Volume 4 Issue 5, May 2020

The 2nd Palaeontological Virtual Congress will take place on 1–15 May 2020. We talked to the chairs of this event, Vicente D. Crespo Roures and Esther Manzanares Ubeda, who were also organizers of the inaugural conference.

The ABCD conference format (All continents, Balanced gender, low Carbon transport, Diverse backgrounds) mixes live-streamed and pre-recorded talks with in-person ones to reflect a diverse range of viewpoints and reduce the environmental footprint of meetings while also lowering barriers to inclusiveness.

A large-scale field experiment in a prey–enemy system demonstrates that spatial and temporal variation in population dynamics can both drive and respond to evolution. This is a crucial step in scaling up our understanding of how ecology and evolution are intertwined in mosaic landscapes.

A comparative analysis of developmental transcriptomes across Metazoa provides a quantitative approach to test scenarios of life-cycle evolution and supports an ancestral adult form with later intercalation of larval stages.

Ecosystem restoration needs to incorporate network and evolutionary approaches to focus on long-term recovery of the complexity of ecosystems.

The German site of Schöningen preserves rare examples of Palaeolithic wooden artefacts. Here, a 300,000-year-old spruce wood implement is interpreted as a throwing stick on the basis of microscopic use-wear analysis.

Species with ranges that span international borders pose particular challenges for conservation management. Here, the authors develop an index of transboundary feasibility, and identify regions of the world with high conservation potential across national borders.

Combining a large-scale manipulative field experiment with long-term genetic assays and modelling, the authors document evidence of ecological–evolutionary feedbacks between aphids and parasitoids through resistance conferred by heritable bacterial symbionts.

The civil war in Mozambique led to the collapse of large-mammal populations and the spread of the invasive plant Mimosa pigra. Experimental exclosures and DNA metabarcoding are used to show how trophic rewilding since the end of the war has reduced the invasive population.

Evolutionary analysis of transcriptomes across Metazoa supports a scenario of ancestral adult stages and a single intercalation event at the origin of larvae.

Experimental evolution in male seed beetles subjected to different levels of natural and sexual selection reveals that trade-offs between naturally and sexually selected fitness components can increase mutation rate.

It is unclear whether between-male relatedness modulates the intensity of intrasexual competition. A combination of modelling and empirical testing supports a kin-selected strategy of male–male competition in Trinidadian guppies.

Phylogenetic and climatic data for 19 plant and 17 vertebrate clades suggest there are general ‘rules’ for climatic-niche evolution.