Volume 8 Issue 8, August 2024

The genome assembly of a brittle star reveals distinctive features of genome evolution in this echinoderm lineage and enables comparisons of gene expression during appendage regeneration across distantly related animals.

An analysis of whole genomes of mothers and daughters of the clonal raider ant Ooceraea biroi shows non-random segregation of chromosomes during meiosis, which enables the species to maintain heterozygosity while still recombining because crossover products are faithfully coinherited.

An analysis of interspecific brain–body size relationships in mammals finds they do not follow the oft-assumed power-law scaling relationship that leads to a linear relationship when both variables are log-transformed, and reveals instead a curvilinear relationship between brain size and body size.

This Perspective argues that registration and registered reports are important tools for reducing research waste in ecology, and that this needs to be supported by coordinated efforts by funders, publishers and research institutions.

Deoxygenation is rapidly occurring in marine and freshwater habitats worldwide. This Perspective proposes that deoxygenation should be considered as a planetary boundary, discusses how deoxygenation affects Earth systems and describes interactions with several other described planetary boundaries.

Marine microbes can form habitats for animals and protists to colonize, promoting novel ecological interactions and also providing food and refuge. This Review surveys the ecology and biogeography of marine microbes as ecosystem engineers, and discusses their role in management and conservation.

Analysis of fire radiative power derived from satellite data finds that the frequency of extreme fire events increased 2.2-fold from 2003 to 2023 and that these increases were mostly driven by extreme fires in temperate conifer and boreal forest biomes.

A comparative analysis of community metabolomics and herbivore-induced damage in tropical, subtropical and subalpine tree communities shows that both phytochemical diversity and herbivory were higher in tropical communities, providing support to the latitudinal biotic interactions hypothesis.

How biodiversity responds to habitat fragmentation per se is debated. Here the authors combine metacommunity simulations with reanalysis of empirical metacommunities to show that the amount of habitat loss modulates the response of biodiversity to fragmentation.

Drylands face multiple anthropogenic stressors globally. Here the authors assess protected area coverage and current threats of vertebrate diversity in global drylands and project impacts under future climate and socioeconomic scenarios.

Analysing data from 64,305 Holocene pollen samples worldwide, the authors reveal regionally variable long-term diversity trends associated with human impact over the last 8,000 years.

Reconstructing Holocene range and extinction dynamics of moa (order Dinornithiformes), the authors determine that despite interspecifically different dynamics, spatial patterns of collapse were probably similar. They also find that the likely final refugia for moa were in the same areas and ecological conditions where New Zealand’s remaining flightless birds persist today.

The authors find that protected areas and Indigenous territories in the Brazilian Amazon are highly effective at reducing deforestation driven by agriculture and legal mining concessions, but Indigenous territories typically generate smaller socio-economic benefits than strict and sustainable-use protected areas.

A longitudinal analysis of microbial community assembly dynamics reveals that communities cultured in metabolically complex media are more different from each other than those cultured in simpler media. Using consumer-resource model simulations, the authors demonstrate that the breakdown of complex metabolites by specialist taxa may promote cross-feeding between community members and allow for the assembly of more diverse communities.

A newly sequenced genome of the brittle star Amphiura filiformis and gene expression profiling of adult arm regeneration reveal genes with conserved expression dynamics across invertebrates and vertebrates.

This study reports non-random segregation of chromosomes during meiosis in the clonal raider ant, Ooceraea biroi, but no loss of heterozygosity because crossover products are faithfully co-inherited.

Analysis of mammalian brain and body mass reveals a curvilinear relationship contrary to assumptions of log-linear power laws. As mammals grow larger, increases in brain mass compared to body mass diminish.

Analysis of 297 whole-genome sequences of six introduced European rabbit populations, domestic rabbits and wild rabbits from the native range shows wild and domestic ancestry in introduced rabbit populations and purging of alleles for domesticated traits when rabbits colonized novel natural environments.

Cecilia Apaldetti’s palaeontological journey began with a turkey-sized dinosaur.