Volume 6 Issue 5, May 2022

Achieving net-zero targets and climate stabilization will require better accounting for the immense amount of carbon naturally stored belowground. We propose ‘carbon parks’ as a conservation tool and financial instrument to protect and value carbon-rich ecosystems.

Experimentally manipulating precipitation levels in a plant–soil feedback experiment reveals changes to the interactions between plants and soil microbes that render community dynamics less predictable under wetter conditions.

Analysis of the dynamics of transposons that encode resistance to different antibiotics shows that the movement of genes under positive selection from the chromosome to mobile genetic elements such as plasmids can be beneficial in bacteria. Once integrated into plasmids, these genes can spread by horizontal gene transfer.

A framework to experimentally traverse the large space of functionally neutral variants in a toxin–antitoxin protein complex reveals insights on evolvability and entrenchment of molecular interactions.

A large dataset quantifying variation in bird colourfulness lends support to a long-hypothesized latitudinal diversity gradient in animal colouration.

Taking advantage of natural variation present in six populations of wild orangutans, a new study correlates population density with multiple facets of individuals’ vocal phenotype and demonstrates that sociality influences vocal plasticity in great apes.

This Perspective discusses how the latest advances in remote sensing can be used to answer basic ecological and evolutionary questions, as well as contribute to important biodiversity monitoring.

For decades, the origin of mitochondria during eukaryogenesis has been viewed as a response to Earth’s oxygenation, but this has been challenged by more recent research. Here, the authors review recent literature, concluding that eukaryogenesis and the rise of oxygen were decoupled, and obligate aerosis in eukaryotes has only become widespread in the past 1 billion years

In a meta-analysis comparing experimental versus observational studies of aboveground biomass responses to drought in grasslands, the authors show that effect sizes in experiments are 53% weaker than in observational studies, suggesting that experiments are underestimating drought responses.

The authors use experiments and model simulations to show that among a community of eight grassland plant species, pairwise plant–soil feedbacks are more likely to be positive in high-precipitation conditions and negative in dry conditions.

Analysing the transposition dynamics of synthetic and natural transposons that encode resistance to different antibiotics, the authors show that stronger antibiotic selection leads to a higher fraction of cells carrying the resistance on plasmids.

The innate immune system affects viral evolution. Here, the authors use experimental evolution to ask how different immune pathways impact viral genetic diversity and virulence using Drosophila melanogaster and its natural pathogen Drosophila C virus.

Studying four examples of the transition to co-sexuality in brown algae, the authors show extensive convergent changes in gene expression driven by selection, and greater similarity of co-sexual gene expression profiles to those of ancestral females than to those of ancestral males.

Enabling mutations do not affect current protein function but affect future mutational possibilities. The authors explore the nature of enabling mutations in a bacterial toxin–antitoxin system.

The evolutionary history of amniote limb muscles remains unclear. Here the authors study the embryonic development of forelimb musculature in six species of amniotes and show that early splitting patterns of embryonic muscle masses are highly conserved across Amniota.

A new taxon of molgophid recumbirostran from the Carboniferous of Illinois, Nagini mazonense, suggests that the forelimb-first pattern of limb reduction that characterizes modern snakes also occurs early on in amniote evolution.

After generating a dataset on plumage colouration for over 4,500 bird species, the authors show that tropical species are more colourful than temperate species, confirming a long-held but difficult-to-prove belief.

Analysing a newly assembled genome of the gelada, an endemic Ethiopian monkey that lives in high altitudes, the authors identify a novel karyotype and genomic elements associated with high-altitude adaptation.

Analysis of wild orangutan calls demonstrates that different degrees of sociality across populations are associated with different ‘vocal personalities’.