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Climate warming is driving a global redistribution of marine life as species shift their distribution to accommodate temperature changes. This is often analysed at the ocean surface, but a global analysis of temperature vertical migration provides a new perspective of the challenges and opportunities for marine life under future warming.
A group of early terrestrial vertebrates called varanopids, long regarded as mammal-line amniotes, is placed wholesale with reptiles in a new analysis of early amniote relationships. Meanwhile, a new species of varanopid from Canada provides the oldest evidence for extended parental care in terrestrial vertebrates.
Data from hundreds of natural communities show that rare species share more positive associations with each other than abundant species, which tend to be more segregated. These patterns are consistent with facilitation for rare species and competition for abundant ones, and hold true across taxa and biogeographic regions.
A phylogenomic re-analysis of sequence data strongly supports the emergence of eukaryotes from within the archaeal radiation and underlines the importance of using the most accurate approaches to reconstruct ancient divergences in the tree of life.
Comparative analyses of egg colouration and experimental data suggest that variation in egg colours between species is shaped by thermoregulatory needs.
A new modelling study highlights the importance of the search process in predator–prey interactions. When predators act on information related to prey location, the dynamics and stability of populations are more realistic.
A field test suggests that orally ingestible, spreadable vaccines to combat rabies will transmit widely among vampire bats in the wild, offering a more humane — and effective — alternative to the bat culling practiced throughout Latin America today.
Analysis of the world’s longest-running insect monitoring programme finds little evidence to support steep declines in biomass across the United Kingdom over the past 50 years. Moth biomass showed a net increase, but a gradual post-1982 decline was found in certain land uses and for some moth families.
Temperature differences between cities and the countryside have been regarded as useful surrogates for ecological responses to climate warming. However, research reveals mismatch between the phenological responses to spatial and temporal temperature gradients as well as complex interactions between urbanization and climate.
The recently evolved Y chromosome of Drosophila miranda shows a massive increase in gene number and signatures of antagonistic coevolution of the Y and X.
The pools of the geothermal Dallol Dome and surrounding area (in the Danakil Depression of Ethiopia) are an extreme example of complex brines: many lack evidence of life, but others are habitats for archaea and other extremophiles, prompting questions about the biophysical limits for microbial function.
The existence of trade-offs between traits under selection is a fundamental concept in evolutionary biology. Analysis of a densely sampled collection of adaptive mutations in yeast reveals that no single mutation can allow it to overcome detected trade-offs between key traits under selection.
Inferred gene expression differences between modern humans and our extinct archaic relatives suggest potential mechanistic bases for the evolution of hominin phenotypes.
A Free Ocean Carbon Enrichment experiment that manipulates seawater pH on a coral reef flat shows that the level of ocean acidification at which net dissolution of corals occurs may arrive much sooner than expected.
Measurement comparisons of ancient and modern carp push back the initial stages of aquaculture to 6000 bc, raising the possibility that rice paddy and fish co-culture systems are much older than previously thought. This research suggests carp were later independently domesticated twice, once in Europe and once in Asia.
A simulation of expansion, fragmentation and extirpation of species ranges over multiple glacial–interglacial cycles matches empirical biodiversity gradients and shows that high levels of biodiversity in the tropics can emerge from temporally variable but spatially patchy precipitation regimes, driven by allopatric speciation.
An assessment of how social spider populations respond to tropical cyclones sheds light on the role that extreme climatic events play in driving trait evolution contributing to local adaptation.