Volume 2 Issue 3, March 2018

Allowing biogeographical data to evolve at varying rates on a globe, not a plane, reveals new insights into the origin and dispersal of dinosaurs. The method could also be applied to manifold organisms, from humans to influenza viruses.

A dataset that links geographical occurrences, phylogenies, fossils and climate reconstructions for more than 10,000 vertebrate species reveals accelerated rates of climate niche evolution in warm-blooded animals.

For natural ecosystems, the speed of climate change is what matters most. If stratospheric climate geoengineering is deployed but not sustained, its impacts on species and communities could be far worse than the damage averted.

Control of gene activity through transcriptional regulatory elements is a major driving force in human evolution. A new study measures nascent transcription directly and shows that sequence, activity and three-dimensional organization of transcriptional regulatory elements all contribute to the evolution of gene activity within primate CD4⁺ T cells.

Open data is increasing rapidly, but data sets may be scattered among many repositories. Here, the authors present an overview of the open data landscape in ecology and evolutionary biology, and highlight key points to consider when reusing data.

The concept of ecosystem multifunctionality has emerged from two distinct research fields. In this Perspective, the authors reconcile these views by redefining multifunctionality at two levels that will be relevant for both fundamental and applied researchers.

Organic preserved biomarkers in specimens of Beltanelliformis reveal that these enigmatic members of the Ediacara biota were benthic colonial cyanobacteria.

Although New Caledonian crows are known to create hooked foraging tools in the wild, here the authors show that this allows them to forage more efficiently compared with when they use non-hooked tools.

A new titanosaurian sauropod, Mansourasaurus, is the most complete terrestrial vertebrate from the post-Cenomanian Cretaceous of the African mainland. Phylogenetic analyses reveal the existence of a titanosaurian clade inhabiting both Africa and Europe at this time and a faunal connection between the two continents.

Here, a biogeographical model reconstructs ancestral locations of dinosaurs, revealing the spatial mechanisms underpinning their lengthy radiation process over 170 million years: initially rapid, movement slowed towards the time of their extinction.

Combining distribution and phylogenetic data from fossils and contemporary records of 11,465 species of terrestrial vertebrates, the authors show that climatic niche shifts are significantly faster in endotherms than ectotherms.

Network analyses of species co-occurrence show that highly connected species are likely to benefit more from threat management, and that this information can be used to predict whole-community responses to threat mitigation regimes.

Geoengineering is a potential strategy to offset the effects of climate change. Using climate velocities to predict the effects on biodiversity shows particular risk from the abrupt termination of geoengineering.

A continent-wide analysis of community assembly in European beech forests shows different emphasis on historical or environmental effects on species pools across different scales.

Genome-wide data from all plains zebra subspecies reveal a population genetic structure at odds with morphology-based subspecies delineation, modern and ancient variation, and a probable southern African origin of all extant populations.

Metagenomic and metaproteomic analysis of soil from a 17-year tropical forest fertilization experiment supports the hypothesis that microbial communities respond to nutrient deficiency by enhancing the extraction of phosphorus from recalcitrant substrates.

Long-term maintenance of genetic polymorphism by balancing selection is rare. Here, the authors show that a polymorphism that impacts the physiology of nitrogen fixation has been maintained for tens of millions of years of diversification in a thermophilic cyanobacterium.

Ancient DNA from victims of a sixteenth-century disease in Mexico suggests that Salmonella enterica Paratyphi C (enteric fever) was responsible for a devastating epidemic that closely followed European presence in the region.

A survey of black-grass occurrence and herbicide resistance on farms across the United Kingdom suggests that resistance drives weed density and that cyclical or combination herbicide application does not reduce resistance evolution.

It is unclear how evolutionary changes at enhancers affect the transcription of target genes. Measuring nascent transcription in CD4⁺ T cells in primates, the authors show that the effects of evolutionary changes in enhancers are buffered at the transcriptional level.

Hybridization is an important evolutionary process. Here, the authors study isolated populations of the hybrid Italian sparrow and identify several novel and fully functional hybrid genomic combinations that arose independently in different islands.

Eusociality evolved independently in Hymenoptera and in termites. Here, the authors sequence genomes of the German cockroach and a drywood termite and provide insights into the evolutionary signatures of termite eusociality.

The marbled crayfish is an emerging invasive species in freshwater habitats. Here, the authors sequence the genome of the marbled crayfish and show that evolution of this decapod crustacean involved genome duplication, triploidy and clonal expansion.