Reviews & Analysis

A global comparison of plant trait patterns calculated using citizen science observations versus those calculated using traditional scientific data reveals remarkable congruence between the two approaches.

The effects of the redistribution of flora and fauna by European empires are still visible in global biodiversity today and can be traced through the distribution of introduced species. Attempts to solve today’s biodiversity crisis necessitates grappling these colonial legacies head on.

An innovative isotopic labelling strategy shows that malaria mosquitoes in the West-African Sahel region survive in dormancy over the prolonged dry season. These results have implications for efforts to suppress malaria transmission in Africa.

This Perspective discusses potential effects of ocean warming on human nutrition provision from coral reef fish, ranging from altered species compositions of fish populations through to changed fish nutrient profiles resulting from altered metabolism, microbiome composition and trophic interactions.

Fitness landscapes were described almost a century ago as smooth surfaces with peaks and valleys that are difficult to navigate. Now, more realistic high-dimensional genotype–phenotype maps show that fitness maxima can be reached from almost any other phenotype while avoiding fitness valleys, which are very rare.

Harnessing big data and machine learning provides an assessment of the extinction risks of palm species worldwide, and illustrates an integrative conservation planning approach that incorporates evolutionary and ecological distinctiveness as well as human use.

Many viruses evolve quickly, leading to the coexistence of multiple strains within the same host and population. In this Review, the authors synthesize ecological and evolutionary approaches to studying the dynamics of multi-strain RNA virus infections and suggest opportunities for future work.

Coevolutionary warfare between bacteria and phage results in the diversification of anti-phage CRISPR arrays among the most successful bacterial competitors

Cnidarians and ctenophores have morphologically simpler nervous systems than those of bilaterians. Discovery and characterization of neuropeptides in a comb jelly and a sea anemone support a common origin of animal peptidergic neurons from digestive cells that could sense their environment.

A large dataset of aquatic biodiversity across multiple trophic levels from several wetlands in Brazil reveals that biodiversity–multifunctionality relationships break down with human pressures.

A modelling study suggests that the proposed energetic barrier between prokaryotes and eukaryotes may not be relevant to the complexity gap between the two domains. The energetic advantage of early mitochondria was probably small, and eukaryotes likely emerged without the help of an endosymbiont.

Transmissible cancers are governed by the same evolutionary processes as asexually reproducing, unicellular organisms. This Review discusses population genetics processes that determine the evolution of clonally transmissible cancers.

In drylands, there are unique mechanisms that influence multiple ecosystem processes. In this Perspective, the authors identify these dryland mechanisms and show that they could become more important in non-dryland regions or areas that will become drier in the future.

Longitudinal data spanning 43 years from a wild ungulate population reveal changes in social connectedness as individuals age, and suggest that these changes may in part be driven by changes in spatial behaviour.

Distribution data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey shows an increasing mismatch between species distribution and climate.

Mating in insects relies on pheromone production in just one of the sexes. A multidisciplinary study on the German cockroach identifies a gene that connects sex differentiation factors with the production of sexual pheromones in females only.

An experiment in secondary forests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo finds that calcium, an overlooked soil nutrient, is scarcer than phosphorus, and represents a potentially greater limitation on tropical forest growth.

Pharaoh ants live in highly organized colonies with elaborate social structure. An atlas of the brain cells of the different sexes and social groups of this ant reveals cell compositions tailored to the tasks performed by each group.

Longitudinal data on gut microbiomes of wild baboons show that microbial communities are highly individualized, despite shared diet and environment within primate social groups.

Whole-genome sequencing and comparative omics analyses highlight recent and parallel paths to adaptive evolution involving expansions in zinc-binding proteins in the genomes of diverse cold-adapted algae.