Volume 2 Issue 6, June 2018

Regulations designed to prevent global inequalities in the use of genetic resources apply to both commercial and non-commercial research. Conflating the two may have unintended consequences for collaboration between the Global North and biodiverse countries in the Global South, which may promote global injustice rather than mitigate it.

European governments are poised to ban neonicotinoid pesticides. Insights from six years as a senior government advisor have led me to conclude that agricultural reform is urgently needed, beyond cycles of pesticide licensing and withdrawal.

Evolutionary biologist who brought taxonomy to life.

Craniofacial modelling illustrates the lack of a biomechanical function for the hominin browridge and points to a potential role in social communication.

New dates for Spanish rock art open up the possibility that Neanderthals were artists, but further evidence is required before we can be certain.

New details of the social and sex lives of platypodine ambrosia beetles support a controversial link between parental monogamy and complex animal societies.

A checklist is presented that can be used by peer reviewers for more effective and efficient assessment of research manuscripts.

Microbial communities may often be composed of a wide diversity of taxa that perform similar functions. Here, the authors discuss the roles of function, functional redundancy and taxonomy in microbial community assembly and coexistence.

Individual differences in behaviour have been of great interest to behavioural geneticists in recent years. This Review examines the genomic tools available to study such differences, and the pitfalls to avoid.

Virtual manipulation of the archaic hominin specimen Kabwe 1’s browridge and biting simulations reveal a limited spatial and biomechanical role, opening up the possibility that the hominin supraorbital region was co-opted for social signalling after facial reduction and morphological changes in the frontal bone.

Using a spatially explicit mechanistic model, the authors show that the distribution of all terrestrial bird species across the world is driven by an optimal balance between energy acquisition and energy expenditure.

Most work on phenological mismatch has focused on temporal trends only. Here, the authors analyse trends in spatial and temporal mismatch between trees, caterpillars and birds in the UK, and find delayed phenology of all species with increasing latitude and little spatial variation in the magnitude of mismatch between caterpillars and birds.

A new method for measuring plant biodiversity based on spectral reflectance profiles captures variation in productivity comparable to that of taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity.

A high frequency and abundance of secondary metabolites associated with defence against >230 insect herbivore species suggests that generalist herbivores play a crucial role in shaping plant chemical diversity among Amazonian Protieae trees.

Invasion of novel environments by the perennial sunflower Helianthus tuberosus is facilitated by a plastic response of clonality to water availability, in line with the theory of genetic accommodation.

The fungal pathogen Hymenoscyphus fraxineus is killing European common ash trees. Here, the authors sequence the genome of H. fraxineus and show that European populations were founded by two divergent haploid individuals introduced from Asia.

Analysis of the life history and habitat of the ambrosia beetle Austroplatypus incompertus reveals strict monogamy and lifetime sperm storage as precursors to eusociality in this coleopteran species.

The acetyl-CoA pathway is the most ancient CO₂ fixation pathway in nature. Here, the authors show that metals selectively reduce CO₂ to the intermediates and end-products of the acetyl-CoA pathway, which is consistent with a prebiotic origin of this pathway.

Fitness landscapes describe the fitness of each genotype in a given environment. Here, the authors determine fitness landscapes of a yeast tRNA gene in four environments and show simple genotype-by-environment patterns that can easily be extrapolated to a new environment.

The ability to evolve resistance to the antibiotic ceftazidime is shown to vary across the Pseudomonas genus because the AmpR global transcriptional regulator potentiates evolution. Blocking this pathway can eliminate pathogenic strains before they evolve resistance.