Volume 5 Issue 7, July 2021

Kimberleigh Tommy is a PhD candidate and science communicator, based at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where she studies hominin functional morphology as it relates to locomotion. She has won numerous awards for both her science communication and research; most recently she was named one of The Mail and Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans making a difference in their fields as well as a recipient of the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science South African National Young Talents programme awards. We asked her about her background, her interests and her hopes for the future.

The founder of plant functional ecology.

The Y chromosome of the freshwater fish Poecilia parae may have successively evolved five haplotypes that are maintained in the population for alternative male reproductive strategies.

Simulations of eco-evolutionary processes involved in artificial selection of microbial communities provide a guide to optimize experimental design for improving ecosystem functions.

Remote sensing of geospatial biodiversity patterns is an important complement to field observations. This priority list suggests how remote sensing observations can be better integrated into the essential biodiversity variables.

This Perspective examines how systems ecology models that incorporate pathogens can transform our understanding of ecosystem functioning, disease ecology, and the detection and control of zoonoses.

The authors explore dental development in a stem-chondrichthyan ischnacanthid acanthodian to inform our understanding of the ancestral gnathostome dental condition, finding that although dermal oral tubercles are a conserved feature of early gnathostomes, the complex cyclic shedding dentitions and whorls appear to have evolved multiple times.

Nautilus, the sole surviving externally shelled cephalopod from the Palaeozoic, holds an important phylogenetic position to understand the evolution of cephalopods. A complete genome of Nautilus pompilius sheds light on the evolution of the pinhole eye and biomineralization.

Males of the freshwater fish Poecilia parae occur as one of five morphs with different reproductive strategies that are controlled by five Y haplotypes. Analysis of Y chromosomes of the five morphs shows extreme diversity in the three major morphs despite constraints imposed by lack of recombination of sex chromosomes.

A meta-analysis of 139 studies of diploid animals shows that they rarely avoid mating with kin, although the degree of relatedness and prior experience with kin do alter the effect size, and there is evidence of publication bias.

Tree spatial data, spatial statistics and dynamical theory reveal the relationship between spatial patterns and population-level interaction coefficients and their consequences for multispecies dynamics and coexistence.

Mechanisms underlying interactions in insect–pollinator systems remain unknown. Analysis of high-quality genomes of Ficus pumila var. pumila and its specific pollinating wasp, Wiebesia pumilae, reveals molecular mechanisms underlying this coevolved mutualism.

Citizen-science data on bird observations from eastern North America show that the timing of spring arrival of migratory birds is broadly correlated with fluctuations in vegetation green-up but that the varying sensitivity of different bird species to this phenological event is linked to their different migratory strategies.

Combining a published dataset of stable carbon isotopes from herbivore tooth enamel with multidecadal Landsat estimates of C₃ woody cover across 30 African ecosystems, the authors show that there is little relationship between intrataxonomic variation in δ¹³C enamel and vegetation structure, leading them to recommend a community-level approach for making vegetation inferences.

Geospatial analysis of forest canopy damage in over half the area burned in the 2019–20 southeast Australian wildfires shows that spatial factors and weather determine burning severity much more than past logging and wildfire disturbance.

A simulation study integrates existing artificial selection methods to develop a ‘top-down’ approach to engineering complex, stable microbial communities based on iterated randomization and selection of community structure and function.

Analysis of exome sequencing data from 42 baseline and progression biopsies from cetuximab-treated colorectal cancers reveals limited adaptive mutagenesis but shows a chemotherapy-induced mutational signature that is the main contributor of specific driver mutations that are enriched at acquired resistance.

The spatial and physical nature of tumour growth remains unclear. Combining whole-tumour images from clear cell renal cell carcinoma with genomic data, the authors show more aggressive subclonal growth and metastasizing subclones in the tumour centre.