Complexity articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Channel networks are key to coastal wetland functioning. Here, the authors show how vegetation enhances network branching, and hypothesize that this may enhance the storm surge buffering capacity of wetlands and their resilience under sea-level rise.

    • Roeland C. van de Vijsel
    • , Jim van Belzen
    •  & Johan van de Koppel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The heterogeneity of single cell responses during infection have been reported to influence disease outcome. Here, Pietilä et al characterize cellular heterogeneity during Herpes Simplex Virus 1 infection using a multimodal approach that resolves gene expression, proteomic and spatial details at the single cell level.

    • Maija K. Pietilä
    • , Jana J. Bachmann
    •  & Cornel Fraefel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    At the molecular level, the evolution of life is driven by the generation and diversification of adaptation mechanisms. Here Araujo and Liotta identify definitive and universal structural requirements for adaptation via intermolecular interactions.

    • Robyn P. Araujo
    •  & Lance A. Liotta

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    In this perspective, the authors hypothesise that glial senescence, requiring senescent microglia burden, perpetuates further aging, Alzheimer’s pathologies, and senescence. Increasing glial senescence is proposed as necessary to drive individuals from healthy cognition into cognitive decline and dementia.

    • Victor Lau
    • , Leanne Ramer
    •  & Marie-Ève Tremblay

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ant and honeybee workers specialize on certain tasks and also on zones within the nest; but how do they avoid straying into the wrong zone? The authors conduct automated tracking experiments following thousands of individuals, revealing that workers use context-dependent rules to navigate inside the nest.

    • Thomas O. Richardson
    • , Nathalie Stroeymeyt
    •  & Laurent Keller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pesticide impact on honey bees under field conditions remains elusive. Here, the authors combine a systems biology approach and laboratory experiments to show that the immune suppressive effect of the pathogen deformed wing virus can be responsible for the disparity amongst honey bee experiments.

    • Dimitri Breda
    • , Davide Frizzera
    •  & Francesco Nazzi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This mathematical modelling study projects the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 in England until the end of 2022 assuming that the Omicron BA.2 sublineage remains dominant. They show that booster vaccination was highly effective in mitigating severe outcomes and that future dynamics will depend greatly on assumptions about waning immunity.

    • Rosanna C. Barnard
    • , Nicholas G. Davies
    •  & W. John Edmunds

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Army ant bridges are a remarkable example of self-assembled living structures. Here, the authors investigate experimentally how army ant bridges respond to unstable ground, revealing how responses emerge from the decentralized actions of individuals.

    • Helen F. McCreery
    • , Georgina Gemayel
    •  & Radhika Nagpal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Honey bee workers take on different tasks for the colony as they age. Here, the authors develop a method to extract a descriptor of the individuals’ social networks and show that interaction patterns predict task allocation and distinguish different developmental trajectories.

    • Benjamin Wild
    • , David M. Dormagen
    •  & Tim Landgraf

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tropical rainforests partly create their own climatic conditions by promoting precipitation, therefore rainforest losses may trigger dramatic shifts. Here the authors combine remote sensing, hydrological modelling, and atmospheric moisture tracking simulations to assess forest-rainfall feedbacks in three major tropical rainforest regions on Earth and simulate potential changes under a severe climate change scenario.

    • Arie Staal
    • , Ingo Fetzer
    •  & Obbe A. Tuinenburg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Identification of clinically relevant gene expression signatures for cancer stratification remains challenging. Here, the authors introduce a flexible nonlinear signal superposition model that enables dissection of large gene expression data sets into signatures and extraction of gene interactions.

    • Michael Grau
    • , Georg Lenz
    •  & Peter Lenz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In asexual populations selection at different genomic loci can interfere with each other. Here, using a biophysical model of molecular evolution the authors show that interference results in long-term degradation of molecular function, an effect that strongly depends on genome size.

    • Torsten Held
    • , Daniel Klemmer
    •  & Michael Lässig

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Robust perfect adaptation (RPA), the ability of a system to return to its pre-stimulus state in the presence of a new signal, enables organisms to respond to further changes in stimuli. Here, the authors identify the modular structure of the full set of network topologies that can confer RPA on complex networks.

    • Robyn P. Araujo
    •  & Lance A. Liotta

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The evolutionary rationale behind the extensive crosstalk between Metazoan signalling pathways remains elusive. Here the authors provide evidence that crosstalk in the human signalling network evolves as a means to allow efficient diversification of cellular responses to the same signals between different cell types.

    • Michael A. Rowland
    • , Joseph M. Greenbaum
    •  & Eric J. Deeds

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