Volume 8 Issue 9, September 2024

Resilience in production forests can be achieved through natural ecological processes or repeated intensive interventions. We caution that ‘coerced’ resilience derived from intense and repeated human inputs may exacerbate biodiversity loss, narrow the range of ecosystem services provided and limit general resilience (that is, the capacity of production forests to recover from unforeseen disturbances).

Global biodiversity loss is showing no signs of slowing down. Two broad studies have attempted to analyse where conservation efforts have failed and succeeded, with seemingly contrasting results.

An analysis of nearly 44,000 mutualistic, commensalistic and parasitic interactions suggests that a species’ ecological generalism results from, rather than causes, ecological success.

In Australia, the designation and management of culturally significant entities (CSEs) is interwound with cultural governance and obligations to care for Country. We show how Indigenous-led objectives and biocultural measures for designating and managing CSEs can be successfully framed and planned by placing the decision-making authority within local Indigenous governance structures.

Through analysis of gene families that were duplicated before the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), we estimate the date of the LUCA at approximately 4.2 billion years ago. Our reconstruction of the genome of the LUCA contains around 2,500 protein-encoding genes across 2.5 megabases, and we suggest that the LUCA was a complex anaerobic acetogen that lived within a pre-existing ecosystem.

Proteins that are involved in immunity rapidly evolve to adapt to pathogens. However, some eukaryotic immune proteins have been shown to originate from bacterial antiphage systems, which suggests the existence of highly conserved immune proteins. Our investigation now reveals how viperins — a conserved family of immune proteins — evolved across domains of life.

The serrated, blade-shaped teeth of Komodo dragons make these lizards ideal models for understanding the function of similarly shaped dinosaur teeth. Analyses of the teeth of Komodo dragons have revealed protective iron coatings along their serrations and tips, a surprising feature that could be more widespread among reptiles.

Ten years after the discovery of Homo naledi, the authors explore the various anatomical and behavioural evidence accumulated for this intriguing species.

This Perspective discusses using long-term ecological research networks to advance our understanding of fundamental evolutionary processes and evolutionary responses to global change.

This Review synthesizes global evidence on climate-change-driven spatial mismatch between predator and prey species in marine and terrestrial domains. The authors discuss ecosystem-level impacts of changes in predator–prey overlap and identify future research directions to understand the ecological consequences of these changes.

Generalism is often assumed to be a cause of species success. This analysis of mutualistic, commensalistic and parasitic interactions supports the alternative causal hypothesis that generalism is the consequence of ecological success.

Measurements of plant–pollinator interactions and crop yields for 32 crops in 120 study systems show that 28–61% of crop systems globally are pollinator limited and that realistic increases in pollinator visitation could close yield gaps.

Indigenous-led structured decision-making workshops with local Indigenous people on Bundjalung Country in Australia identified and prioritized culturally significant species and determined Bundjalung-led actions for the management of these culturally significant entities.

Sub-metre-resolution satellite imagery is used to identify the presence of nearly 2.8 million baobab trees in the Sahel, with 94% of rural buildings in Senegal having at least one baobab tree in their immediate surroundings. The abundance of baobabs is associated with a higher likelihood of people consuming highly nutritious dark green leafy vegetables.

Exploring genomic data from contemporary and 191 Arabidopsis thaliana herbarium specimens collected over 193 years, the authors identify signs of local adaptation in regulators of stomatal development in contemporary samples from different geographic regions, then use functional scoring to identify a genetic component contributing to this change.

Integration of phylogenetics, comparative genomics and palaeobiological approaches suggests that the last universal common ancestor lived about 4.2 billion years ago and was a complex prokaryote-grade anaerobic acetogen that was part of an ecosystem.

Systematic analysis of viperin sequences, a family of immune genes that are highly conserved across diverse prokaryotes and eukaryotes, shows that eukaryotic viperins were acquired from archaea and provides information about their evolutionary dynamics.

Comparison of neural crest and pluripotency gene regulatory networks of Xenopus and lamprey reveals shared regulatory factors in the last common ancestor of extant vertebrates and suggests common molecular features of blastula and neural crest stem cells.

Analysis of single-cell RNA-sequencing data from seven amphioxus embryo stages informs the evolution of chordate cell type evolution and reveals three developmental origins for the vertebrate nervous system.

Chemical and structural imaging of Komodo dragon teeth reveals that they maintain their sharp cutting edges through iron-enriched coatings, a unique adaptation compared with theropod dinosaurs (for which they have previously been used as an extant model).

Combining geographic information, climate data and colour mechanism at broad phylogenetic and spatial scales, the authors determine how transitions between pigmentary and structural colours influence bird speciation dynamics.

An analysis of Neotropical bats with different diets reveals molecular and physiological mechanisms of dietary diversification and sugar assimilation.

Spatial beta diversity analyses of mammalian fossil records from the East African Rift System reveal long-term biotic homogenization over the last six million years, a key time frame and context for human evolution.

A combination of experimental evolution of barcoded yeast lineages evolving in static and fluctuating conditions with math modelling shows that environmental fluctuations have non-additive effects on fitness.