Volume 2 Issue 4, April 2018

Ecological concepts and their acronyms can obstruct understanding of complexity by providing seemingly simple and certain descriptions of the natural world. Their use requires a balanced approach.

Evidence-based environmental management is being hindered by difficulties in locating, interpreting and synthesizing relevant information among vast scientific outputs. But software developments that allow enhanced collation and sharing of data will help.

A focus on the sharp edge of manufactured stone flakes reveals increasing control and efficiency over a 2-million-year dataset, and fosters replicable, standardized methods in lithic analysis. But scaling this method up to more complex stone tools may require further thought.

Genomes from hunter-gatherers dated to around 9,000 years ago reveal two early postglacial migrations into Scandinavia: an initial migration from the south and a second coastal migration north of the Scandinavian ice sheet.

The genome of the Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa), a parthenogenetic fish species, shows little genetic decay and a high degree of diversity. The genetic health of this asexual vertebrate is surprising given the accumulation of genomic damage that is expected to follow from asexual reproduction.

A duplicated gene in Drosophila melanogaster showcases an example of how sexual antagonism can be resolved.

Forests that are free of significant human-induced degradation should be accorded urgent conservation priority, it is argued, owing to evidence that they hold particular value for biodiversity, carbon sequestration and storage, water provision, and the maintenance of indigenous cultures and human health.

Laboratory experiments have shown evolutionary adaptation of phytoplankton to ocean acidification. Here, it is shown that this adaptation is masked in field conditions by pleiotropic effects.

A new Cretaceous arachnid fossil encased in Burmese amber sheds light on the evolution of spiders, as it preserves both primitive and derived features, suggestive of a basal Araneae position.

Two further specimens of Chimerachne yangi preserved in mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber shed light on the origin of spiders and the development of their spinning organs.

Stone tools are taken as signatures of hominin behavioural evolution, but we don’t know how exactly they conferred advantages in adaptation. Here a two-million-year dataset of stone flakes reassesses the evolutionary efficiency of this technology.

Secondary foundation species, such as epiphytes, form structurally complex habitats on primary foundation species. A meta-analysis shows that they significantly enhance the abundance and richness of inhabitants compared to primary foundation species alone.

Incorporating a grazing module into a global dynamic vegetation model allows the effects of large herbivores to be accounted for. This revised model is applied to conditions in the present and during the Last Glacial Maximum.

Analysis of Indonesia’s recent push to aggressively police illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing demonstrates a cost-effective way to improve fisheries recovery while limiting the reduction of legal catch (and the subsequent impact on food supply and profit) that could be applied to other regions.

The common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) is one of only three obligate blood-feeding mammals. By sequencing both its genome and gut metagenome, the authors provide a holistic view of the evolutionary adaptations that underlie this unusual diet.

Asexual vertebrates are extremely rare. Here, the authors sequence the genome of the Amazon molly, an asexual fish, and find few signs of genetic degeneration but clonal polymorphism and high heterozygosity, which might explain the success of this species.

Little is known about the role of aquatic depth gradients in promoting intraspecific differentiation. Here, the authors present an annotated genome assembly of the roundnose grenadier, a deep-sea fish in which re-sequencing data indicate genotypic segregation by depth.

Targeted enrichment of >1,000 ultraconserved elements and divergence time analysis resolves relationships among 120 major acanthomorph lineages and provides a new timescale for acanthomorph radiation in the wake of the K–Pg boundary.

Gene-based predictive models of trophic modes reveal the Asgard archaea are not phagocytotic, and suggest instead that the origin of phagocytosis required an ancestral archaeal input of cytoskeleton components, a suite of bacterial proteins centred around calcium signalling, and a certain degree of innovation.

The paralogues of a gene duplication specific to Drosophila melanogaster are shown to be essential for male and female gametogenesis, respectively, and to suppress fertility of the opposite sex.

Detecting selection events shared across human populations is challenging. Here, the authors identify overlapping and shared signatures of positive selection across human populations and connect shared targets of selection with potential biological mechanisms.

High-coverage exomes from 300 central African hunter-gatherers and farmers reveal recent population trends and gene flow, as well as insight into the effects these trends have had on their respective mutational loads.

Genome-wide data from ancient and modern individuals in Remote Oceania indicate population replacement but language continuity over the past 2,500 years. Papuan migrations led to almost complete genetic replacement of in situ East Asian-derived populations, but not replacement of Austronesian languages.

A Bayesian phylogeographic analysis of vocabulary from 306 Pama–Nyungan languages suggests that the language family rose to dominance across Australia in a process of rapid replacement following an origin in the Gulf Plains region during the mid-Holocene.