Volume 1 Issue 4, April 2017

As peace consolidates in Colombia, can biodiversity survive development? We discuss challenges and opportunities for integrating forest biodiversity conservation into developing, war-dilapidated economies of post-conflict regions, paving the way for a green economy and climate resilient society.

Despite projections of a severe extinction event, a window of opportunity is now open for a mix of policies to avoid biodiversity collapse in the Cerrado hotspot.

The biodiversity of the Amazonian savannahs may be lost before it is known, unless scientists, conservationists and policymakers come together quickly to protect it.

As the line dividing human and wild habitats becomes thinner, we might be brewing the world's next big pandemic. Zoonoses are diseases that are naturally transmitted between animals and humans, and a new project aims to predict their occurrence.

Physical complementarity among trees in the use of vertical space increases productivity due to species-specific differences and plasticity in crown architecture.

Cost–benefit analysis suggests that the costs of de-extinction could imperil conservation of extant biodiversity in many cases. But there is also an ethical dimension to this debate that cannot be ignored.

A global analysis finds that tectonics, climate and mountains have jointly shaped the evolution of the world's terrestrial biodiversity into distinct biogeographical regions.

The evolution of organs requires changes in multiple tissues and is underpinned by complex molecular mechanisms. In this Review, the authors use the evolution of the placenta in vertebrates as a model to discuss the genetic processes involved in organ origins.

Ecological interactions typically vary across both space and time. Here, the authors outline a framework for incorporating multiple layers of complexity into ecological networks, and discuss their potential applications and future challenges.

A full understanding of speciation requires the integration of knowledge at the macro and micro evolutionary scales. Here, the authors discuss the developmental processes associated with variation within plant species and morphological innovations that promote speciation in plants.

Genomic data from over 100 populations of Timema stick insects are used to show the transition from an early phase of speciation involving localized genetic regions to later stages involving genome-wide differentiation.

Use of public funding for conservation of resurrected species would lead to fewer extant species that could be conserved, and consequent net biodiversity loss.

As populations evolve in a constant environment, the rate of adaptation decreases. Here, experimental E. coli populations are used to show that global epistasis reduces the effect size of beneficial mutations as evolution proceeds.

A field study of young trees shows that complementarity among tree crowns in canopy space is a mechanism linking biodiversity with ecosystem productivity, and as such may contribute to diversity-enhanced productivity in forests.

Restoring degraded food webs is a major conservation challenge and different approaches have been used. Here, modelling is used to show that restoring species together rather than sequentially leads to faster and less variable ecosystem recovery.

Tracking vegetation change in sub-Saharan Africa between 1992 and 2011, the authors reveal contrasting patterns in woody cover between drylands and humid zones, with decreases in both areas associated with high human population growth.

A long-term rhinoceros experiment demonstrates that unbalanced operational sex rations predict offspring sex and offspring sex ratios.

Terrestrial animals can be classified into distinct biogeographic regions, but less is known about what shapes these global boundaries. Here, the authors identify geological and climatic factors that determine the separation of realms through time.

The distinctive mammalian middle ear evolved by separation of the primary jaw joint from the mandible, requiring breakdown of Meckel’s cartilage. Here, genetic and pharmacological manipulation of mice and opossums is used to mimic transitional forms found in Mesozoic mammals and gain insights into middle ear evolution.

The evolutionary origin of the enzyme-catalysed Krebs cycle is unclear. Here, the authors identify non-enzymatic intermediates that replicate key elements of the cycle, suggesting that inorganic catalysts may have driven the origin of metabolic processes.

Marine species distributed along environmental gradients may experience large-scale heterogeneity in ocean physicochemical conditions. Here, the authors develop an index to account for this variability in studies of responses to ocean acidification.

Comparative transcriptomic analysis of mitochondria-related organelles across Metamonada, a group of anaerobic microbial parasites, identifies a potentially new class of organelle in which ATP and hydrogen production are decoupled.

Domesticated animals are great models to understand how diversity is generated. Here, the authors show that patterns of cranial shape variation in domestic pigeons mirror cranial variation in birds in general, suggesting that selection on conserved developmental mechanisms can generate tremendous diversity.

Environmental metabarcoding of soil samples suggests that protists comprise the greatest eukaryotic diversity in tropical rainforests, and are dominated by phyla that parasitise arthropods and other animals.

Isolates of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii adapted to a decade of chronic warming in outdoor mesocosms have higher competitive fitness than ambient controls, due to greater photosynthetic capacity and reduced susceptibility to photoinhibition

Analysis of multiple species of sponge-dwelling, snapping shrimp reveals pair-forming, communal and eusocial species, suggestive of evolution of eusociality via a ‘family-centred model’, paralleling insects and vertebrates.