Volume 1 Issue 10, October 2017

Targets for human development are increasingly connected with targets for nature, however, existing scenarios do not explicitly address this relationship. Here, we outline a strategy to generate scenarios centred on our relationship with nature to inform decision-making at multiple scales.

We anticipate that conventional management approaches will be insufficient to protect coral reefs, even if global warming is limited to 1.5 °C. Emerging technologies are needed to stem the decline of these natural assets.

Trace fossils from the Ediacaran–Cambrian transition of Brazil point to the existence of bioengineering meiofaunal animals prior to the ‘Cambrian Explosion’.

A new theoretical study warns against common misinterpretations of classical ideas on the limits to species diversity.

Female cuckoos use predator-like calls to manipulate their hosts and reveal a new world of deception.

A focus on sea anemones throws the classic concept of germ layer homology on its head, as cnidarians are found to possess the gene expression programmes for three, rather than two, germ layers.

Nearly ten years after the field of primate archaeology was first proposed, the status of the field is reported on, including recent discoveries as well as future directions and challenges, marking the end of archaeology’s ‘anthropocentric era’.

The fertilization effect has the potential to limit the impacts of global warming, but the biosphere is likely to shift into a period in which this effect is saturated.

Bayesian phylogenetic methods are very popular among evolutionary biologists and ecologists. This Review summarizes the major features of Bayesian inference and discusses several practical aspects of Bayesian computation.

Trace fossils from the Ediacaran–Cambrian transition of Brazil are interpreted as the remains of burrows made by a nematoid-like organism moving through sediment: these organisms are interpreted as the oldest known fossil meiofaunal bilaterians.

A new species of worm from the early Cambrian period of China may represent the earliest evidence for host-specific infestation in bilaterians.

A large, lobe-finned fish from the Late Devonian of China disrupts previously accepted stem-tetrapod phylogeny and reveals parallel evolution within the lineage.

A Middle–Late Triassic tetrapod assemblage from South America reveals a series of faunal turnovers prior to the rise of dinosaurs in the region.

Global patterns of upper-ocean plankton phenology are described and found to vary strongly by latitude and productivity regime, with insolation having a globally overarching role.

Theory predicts that competing species should fill niche space, but empirical evidence is lacking. Here, the authors reconcile theory and data by showing that niche packing depends on whether regulating factors are substitutable or not.

Phrygana scrubland flowers display integrated, predictive patterns of scent emissions (volatile emissions) and colour (corolla reflectance spectra). This phenotypic integration is consistent with the sensory abilities and perceptual biases of bees.

Direct and cascading land-use effects alter biomass and species richness of taxa across trophic levels ranging from microorganisms to birds in a multi-taxon research initiative in Sumatra, Indonesia.

Female common cuckoos often make a hawk-like call after parasitizing a host’s clutch. Here, field experiments show that this call increases the chances of parasitic success by diverting host parents’ attention.

Ranges of species overlap predict chromosome inversion differences between closely related passerine birds, suggesting that inversions have the selective advantage of suppressing recombination when hybridization occurs.

The cnidarian endoderm has been considered homologous to the bilaterian endoderm and mesoderm. Here, a gut-like ectoderm is revealed in a sea anemone, corresponding to the bilaterian endoderm, supporting an alternative model of germ layer homology.

Brain and skull development are intimately related across tetrapods. Here, the authors show a close relationship between brain and skull roof across evolutionary transitions and ontogenetic stages of reptiles.

The genetic architecture underlying rapid phenotypic changes remains largely unknown. Here, the authors show that genes with an intermediate degree of pleiotropy have the highest rate of adaptive evolution in Arabidopsis thaliana.

New genes can arise by several mechanisms involving mutation. Here, the authors show that an adaptive phenotype is caused by the emergence of a new gene by domain fusion and protein relocalization in Pseudomonas.

Lyme disease, spread by ticks infected with the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, was first described in the 1970s, but its origins are obscure. Genomics of North American ticks points to an origin pre-dating the Last Glacial Maximum.

DNA methylation patterns are studied in five diverse human populations. The evolutionary stability of DNA methylation in humans is found to be much greater than that observed previously in plants.