Volume 4 Issue 1, January 2020

Much research and policy effort is being expended on ways to conserve living nature while enabling the economic and social development needed to increase equity and end poverty. We propose this will only be possible if policy shifts away from conservation targets that focus on avoiding losses towards processes that consider net outcomes for biodiversity.

Data from hundreds of natural communities show that rare species share more positive associations with each other than abundant species, which tend to be more segregated. These patterns are consistent with facilitation for rare species and competition for abundant ones, and hold true across taxa and biogeographic regions.

A group of early terrestrial vertebrates called varanopids, long regarded as mammal-line amniotes, is placed wholesale with reptiles in a new analysis of early amniote relationships. Meanwhile, a new species of varanopid from Canada provides the oldest evidence for extended parental care in terrestrial vertebrates.

A large-scale, cross-taxa analysis reveals high nonlinearity and limited long-term predictability in the dynamics of animal populations.

A new modelling study highlights the importance of the search process in predator–prey interactions. When predators act on information related to prey location, the dynamics and stability of populations are more realistic.

Climate warming is driving a global redistribution of marine life as species shift their distribution to accommodate temperature changes. This is often analysed at the ocean surface, but a global analysis of temperature vertical migration provides a new perspective of the challenges and opportunities for marine life under future warming.

The physical linkage of the first self-replicating molecules is likely to have been selected based on their capacity to perform cooperative catalysis.

A phylogenomic re-analysis of sequence data strongly supports the emergence of eukaryotes from within the archaeal radiation and underlines the importance of using the most accurate approaches to reconstruct ancient divergences in the tree of life.

Comparative analyses of egg colouration and experimental data suggest that variation in egg colours between species is shaped by thermoregulatory needs.

There has been intense debate as to whether biodiversity increases or reduces the risk of infectious disease. This Review is the result of researchers from both sides of the debate attempting to reach a consensus.

Analysing spatial association networks among >300 terrestrial and aquatic assemblages, the authors find that the majority of negative associations involve abundant species. In contrast, rare species form mostly positive associations, potentially explaining their persistence in natural communities.

A framework is presented for achieving global no net loss of biodiversity that accounts for inequity among countries in both pressures and ability to act.

A new species of fossil synapsid from the Pennsylvanian (323–298 million years ago) of Canada represents the earliest known evidence of parental care in the form of a larger individual preserved with a small conspecific in close association, interpreted as denning.

A new amniote phylogeny excludes varanopids as stem-line mammals, nests Parareptilia within Diapsida and suggests that temporal fenestration evolved fewer times than previously thought.

Multi-proxy palaeoecological methods reconstruct phases of land clearance, maize cultivation and forest regrowth in the High Andes centuries before European incursion, and do not support the idea that forest regrowth and peak carbon sequestration were coincident with European arrival.

Analysing the population dynamics of 228 terrestrial and aquatic species, the authors show that nonlinearity is a ubiquitous feature of animal populations and is more prevalent among fast-reproducing species.

A theoretical framework is developed to show that interactions among organisms are limited by the availability of sensory information, and that the dynamical properties of a wide variety of interacting populations depend on responses to this information.

A new statistical method is introduced that can predict the outcomes of unobserved experiments in complex communities using only a limited subset of all possible experiments.

Comparing grassland ecosystem responses of 128 biotic and abiotic variables to geothermal warming, the authors find that short-term (5–8 years) responses are poor predictors of change over the long term (>50 years).

A projection of ocean surface isotherm deepening under emissions scenarios RCP8.5 and RCP4.5 reveals that the potential habitat of many marine organisms will rapidly become tightly compressed between depth levels imposed by isotherm deepening, the thickness of the photic layer and the seafloor.

By analysing phenological shifts among > 2,000 insect pollinator species in Europe, the authors show that flight dates have become earlier and flight lengths shorter over the past 60 years, potentially altering continental-scale pollinator function.

Across large spatial scales, climate is more important than soil conditions for plant adaptation and variation in root-associated filamentous eukaryotic communities.

The origin of life would have required enzymatic cooperation that was not susceptible to cheating replicators. The authors show theoretically that this does not require a cell membrane and instead can arise when enzymatic cooperation and physical association coevolve.

The evolutionary origin of eukaryotes is under debate. Here, the authors conduct phylogenetic analyses using >3,000 gene families in archaea and eukaryotes and find support for an origin of eukaryotes from within the archaea.

A phylogenetically diverse dataset of birds reveals that eggshell pigmentation may have been shaped by thermoregulatory needs, with birds in colder habitats having darker eggs.

By mapping piRNA genes in juvenile and adult human testes, the authors show that although synteny is conserved with other mammals, sequences are diverging rapidly even among modern humans.