Volume 4 Issue 2, February 2020

Conservationist who changed how we think about threats to biodiversity.

Analysis of niche related morphological traits in nearly 10,000 species of birds shows concordance between phenotypic traits and trophic function. Avian trophic niche space can be described by only two to four dimensions, with the occurrence of similar adaptive morphologies primarily driven by convergent evolution.

Expert elicitation methods identify a set of essential ecological variables that may be used to guide effective conservation and management of the deep sea.

Exposing experimental lines of microalgae to random fluctuations in salinity, the authors show that environmental autocorrelation strongly influences population growth and extinction risk, with accurate predictions only possible when the impact of past environments is taken into account.

Combining Earth observation data and dynamic global vegetation models, the authors show that anthropogenic land use and land cover change has caused a reduction in the contribution to the terrestrial carbon sink for tropical forests but an increase for boreal forests between 1992 and 2015.

Combining field data from 83 sites on five continents, together with microcosm experiments, the authors show that nutrient cycling, decomposition, plant production and other ecosystem functions are positively associated with a higher diversity of a wide range of soil organisms.

Quantifying bacterial load in plant leaves, the authors show that insect herbivory can cause compositional shifts in bacterial community structure, primarily by enhancing the growth of putative phytopathogens. Across a native host population, insect–bacteria co-infection load is highly clustered and associated with lower plant fitness.

Predicting ecological niche space and ecosystem function from morphological traits is challenging. Here, the authors show that avian trophic diversity can be reduced to four dimensions, based on nine key morphological traits, which reflects convergence of trait combinations.

A supergene controlling social behaviour arose in the common ancestor of six ant species by the sequential incorporation of three inversions.

The treehopper helmet represents a morphologic novelty. Comparison of body-region transcriptomes in a treehopper and a leafhopper supports co-option of the wing-patterning network for the origin of the helmet.

Left–right symmetry in vertebrates is established during development by different mechanisms, including motile cilia. Here, the authors show asymmetric expression of a Nodal paralogue in the left–right organizer in two reptilian embryos, which do not have motile cilia.

Morphometrics and comparative phylogenetics show coevolution of the beak and the skull of Darwin’s finches and Hawaiian honeycreepers, suggesting that adaptive radiation in these groups occurred under tight cranial integration.