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Plasmids are well known for transferring antibiotic resistance genes between bacteria. A study in the clinic shows that evolutionary dynamics within the gut microbiomes of hospitalized patients lead to rapid adaptive changes, balancing the level of resistance that plasmids provide against the fitness costs that they impose on bacteria.
A combination of analysis of plasmid diversity in the gut of hospitalized patients with experimental evolution shows that the evolution of plasmid-mediated antibiotic resistance involves a trade-off between antibiotic resistance levels and bacterial fitness.
In this Perspective, the authors demonstrate how concepts and models from landscape ecology and complex adaptive systems science can be used to explore the dynamics of mosquito-borne diseases in urban environments.
Analysis of a dataset of the morphology of more than 250,000 adult birds of 105 species over a 30 year period across North America reveals changes in body size and relative wing length over time and with relation to latitude, elevation and temperature variation.
Two Palaeolithic genomes from Britain provide the oldest currently available genetic data from the region and appear to map on to wider European patterns of genetic ancestry and associated archaeology. However, with sparse samples and wide temporal gaps between them, it might be premature to draw wider conclusions about the consistency of these patterns.
Social cues are known to be involved in the timing of animal migrations. In this Review, the authors outline a framework for understanding the roles of different cues across temporal scales, and how these match with ecosystem dynamics.
Multiple factors contribute to the independent evolution of the same adaptations in nature. This study quantifies parallel evolution among species of Timema stick insects and shows that the degree of parallelism is determined by shared ecology and genomic background.
The authors report genetic, archaeological and stable isotopic data from two late Palaeolithic individuals in Britain, from Gough's Cave and Kendrick's Cave. The individuals differ not only in their ancestry but also their diets, ecologies and mortuary practices, revealing diverse origins and lifeways among inhabitants of late Pleistocene Britain.
Analysis of genomes in a phylogenetic context reveals a 350-million-year-old homomorphic sex chromosome in molluscs, probably maintained by regulation of reversible sex-biased genes and sex chromosome turnover.
A global comparison of plant trait patterns calculated using citizen science observations versus those calculated using traditional scientific data reveals remarkable congruence between the two approaches.
Analysis of the DNA methylomes of two ecomorphs of Astatotilapia calliptera from a single lake, which diverged about 1,000 years ago plus a third riverine ecomorph, from which they likely separated about 10,000 years ago, shows epigenetic differences associated with altered transcriptional activity of ecologically relevant genes, despite low levels of genetic divergence.
Analysis of genomes, epigenomes and transcriptomes of developing sea urchins with divergent life histories shows how natural selection can reshape developmental gene regulatory networks.
Comparing global vegetation trait patterns derived from citizen science data versus those from scientific survey plots, the authors reveal high correlations between the two approaches and improvements over previously published trait maps.
The effects of the redistribution of flora and fauna by European empires are still visible in global biodiversity today and can be traced through the distribution of introduced species. Attempts to solve today’s biodiversity crisis necessitates grappling these colonial legacies head on.
The identification of 21 large inversion polymorphisms in populations of deer mice shows that they are widespread, important for patterns of recombination and likely to be involved in local adaptation.
Compiling data on floral introductions and European colonial history of regions worldwide, the authors find that compositional similarity of floras is higher than expected among regions once occupied by the same empire and similarity increases with the length of time the region was occupied by that empire.