Volume 3 Issue 5, May 2019

An assessment of the taxonomic composition of airborne pollen using targeted high-throughput sequencing may help in understanding environmental and human drivers of the grass pollen season and in allergy prevention and management.

A global analysis of the relationship between photosynthesis and temperature identifies key similarities and differences when scaling from leaves to ecosystems and suggests that carbon uptake by vegetation may be able to adjust to a warming world.

The EAT-Lancet Commission proposes a universal healthy diet that could help to limit environmental changes within the planetary boundaries, but further work is needed to adapt this diet to local conditions and limit unintended environmental and health impacts of changing diets.

When local crop failures in different regions occur simultaneously, the result can be an amplification of global food production shocks. Better understanding of the role of production synchronicity in historic food system stability is an important step towards anticipating possible future losses.

Three studies presenting genomes and transcriptomes from different life stages of nearly all major lineages of medusozoans present radically different gene expression profiles between life cycle stages and many medusa-specific genes.

The evolution of the human facial skeleton is evaluated in the context of its extinct hominin relatives, and the biomechanical, physiological and social influences on its development are considered.

The World Database on Protected Areas has evolved since 1959 to become an essential resource for monitoring global progress in terrestrial and marine habitat protection. This Review illustrates the users and uses of the WDPA, its history of quality improvements and challenges for future development.

Comparing temperatures in the forest understory versus open habitat across boreal, temperate and tropical biomes, the authors show that tree canopies act as thermal insulators that buffer the understory against temperature extremes.

DNA metabarcoding is used to survey the spatial and temporal distribution of airborne grass pollen genera over the summer grass pollen season across Great Britain.

Morphometric analyses of hominid teeth from Early to Middle Pleistocene Java reveal that Meganthropus was a Pleistocene Indonesian hominid distinct from Pongo, Gigantopithecus and Homo, and that molars previously assigned to Homo erectus are more likely to belong to Meganthropus.

DNA analyses of Mesolithic and Neolithic individuals indicates the British Neolithic transition was mediated by incoming continental farmers, with little gene flow from local hunter-gatherers.

Combining eddy covariance measurements and satellite observations, the authors identify an optimum air temperature for global vegetation productivity and show that it is consistently lower than the optimum foliar photosynthetic capacity.

An analysis of the global production of maize, rice, soybean and wheat from 1961 to 2008 reveals that, although production synchronization within these crops has decreased, leading to increased stability, synchrony between crops has increased, resulting in higher instability of global total calorie production.

A meta-analysis reveals that the presence of exotic species has a modest but significantly negative impact on the ecological properties of native marine communities and identifies the exotic species that exert the most harmful effects.

The genome of the jellyfish Clytia hemisphaerica and the transcriptomes of its planula, polyp and medusa life stages show genetic changes associated with the evolution of complex life cycles.

Genome sequencing of a scyphozoan and a cubozoan jellyfish sheds light on the genetic basis of jellyfish-specific structures and cell types.

Analysing the genome of a snailfish from the Mariana Trench, the authors show genetic changes associated with unique morphological and physiological adaptations to life in the hadal zone.

Songbirds are a species-rich group known for their diversified sexual traits. Genomic analysis of 11 songbird species reveals evolutionary strata and shows their role in reshaping the genomic architecture of songbird sex chromosomes.

Transcriptomic and behavioural analyses of medaka fish demonstrate how photoperiodic activation of the long noncoding RNA LDAIR regulates behaviour in response to seasonal change.

Historical genealogical data for nearly half a million individuals reveals that moderate fecundity maximized long-run reproductive success in a human population.