Evolution articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The burying beetle shows flexible parenting behaviour. Here, the authors show that offspring fare equally well regardless of the sex or number of parents present and find similar gene expression profiles in uniparental and biparental females and in uniparental males, which suggests no specialization in parenting.

    • Darren J. Parker
    • , Christopher B. Cunningham
    •  & Allen J. Moore

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The biochemical pathways of central carbon metabolism are highly conserved across all domains of life. Here, Courtet al. use a computational approach to test all possible pathways of glycolysis and gluconeogenesis and find that the existing trunk pathways may represent a maximal flux solution selected for during evolution.

    • Steven J. Court
    • , Bartlomiej Waclaw
    •  & Rosalind J. Allen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Our understanding of how humans produce complex technologies is limited. Here, the authors use a computer-based experiment to show that the production of complex innovations results from a population process that relies on efficient social learning mechanisms and specific population structures.

    • Maxime Derex
    •  & Robert Boyd

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Crocodylians and their relatives have a rich evolutionary history. Here the authors show long-term decline of terrestrial crocodylians driven by decreasing temperatures but no relationship between temperature and biodiversity for marine crocodylians over their 250 million year history.

    • Philip D. Mannion
    • , Roger B. J. Benson
    •  & Richard J. Butler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Horizontal gene transfer from retroviruses to mammals is rare between unrelated viruses. Here the authors show the convergent acquisition by herpesviruses of a virulence gene of ancient retroviruses, which occurred at least twice from different donor lineages, to distinct herpesviruses that infect mammals.

    • Amr Aswad
    •  & Aris Katzourakis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Diet is a major factor determining the composition of gut microbiota in mammals, while host evolutionary history seems to play an unclear role. Here, Sanderset al. show that baleen whales, which prey on animals, harbour a unique gut microbiome with similarities to those of terrestrial herbivores.

    • Jon G. Sanders
    • , Annabel C. Beichman
    •  & Peter R. Girguis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The presence of a pulmonary system in fossil coelacanths has only recently been identified, with little known about homologues in living species. Here, Cupello et al. confirm the presence of a lung in the extant species Latimeria chalumnaeand report its growth during different stages of development.

    • Camila Cupello
    • , Paulo M. Brito
    •  & Gaël Clément

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In species in which females mate with multiple partners, sexual selection acts on male traits involved in mating and fertilization. Here, the authors show that selection acting before and after mating explains a significant component of variance in male reproductive fitness in a livebearing fish.

    • Alessandro Devigili
    • , Jonathan P. Evans
    •  & Andrea Pilastro

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Butterflies are a promising system to study the genetics and evolution of morphological diversification, yet genomic and technological resources are limited. Here, the authors sequence genomes of two Papiliobutterflies and develop a CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing method for these species.

    • Xueyan Li
    • , Dingding Fan
    •  & Wen Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Some species of social bacteria can chemically modify their nutrient environments, which may influence community interactions. Here, McClean et al.show that changes at a single gene locus in a biofilm-forming bacteria can perturb community structure to the same extent as the loss of an apex predator.

    • Deirdre McClean
    • , Luke McNally
    •  & Ian Donohue

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the mechanism underlying the evolution of ecologically relevant traits is challenging. Here the authors show that changes in the Hox protein Ultrabithorax and its target genegiltcontribute to the evolution of long-mid-legs in water striders, a critical trait to escape predators.

    • David Armisén
    • , Peter Nagui Refki
    •  & Abderrahman Khila

  • Article |

    Changes in vegetation can influence the evolution of morphology and behaviour. Here the authors show an association between elbow-joint shape and habitat for North American canids over the past ∼37 million years, which suggests that climate change can influence the evolution of predatory behaviour.

    • B. Figueirido
    • , A. Martín-Serra
    •  & C. M. Janis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Introduction of pathogens can cause colony collapse in honey bees. Here, the authors use museum specimens to show widespread colony mortality but unaffected nuclear genetic diversity in a wild population of honey bees in North America following the introduction of ectoparasiticVarroamites.

    • Alexander S. Mikheyev
    • , Mandy M. Y. Tin
    •  & Thomas D. Seeley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Turtles are ectothermic vertebrates that have experienced major environmental perturbations. Here the authors show that the geographical distribution of turtles was mediated by climate throughout the Mezozoic and show an increase in diversity of non-marine turtles starting in the Early Cretaceous.

    • David B. Nicholson
    • , Patricia A. Holroyd
    •  & Paul M. Barrett

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The contribution of anthropogenic forcing to rising sea levels during the industrial era remains uncertain. Here, the authors provide a probabilistic evaluation and show that at least 45% of global mean sea level rise is of anthropogenic origin.

    • Sönke Dangendorf
    • , Marta Marcos
    •  & Jürgen Jensen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The African pygmies are known for their short stature, yet it is unclear when and how this phenotype is acquired during growth. Here the authors show that the pygmies’ small stature results primarily from slow growth during infancy.

    • Fernando V. Ramirez Rozzi
    • , Yves Koudou
    •  & Jérémie Botton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phytochromes are red-light photoreceptors in plants that regulate key life cycle processes, yet their evolutionary origins are not well understood. Using transcriptomic and genomic data, Li et al.find that canonical plant phytochromes originated in a common ancestor of land plants and charophyte algae.

