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An analysis of distributions of over 99% of the world’s seed plant flora shows that species that originate from large and biodiverse regions are more successful at establishing naturalized populations outside of their native range. They are also more likely to be used by humans for economic purposes.
Genome sequences of all living kākāpō provide new approaches for evidence-based conservation management, including the identification of genomic regions that are associated with fitness traits, at a time of increased need for breeding programmes for species recovery.
This Perspective discusses common features of curable cancers to gain insights into the evolutionary and developmental determinants of drug resistance.
An analysis of the geographical range and climatic niche dynamics of Australian frogs highlights the role of an emerging chytrid fungal disease in reshaping the distributions of native species through novel host–pathogen interactions.
A defensive bacterial symbiont, spreading rapidly through populations of whitefly in nature, suppresses the proliferation, sporulation and transmission of a fungal pathogen in the whitefly. The pathogen is shown to be an important driving force for rapid shifts of the symbiont in the natural niche.
Wildlife are affected by human movement and static human infrastructure. In this Perspective, the authors propose a ‘dynamic human footprint’ that incorporates metrics accounting for time-varying human activities.
A study of over 18,000 effect sizes from more than 350 published studies in ecology finds clear evidence of selective reporting and exaggeration of effect sizes.
An ancient genomics study of Holocene human individuals in Brazil provides hard-won data that illuminate the early history of population settlement in South America
Using a mechanistic model based on neutral theory, we examined the effects of the ‘Carboniferous rainforest collapse’ on early tetrapod diversity. Our findings highlight the power of mechanistic models for decoding the fossil record and underscore the criticality of adjusting for sampling biases.
Analysis of an ocean basin-scale dataset revealed the existence of clear biogeographic provinces (deep and shallow abyssal zones) delimited by the carbonate compensation depth in Pacific Ocean seabed communities. Species diversity is maintained or increases with depth owing to phylum-level taxonomic replacements.
This Perspective discusses four questions of evolutionary biology that bridge macro and microevolution perspectives and proposes future research avenues to link evolutionary mechanisms and processes.
International trade poses a risk to many species, especially those threatened with extinction. A new assessment tool based on the IUCN Red List may help to improve transparency, oversight and regulation of the international trade in wildlife.
An analysis of millions of wildlife photographs has revealed that survival and colonization probabilities of mammals in protected areas are associated with people and what they do both inside and outside these areas.
Sex differences in physiology and longevity are widely observed. A study that manipulates heterochromatin content in Drosophila Y chromosomes shows no association between the length of the Y chromosome and longevity, thus challenging the hypothesis that Y chromosome-derived heterochromatin causes Y chromosome-bearing animals to live shorter lives.
An analysis of Y chromosomes from 29 primate species shows lineage-specific evolutionary strata as well as changes in the 3D structure, rearrangements and positive selection that have shaped the primate Y chromosome over the past 80 million years.
A study from Belize demonstrates how to set targets for coastal ecosystem conservation and restoration, and to quantify the resulting suite of benefits for achieving climate change mitigation and adaptation goals under the Paris Agreement.
Across taxa, increased temperature has been reported to generally reduce individual body size and change the body size structure of wild communities. Our research reveals that the effects of climate warming on the body size structure of stream fishes are also dependent on the intensity of other human pressures.
A quasi-experimental impact evaluation quantifies reduced forest loss, avoided social cost of emissions and potential carbon-offset revenue associated with India’s designation of protected areas as tiger-conservation reserves with enhanced protection.
A new genetic study provides strong support for the view that our species evolved from exchanges between several ancestral populations in different African regions.
