Reviews & Analysis

Analysis of regional-scale pollen data from southeast Australia that span the entire Holocene epoch reveals that plant functional diversity has been highly variable in time and space. A functional perspective on palaeoecological data helps us to better understand the current climate–biodiversity crisis and to predict future changes.

Comparative analysis of human and macaque brain transcripts together with experiments in mice and in a cortical organoid model show the de novo emergence of a hominoid-specific protein-coding gene implicated in brain development. The evolution of RNA nuclear export signals enabled a new protein to become translated from an ancestral long-noncoding RNA locus.

Zero-deforestation policies are reducing the loss of tropical rainforest to oil palm expansion, but spatial analyses indicate that this may cause unintended large-scale loss of biodiverse grasslands and dry forests unless protections are extended under certification agreements.

An analysis of 16 ecosystem services measured across sites in Europe shows that the supply of some services is predicted by plot-scale diversity, whereas others rely on intact habitats at the landscape scale, highlighting the importance of cross-scale management efforts to maintain ecosystem services.

Ecological syntheses are often assumed to identify generalities in effects, but this concept is rarely defined. Here, the authors review current practice in ecological synthesis and propose pathways to achieving generality.

Measurements of individual birds of 105 species across North America over almost twenty years reveal intraspecific trends of smaller body sizes towards the equator and of decreasing body size as average temperatures increase.

Plasmids are well known for transferring antibiotic resistance genes between bacteria. A study in the clinic shows that evolutionary dynamics within the gut microbiomes of hospitalized patients lead to rapid adaptive changes, balancing the level of resistance that plasmids provide against the fitness costs that they impose on bacteria.

In this Perspective, the authors demonstrate how concepts and models from landscape ecology and complex adaptive systems science can be used to explore the dynamics of mosquito-borne diseases in urban environments.

Two Palaeolithic genomes from Britain provide the oldest currently available genetic data from the region and appear to map on to wider European patterns of genetic ancestry and associated archaeology. However, with sparse samples and wide temporal gaps between them, it might be premature to draw wider conclusions about the consistency of these patterns.

Social cues are known to be involved in the timing of animal migrations. In this Review, the authors outline a framework for understanding the roles of different cues across temporal scales, and how these match with ecosystem dynamics.

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.