Articles

Extreme wildfire events are on the increase, particularly in anthropogenic, suburban landscapes. Particular areas of concern are the subtropical Southern Hemisphere and European Mediterranean Basin.

Dramatic change to environments and climates across the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary is often cited as driving human subsistence change, but at Kiowa, New Guinea, environments and human lifeways remained consistent, stable isotope analysis reveals.

Female genital cutting is detrimental to health and its elimination is a priority. It is also important to understand why it persists. Here, a frequency-dependent evolutionary fitness advantage of FGC is shown using data from West African countries.

The Australian pitcher plant (Cephalotus sp.) genome reveals genetic changes associated with prey attraction, capture, digestion and nutrient absorption. Comparison with other carnivorous plants reveals constraints on evolution of plant carnivory

It is unclear when multicellular animals first invaded the microscopic ecological niche between sediment grains given the absence of such animals from the fossil record. Microscopic Loriciferans are described from the Cambrian period, showing an early occupation of this important niche.

Variation around colour pattern genes is highly modular in Heliconius butterflies. This modular architecture explains the diversity of colour patterns and provides a flexible mechanism for rapid morphological diversification.

Evolutionary explanations for ageing suggest late-onset deleterious mutations may be tolerated or even favoured by selection. Here, data from human genome-wide association studies are used to support these evolutionary predictions.

The evolution of antibiotic resistance is expected to incur a cost. Here, the lack of an apparent cost during doxycycline resistance evolution is reconciled with evolutionary trade-off theory.

Secondary sexual traits influence reproductive success, but may also be sensitive to environmental change. Here, the authors show that selection on forehead patch size in male collared flycatchers switches from positive to negative depending on spring temperature at the breeding site.

Although marine protected areas are designed to conserve biodiversity, they typically do not account for the conservation status of species within them. Here, the authors identify hotspots of extinction risk among the world’s sharks and rays that require targeted conservation action.

The photosynthetic capacity of forest ecosystems is an important variable in the global carbon cycle. Here, it is shown that older, more diverse forests have less fluctuation between years in photosynthetic capacity.

Analysis of over 1,000 complete adaptive landscapes from 129 eukaryotic species suggests that landscape navigability contributed to the success of transcriptional regulation as a source of adaptation and innovation.

Changes in the alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) protein in Drosophila melanogaster are a classic example of molecular adaptation. Here, the authors show that changes in the ADH sequence along the D. melanogaster lineage did not affect function and fitness, which refutes the adaptive role.

Demographic buffering is thought to reduce the impact of environmental variation on fitness. Here, the authors find little evidence that plant life histories tend to be buffered, with certain clades more likely to be demographically labile.

Standard phylogenetic methods produce conflicting results for several parts of the tree of life. Here, a new phylogenomic method is presented, which resolves controversial relationships within the Otophysi freshwater fish and several other recalcitrant groups.

As predators grow, they may occupy different trophic positions by moving up the food chain. Here, the authors identify long-lasting ‘legacy’ effects of younger predator stages that may exceed the impact of adults on community structure.

Laryngeal echolocation occurs in two separate groups of bats, so it is not clear if this is an example of convergent evolution or if those bats that cannot echolocate previously lost the ability. Here, a study of cochlear development in bats and other mammals supports a single origin of echolocation.

By combining data on fossil and extant Caribbean bats, the authors confirm predictions that island biodiversity across this archipelago should reach an equilibrium value through time, but that this has been disrupted by recent anthropogenic extinctions.

Vegetation patterns may be a useful indicator of environmental gradients. Here, the authors use remote-sensing and field surveys to show that patch-size distribution in drylands is related to different ecosystem multifunctionality states.

One of the main drivers of human-induced biodiversity loss is exploitation of natural resources for trade. Here, the authors identify global ‘hotspots’ of threats to wildlife from international trade that directly link production of goods in one country with their consumption in another.