pollinator network that was initially characterized by a naturalist in the late nineteenth century in Finland. They find that only 7% of the original interactions persisted; generally, specialist pollinators disproportionally declined while generalist muscoid flies increased as the abundant pollinators.
Barcode lineage tracking of a competitive mutualism between Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii shows that selection favours yeast mutants that increase the yields of both species and strengthen the mutualism.
Cratonavis zhui, a bird from the Early Cretaceous of China, preserves a combination of non-avialan theropod skull features and a bird-like post-cranial skeleton.
An Indonesia-wide analysis identifies locations for potential mangrove restoration, ranked by scenarios of success likelihood according to biogeomorphology, current and past land use and land tenure, and estimates the restoration costs.
Data from three citizen science programmes on the occurrence, abundance, community structure and demography of birds across the UK show that protected areas are associated with improved state for most species and provide the most benefit to specialist, rare and declining species.
Zero-deforestation policies are reducing the loss of tropical rainforest to oil palm expansion, but spatial analyses indicate that this may cause unintended large-scale loss of biodiverse grasslands and dry forests unless protections are extended under certification agreements.
Bringing together multiple models and databases on nature’s contributions to people, the authors map these contributions globally and determine the critical areas where their magnitude is the highest and where they provide the highest potential human benefit.
Modelling reveals large swathes of land in tropical grassy and dry forest biomes that are climatically suitable for commercial plantations of oil palm and would comply with current zero-deforestation commitments, but where conversion to oil palm would, in many locations, cause loss of habitat and biodiversity.
The delayed UN Biodiversity COP15 follows closely on the heels of the Climate COP27. We look at what comparisons can valuably be made between the two summits.
Brachyury is an early mesoderm determinant and neural repressor in vertebrates. Comparative Brachyury target screens between a sea anemone and a sea urchin reveal an ancestral gene regulatory feedback loop involved in axial patterning, with conserved endodermal and neuronal, but not mesodermal, targets.
An actinopterygian fossil with unexpected anatomical features from 7 million years before the end-Devonian mass extinction suggests complex patterns of divergence and diversification around the Devonian/Carboniferous boundary for ray-finned fishes.
An analysis of 16 ecosystem services measured across sites in Europe shows that the supply of some services is predicted by plot-scale diversity, whereas others rely on intact habitats at the landscape scale, highlighting the importance of cross-scale management efforts to maintain ecosystem services.
Taphonomic and stable isotopic analysis of fish bone assemblages at the early Middle Pleistocene site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in Israel suggest that fish were cooked before consumption by hominins.