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Mushroom-forming fungi (Agaricomycetes) have key roles in ecosystems, such as plant biomass degraders and mycorrhizal mutualists. There are over 21,000 species of mushroom-forming fungi, and they have diverse fruiting-body morphologies. These range from simple and crust-like to highly structured and gilled, such as Mycena interrupta (depicted). Analysis of the global diversity of these fungi reveals intriguing patterns, including a Jurassic explosion of both species number and morphological diversity.
More, not less, international cooperation on conservation is in the interest of Brazilian farmers and wider Brazilian society, argues Bernardo B. N. Strassburg.
The inauguration of Jair Bolsonaro as Brazil’s new president has heralded a rapid acceleration of the erosion of environmental protection measures in the country. Brazil’s scientific community should rally to provide evidence that this is economically and socially unwise.
Macroscopic organisms from the late Ediacaran period have often been described as failed experiments in the history of life. We argue that the field of Ediacaran palaeobiology should dispense with unhelpful historical classification schemes and embrace phylogenetic systematics if we are to establish the evolutionary relevance of these fossils.
New antibiotics are urgently needed to combat rising rates of resistance against all existing classes of antimicrobials. We highlight key issues that complicate the prediction of resistance evolution in the real world and outline the ways in which these can be overcome.
Analysis of Phanerozoic vertebrate community richness suggests there have been constraints on tetrapod diversity dynamics over much of their evolutionary history.
A study of habitat loss associated with global trade reveals growing impacts on bird biodiversity and carbon sequestration. Overall increases in impacts are driven by changing consumption patterns and human population increases — and may be even greater if land-use intensification is considered.
Analysis of genomes, transcriptomes and proteomes from recently diverged rice species provides mechanistic insight into the process of de novo gene origination.
Comparative analysis of microexons across bilaterians identifies a new protein domain associated with the evolutionary origin of microexon inclusion in neural tissues.
Integrating fossil and geochemical records challenges the notion that the Ediacaran and Cambrian worlds were markedly distinct and places biotic and environmental change within a longer-term narrative.
Changes in species distribution and abundance can be captured using essential biodiversity variables (EBVs). Here, the authors synthesize the data and approaches needed for EBVs that allow monitoring of populations in both space and time.
Parasites’ biological rhythms coordinate their activities with both the external environment and the biotic environment of their host. Here, the authors discuss biological rhythms of both host and parasite from an ecological and evolutionary perspective.
A review of current knowledge of the mosquito and vertebrate host species for Zika virus, mechanisms of vector-borne transmission, and the possible scenarios of recent Zika virus emergence and evolution, including potential spillback from urban to zoonotic cycles.
Analysis of crow admixed genomes in a European hybrid zone shows that variation in hybrid colour phenotypes is explained by recessive epistasis between two pigmentation genes, which are targets of divergent selection.
Fossil lipid biomarkers previously thought to be diagnostic of sponges (and thus indicative of animal life) are found to be preserved in unicellular Rhizarian protists, questioning a pre-Cambrian origin of sponges.
Taphonomic experiments show that sedimentary flows constrained Ediacara biota preservation and that Ediacaran fossils do not necessarily reflect the external shape of the organism.
Diversity within terrestrial tetrapod communities has risen by at most threefold over the last 300 million years, consistent with a constrained model of diversification.
The authors identify a strong positive relationship between mass and metabolic rate among insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, and show that the genetic and interspecific correlations between these traits are consistent with a pattern of multivariate selection.
Analysing soil and rhizosphere microbial communities across a latitudinal gradient from southern to central Europe, the authors show that the belowground microbiomes of range-expanding plant species become more similar the further they are from their native range.
Using a multifactorial global change experiment, the authors show that warming grassland plots by +3 °C over 6 years accelerates the scaling rate of both taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity in soil bacterial and fungal communities.
Fitting a water quality index to survey-based estimates of coral resilience finds that reefs exposed to poor water quality are more resistant to bleaching but slower to recover from disturbance and more susceptible to disease outbreaks.
Combining biophysical and economic models, the authors show that the impacts of land use on bird biodiversity and carbon sequestration have increased over the years 2000–2011, with cattle farming being a major driver of biodiversity loss.
A comparison of communities of Anolis lizards across an elevation gradient in the Dominican Republic finds contrasting effects of habitat conversion in lowland and highland communities and suggests that warm-climate specialists dominate human-modified landscapes, even in cool macroclimates.
Genomic analysis of Drosophila melanogaster populations that are found at different climatic extremes identifies a trade-off between resistance to a neonicitinoid pesticide and adaptation to thermotolerance, controlled by two major genes.
Genome analysis of hamlets, a group of reef fishes that differ in colour pattern and that are reproductively isolated via assortative mating, shows inter-chromosomal linkage disequilibrium between vision and pigmentation genes.
A phylogenetic tree of 5,284 fungal species is used to infer patterns of extinction, diversification and morphological innovation in mushroom-forming fungi.
Analysis of high-quality genomes and transcriptomes of 13 closely related Oryza species coupled with proteomics finds about 50 de novo genes per million years.
Microexons play a crucial role in neural development and are evolutionarily conserved. Comparing microexons across bilaterians, the authors find a new protein domain responsible for the evolution of neural specificity of microexons.
Social spider colonies composed of ‘bold’ individuals have greater foraging success than ‘shy’ colonies, but this advantage diminishes as their frequency in the neighbourhood increases.