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Microbial communities in the foliage of wild bromeliads exhibit remarkably stable functional community structure despite large variation in taxonomic composition, indicating that non-neutral processes drive changes in community composition.
Although inbreeding generally reduces genetic diversity, even after 10 generations of inbreeding 37.5% of the planarian worm Schmidtea mediterranea’s genome retains heterozygosity, and is maintained at low recombination rates in the wild.
Romer’s Gap describes the period with few known fossils when early tetrapods were becoming increasingly terrestrial. Here, five new species, three stem tetrapods and two stem amphibians, are described from a location in Scotland shedding light on the phylogeny and environment of this period.
In protostomes the mouth develops from the embryonic blastophore, whereas in deuterostomes it develops separately. A comparison between two related protostomal and deuterostomal brachiopod species shows the role of Wnt signalling and mesoderm formation in this fundamental dichotomy of bilaterian animal body plan.
Evolved native species with prior experience of invasives consistently perform better than naive invaders, supporting the emergence of increased biotic resistance as one consequence of evolution during invasions.
The form and function of an organism are often tightly linked, at least in eukaryotes. In contrast, here it is shown using phylogenetic comparative methods that shape and motility are unlinked across a bacterial taxon, allowing increased evolutionary flexibility.
Successive alleles competing along predictable adaptive trajectories largely governs the rate of evolution of proteins involved in antimalarial drug resistance, with implications for management of antimicrobial resistance in the real world.
Large-scale geographic heterogeneity in extinction and recovery across the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, as indicated by preserved insect-damage of fossil leaves in Patagonia and the Western Interior of North America.
As well as allowing horizontal gene transfer, the increased copy number of plasmids could accelerate evolution. Here, it is shown that clinically relevant antibiotic resistance evolves faster when the target gene is on a plasmid.
What are the molecular mechanisms underpinning local adaptation? Reciprocal transplant of mustard hill coral from a variable to a more stable habitat demonstrates that populations exhibit phenotypic signatures consistent with local adaptation.
Hymenopteran social insects require heterozygosity at the csd locus for female development. Here, it is shown how balancing selection overcomes founder effects to maintain this heterozygosity and allow the Asian honeybee to become invasive.