Volume 5 Issue 9, September 2021

Jennifer Grenz is currently a sessional lecturer at the University of British Columbia and owns a land healing company, Greener This Side. Her recently completed PhD dissertation explores the science of invasive species management and restoration through the lens of an ‘Indigenous ecology’, which she defines as “relationally guided healing of our lands, waters, and relations through intentional shaping of ecosystems by humans to bring a desired balance that meets the fluid needs of communities while respecting and honouring our mutual dependence through reciprocity.” Here we ask about her research and experiences as an Indigenous woman in ecology.

Global scientific partnerships should generate and share knowledge equitably, but too often exploit research partners in lower-income countries, while disproportionately benefitting those in higher-income countries. Here, I outline my suggestions for more-equitable partnerships.

Recent advances in AI-based 3D protein structure prediction could help address health-related questions, but may also have far-reaching implications for evolution. Here we discuss the advantages and limitations of high-quality 3D structural predictions by AlphaFold2 in unravelling the relationship between protein properties and their impact on fitness, and emphasize the need to integrate in silico structural predictions with functional genomic studies.

A clever experimental design in bacteria with engineered obligate mutualisms shows that interdependency can allow pairs of bacteria to survive in environments that are uninhabitable by the individual strains.

A decorated bone object adds to the mounting evidence that Neanderthals were capable of advanced behavioural complexity and could produce artistic representations.

A synthesis of animal population trends around 27 no-take marine protected areas (MPAs) cautions that concentrated fishing right next to an MPA undermines population recovery within the MPA — and beyond.

The authors outline five decolonizing shifts that could help to transform academic ecological practice, challenging the discipline to become more inclusive, creative and ethical.

This Perspective presents a toolkit of evidence-based interventions to foster anti-racism in ecology, evolution and conservation biology in the classroom, within research laboratories and department wide.

Here the authors engineer a synthetic microbial community with obligate mutualisms, finding that mutualisms enable pairs of bacteria to occupy larger niches (feeding from a wider range of carbon sources) than they could in the absence of mutualisms.

Strong population bottlenecks in combination with weak antibiotic selection consistently favours the evolution of resistance across independently performed Pseudomonas aeruginosa evolution experiments.

Analysis of dental characters reveals an early burst in the evolution of the amniote feeding apparatus, but subsequently, variation in the mode of evolution became important as phenotypic diversification became disassociated from increased evolutionary rates.

Analysis of high-resolution three-dimensional models of 149 extant bird species reveals contrasting patterns of integration across the avian skeleton for size and shape: element sizes within body regions are strongly modular, but element shapes are less so and have stronger relationships with ecology.

Diversification does not vary consistently across elevations, but highland species are more likely to migrate than lowland species, setting up species pumps that are particularly strong in the tropics.

The authors use model-based approaches to examine the entire fossil history of proboscideans, from their dispersal outside of Afro-Arabia in the Oligocene to late Miocene extirpations and Quaternary collapse, identifying the innovations that allowed this group to overcome 60 million years of severe environmental shifts.

The authors report an incised giant deer phalanx (toe bone), directly radiocarbon dated to at least 51,000 years old. The age and context of the object suggests that it was engraved by Neanderthals.

The seeding of native species is critical to the success of dryland restoration efforts. Here the authors evaluate success of seeding establishment at 174 sites on six continents, finding that some sites had nearly 100% of species successfully recruit, while 17% of sites had zero seedling success.

Using a 150-year time series of data on arthropod species richness in Italy, the authors identify the main drivers of assemblage compositional turnover, finding that turnover is highest in locations with rapid changes in precipitation, particularly when human population density also increased rapidly.

A finding of smaller numbers of fish and invertebrates close within the border of a marine protected area compared to further inside may have profound effects on current estimates of population sizes in small- to medium-sized MPAs.

The authors model likely outcomes for the 33 isolated populations reported in the Fourth National Giant Panda Census under multiple RCP scenarios and with the provision of the planned Giant Panda National Park. They find that, although the National Park may connect some fragmented habitats, most of the populations with high extinction risk fall outside the current plans.