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Nitrogen isotopic measurements from fossilized cycad leaves and ancestral state reconstructions suggest that N2-fixing symbiosis arose independently in the lineages leading to extant cycads at some point during or after the Jurassic.
Using high-resolution multi-omic data from biological wastewater treatment plants, the authors develop a method to forecast microbial community composition and function; the forecasting is accurate for 3 yr into the future.
The authors use a long-term evolve-and-resequence experiment in the flour beetle Tribolium castaneum to identify the genetic basis for variation in development time, finding that a deletion upstream of the enzyme Cyp18a1 is a main target of selection, and this allele accelerates development but trades off with fecundity.
Analysing the evolutionary history of two recent populations of a pathogenic fungus that infects wheat and ryegrasses, the authors show how recombination and selection on standing genetic variation contributed to adaptation to the new hosts.
Screening 100 million random genes, which lack homology to natural sequences, for their ability to rescue growth arrest of Escherichia coli cells caused by the toxin MazF, the authors find ~2,000 hits and demonstrate that one (RamF) confers resistance through interaction with chaperones and induction of toxin proteolysis.
The authors test whether a wide array of marine and terrestrial animal species occupy the full extent of their potential geographic range based on thermal tolerances. They find that many species are underfilling the warm part of their potential range, suggesting that biotic interactions can limit occupancy in climatically suitable areas adjacent to their ranges.
A synthesis of 443 studies across terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems reveals differences in the responses of non-native and native animal species to heatwaves, cold spells, storms, floods and droughts, and prompts discussion of how such extreme events may facilitate success of non-native species.
The authors investigate the genetic basis of inter-sexual mimicry in Ischnura elegans damselflies, where females are polymorphic and one female morph mimics males. By combining genomic, transcriptomic and phylogenetic evidence, they identify a causal locus and structural variants associated with the evolution of female polymorphism and male mimicry in this species.
A brain-cell atlas of a web-building spider and genomic comparisons between web-building and burrowing species identifies preserved ancestral neuron types and candidate neuronal genes that may be involved in the learning and memory pathways underlying web-building and hunting behaviours.
Using phylogenetic analysis of a hopanoid-producing gene in bacteria, the authors establish fossil 2-methylhopanes as lipid biomarkers for aerobic cyanobacteria and reveal the role of cyanobacteria in primary production before 750 million years ago.
A combination of phylogenomics, mouse gut experimental assays and ecological modelling shows how community structure controls the fitness costs and benefits of the type VI secretion system in the human gut symbiont Bacteroides fragilis.
Using a 50 year time series of photos of cuckoo finch eggs and those of its host, prinia, the authors document that cuckoo eggs evolve towards prinia eggs, but progressive evolution of prinia eggs away from cuckoo eggs results in no detectible increase in mimetic fidelity.
Two Early Upper Palaeolithic genomes of humans that lived 36,000–37,000 years ago in Crimea reveal migration and admixture dynamics against a backdrop of climate change.
Reconstructing river networks over the past 80 Ma reveals the role of Andean uplift in creating a dynamic habitat leading to increased fish species diversity in western Amazonia.
A comparative analysis of head-regeneration capacity across planarian species in a phylogenetic context reveals multiple Wnt-dependent transitions in head-regeneration ability and proposes Wnt functions in the reproductive system as possible evolutionary drivers.
Combining transcriptomics, mathematical modelling and in vivo gene editing, this study shows that Sfrp2 contributes to stripe formation and hair colour in the African striped mouse.
Catastrophic flooding caused by an extreme hurricane offered a rare natural experiment monitoring recolonization of host plants by a herbivorous predator, in which the authors found that spatial sorting is responsible for the rapid and persistent evolution of dispersal and feeding traits in the red-shouldered soapberry bug.
Using a bioenergetic model and manipulative field experiment along a natural stream temperature gradient, the authors identify a temperature-induced trophic cascade where the presence of fish increases algal biomass and reduces decomposition, but only under warming.
Small-bodied faunivory has been proposed as the ancestral condition of most major synapsid clades, but here using a time-calibrated metatree of 1,888 fossil synapsids, the authors show that while faunivory is commonly ancestral, small body size in radiation forerunners is a relatively late innovation, arising in the Late Triassic.
Landscapes of microbial community function inferred statistically from a broad range of datasets can predict community function on the basis on presence and absence data, without the need for abundance dynamics or interaction data.