Articles in 2023

Analysing plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the authors identify three times more coastal invertebrate taxa than pelagic taxa, along with evidence that coastal taxa are reproducing while rafting on plastic.

In microbial community assembly, species that establish earlier often have an advantage. Here, the authors explore these priority effects in the tomato plant-associated microbiome, showing that experimental evolution selecting for host colonization alters priority effects among competitors.

The iron/manganese superoxide dismutases constitute a family of metalloenzymes that function as scavengers of reactive oxygen species. Here the authors use phylogenetics, biochemistry and structural biology to show how differential metal preference for Fe and Mn has been modulated throughout iron/manganese superoxide dismutases evolution.

While a bioinformatic comparison of de novo genes and synthetic random sequence does not identify a difference in biophysical properties, in vitro expression shows higher solubility for the de novo proteins, suggesting better integration into the cellular system than random sequences.

Defining the niche of a microorganism is more difficult than doing so for a macroorganism. Here the authors define a microorganism’s niche based on the communities of other microorganisms it is found with; they apply this social niche breadth metric to reveal the ecological and genomic correlates of microbial specialism versus generalism.

Molecular phylogenetics, ancestral sequence reconstruction and biophysical protein characterization are used to investigate the interaction between the orange carotenoid protein and its unrelated regulator, the fluorescence recovery protein (FRP). This interaction evolved when a precursor of FRP was horizontally acquired by cyanobacteria.

An analysis of the eligibility rules, assessment criteria and potential gender bias in best researcher and best paper awards from broad-scope ecology and evolution journals and societies shows a lack of assessment transparency, few attempts to foster equitable access and minimal consideration of open science.

Replacing 86 essential genes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae with orthologues from species with different diverging times, the authors show that intermolecular epistasis plays a key role in their evolution and that conserved physiological functions are maintained by co-evolution of interacting components.

An unsupervised, annotation-free method is developed that can identify microbial functional groups on the basis of variation in microbiome data and environmental variables. Here, the authors demonstrate its application in several different datasets including the Tara oceans microbiome and animal gut microbiomes.

Consuming microplastics is known to harm marine wildlife in several ways, but effects on the microbiome are understudied. Here the authors demonstrate that two species of wild seabirds with larger amounts of microplastic in their guts had fewer commensal gut microbial species but more pathogens.

Leveraging independent gains and losses of eusociality, the authors identify complementary signatures of selection in sweat bee genomes, including two proteins that bind and transport juvenile hormone.

Genomic and demographic analyses of the ‘Southern Resident’ killer whales in the North Pacific find that strong inbreeding depression is inhibiting growth of this small and isolated population. The findings help to explain why this group of whales is still declining despite 50 years of conservation efforts.

Theoretical models of foraging efficiency suggest that lunge-filter-feeding marine vertebrates could be as small as 10 kg. However, here the authors show with bio-logged data from filter-feeding minke whales that in practice there are minimum body-size constraints on filter feeders, below which this becomes an unviable feeding strategy.

A meta-analysis of peer-review data from over 300,000 biological sciences manuscripts reveals worse review outcomes for authors from historically excluded groups, and limited data evaluating the effectiveness of interventions to address bias in peer review.

A Bayesian state-dependent evolutionary phylodynamic model (SDevo) quantifies the difference in division rates between cells at the periphery and interior of a tumour. In simulations and using clinical hepatocellular carcinoma data, the authors use SDevo to interrogate spatial patterns in tumour growth.

Focusing on the serial differentiation of the presacral column across 1,136 extant mammal species, the authors find evidence of high within-group variation and an evolutionary trend towards increasing complexity.

The authors incorporate mechanistic information about lizard physiological responses to heat into predictions of trait variation across time and space, finding that the range of functional traits is more constrained in locations where the local climate strongly selects for thermal performance.

The authors sequence genome-wide data from multiple human individuals in southern Spain and find long-lasting genetic continuity. Here, in contrast to regions elsewhere in Europe, a 23,000-year-old individual from Malalmuerzo carries genetic ancestry that connects earlier Aurignacian-associated individuals with western European hunter-gatherers long after the Last Glacial Maximum.

Analysing pesticide residues in pollen and nectar collected by three bee species along a land-use gradient, the authors show that extensive foragers like Apis mellifera have higher pesticide risk than species that forage at intermediate or limited ranges, irrespective of landscape context.

A qualitative and quantitative analysis of 186 biodiversity-related policies in Colombia is used to describe how biodiversity has been integrated into policy domains, which policy instruments are most prevalent and how the policy mix has changed over six decades.