News & Views in 2020

Two analyses of developmental patterning functions of leg and wing genes in a crustacean provide complementary support for the incorporation of proximal leg components into the body wall during the crustacean–insect transition, but lead to duelling models for which portion(s) re-emerged from the body as wings.

Cranial variation in South African specimens of Paranthropus robustus illustrate temporal changes that suggest how the morphology of this hominin fossil species related to its palaeoenvironment and microevolutionary processes.

Global synchrony in tree growth shows a recent rapid rise tied to increasing temperature synchrony, which might alter global carbon sink dynamics.

The discovery of Minjinia turgenensis, a Palaeozoic stem-group jawed vertebrate with endochondral bone — a character long regarded as exclusive for bony fish and land vertebrates — changes our perception of bone formation evolution. It may also provide the first evidence for endochondral bone loss in cartilaginous fishes.

New evidence from over 4,600 studies calls into question the universal application of critical threshold values, or tipping points, along gradients of environmental stress. Identifying never-to-exceed environmental targets may prove elusive for environmental policy and management.

An in-depth analysis of how pathogen prevalence among both bees and flowers changes over the course of a growing season reveals the complex dynamics of how infection risk changes with species diversity, abundance and phenology.

The genome sequence of the algal species Prasinoderma coloniale reveals a novel phylum of green plants.

Tree ring records show that sensitivity of conifer trees to drought has generally increased during the last century, but so has post-drought recovery.

Freshwaters are subject to a multitude of threats, but complex interactions among stressors are context-dependant and less common than expected.

Homo sapiens remains, molecular data and a revised chronology for the Bulgarian site of Bacho Kiro document the earliest known presence of our species in Europe, representing an important jigsaw piece in the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition.

A global analysis of biodiversity time series across temperate zones shows contrasting fingerprints of contemporary climate warming on species assemblages over land and sea. A net increase in the number of species is evident in the warmest temperate oceans but no systematic biodiversity trend is detected in the terrestrial realm.

A comparative analysis of developmental transcriptomes across Metazoa provides a quantitative approach to test scenarios of life-cycle evolution and supports an ancestral adult form with later intercalation of larval stages.

A large-scale field experiment in a prey–enemy system demonstrates that spatial and temporal variation in population dynamics can both drive and respond to evolution. This is a crucial step in scaling up our understanding of how ecology and evolution are intertwined in mosaic landscapes.

A new model suggests that energetic costs of development are minimized within narrow ranges of temperature. Temperatures below an optimum raise costs by extending development times more than metabolic rates are depressed, whereas temperatures above the optimum cause development rates to stall even as metabolic rates rise.

Proteomic analysis of human dental calculus finds evidence that ruminant dairying was accompanied with eastward human migration into Central Mongolia about 5,000 years ago and horse milk consumption was a part of the economic transformation in Mongolia around 1200 bc.

Ancient Salmonella enterica genomes from humans beginning to adopt farming lifestyles reveal insight into how epidemiological pathways were affected by human cultural transitions.

Slow ecological cycles, resulting in the recurrent dispersal of cells between resource patches, can drive the evolution of collectivity.

Analysis of niche related morphological traits in nearly 10,000 species of birds shows concordance between phenotypic traits and trophic function. Avian trophic niche space can be described by only two to four dimensions, with the occurrence of similar adaptive morphologies primarily driven by convergent evolution.