    • Fay-Wei Li
    • , Michael Melkonian
    •  & Sarah Mathews

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Complete sex chromosome dosage compensation is largely limited to male heterogametic species, with the majority of female heterogametic species displaying incomplete dosage compensation. Here, the authors show that sexual conflict over gene expression combined with sexual selection in males can explain this pattern.

    • Charles Mullon
    • , Alison E. Wright
    •  & Judith E. Mank

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Insects can accumulate high levels of glycerol as an adaptive response to dessication and freezing. Here, the authors show that glycerol transporters evolved from water-selective channels that co-opted the glycerol transport function of ancestral aquaglyceroporins in the oldest lineages of insects.

    • Roderick Nigel Finn
    • , François Chauvigné
    •  & Joan Cerdà

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The human hand can be distinguished from that of apes by its long thumb relative to fingers. Here the authors show that hand proportions vary greatly among ape species and that the human hand evolved from an ancestor that was more similar to humans than to chimpanzees.

    • Sergio Almécija
    • , Jeroen B. Smaers
    •  & William L. Jungers

  • Article |

    How animals distinguish family members from unrelated conspecifics is not fully understood. Here Levréro et al.show that although the structure of mandrill vocalisations can be modulated by their social environment, it still contains information that may be used to recognise unfamiliar relatives.

    • F. Levréro
    • , G. Carrete-Vega
    •  & M.J.E. Charpentier

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The evolution of the brain in Old World monkeys (cercopithecoids) is poorly understood. Here the authors describe a complete endocast of Victoriapithecus, a 15 Myr old cercopithecoid, which shows that the brain size was much smaller and the olfactory bulbs much larger than in any extant catarrhine primate.

    • Lauren A. Gonzales
    • , Brenda R. Benefit
    •  & Fred Spoor

  • Article |

    Antibiotic resistance can evolve through the stepwise accumulation of mutations. Here, the authors reconstruct the multistep evolutionary pathway for trimethoprim resistance and show that epistatic interactions increase rather than decrease the accessibility of each adaptive peak.

    • Adam C. Palmer
    • , Erdal Toprak
    •  & Roy Kishony

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soft tissue from vertebrate fossils has previously been documented, but only in exceptionally preserved specimens. Here, Bertazzo et al. describe structures consistent with collagen fibres and red blood cells from eight Cretaceous dinosaur bones, none of which are exceptionally preserved.

    • Sergio Bertazzo
    • , Susannah C. R. Maidment
    •  & Hai-nan Xie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The evolution of non-recombining chromosomes is poorly understood. Here, the authors sequence the collared flycatcher female-specific W chromosome and show nonrandom survival of genes during W chromosome degeneration which is due to selection for maintaining gene dose and expression levels of essential genes.

    • Linnéa Smeds
    • , Vera Warmuth
    •  & Hans Ellegren

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fossils of Cretaceous birds with feathers are rare and known mostly from China. Here, the authors show an enantiornithine bird from the Lower Cretaceous of Brazil with a fully articulated skeleton and rachis-dominated tail feathers, which has implications for our understanding of feather evolution.

    • Ismar de Souza Carvalho
    • , Fernando E. Novas
    •  & José A. Andrade

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Microsporidia are intracellular parasitic fungi that infect diverse animal hosts including humans. Here, Desjardins et al.present genomic and transcriptomic data for two microsporidia that infect disease-transmitting mosquitoes, highlighting differences in potential host interplay mechanisms.

    • Christopher A. Desjardins
    • , Neil D. Sanscrainte
    •  & Christina A Cuomo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The early origin and evolution of multidrug resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosisare poorly understood. Here, the authors perform genomic and phylogenetic analyses of 252 clinical isolates from a tuberculosis outbreak in Argentina and reconstruct the timeline of the acquisition of antibiotic resistance.

    • Vegard Eldholm
    • , Johana Monteserin
    •  & Francois Balloux

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The origin and diversification of early birds remain unclear. Here, the authors report fossils from the oldest known ornithuromorph bird, recovered from the Huajiying Formation in China, which pushes the divergence of these and other early bird lineages back to the Jurassic–Cretaceous transition.

    • Min Wang
    • , Xiaoting Zheng
    •  & Zhonghe Zhou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Enhancers regulate the transcription of genes over long genomic distances. Here, the authors show that enhancer function is correlated with maintenance of linkage between non-coding elements and neighbouring genes in the human X chromosome and that enhancers in zebrafish drive expression in a pattern consistent with the expression of a linked gene.

    • Magali Naville
    • , Minaka Ishibashi
    •  & Hugues Roest Crollius

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The evolution of the amniote middle ear remains unclear. Here, the authors show that inactivation of the Edn1-Dlx5/6 cascade during development results in loss of the tympanic membrane in mouse and duplication in chicken, which suggests independent evolution of the tympanic membrane in different amniotes.

    • Taro Kitazawa
    • , Masaki Takechi
    •  & Hiroki Kurihara

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Horizontal gene transfer is important for bacterial evolution but the molecular basis of its fitness costs remain unclear. Here the authors show that fitness costs produced by a plasmid in P. aeruginosaare alleviated by mutations in recently acquired genes encoded in mobile genetic elements.

    • Alvaro San Millan
    • , Macarena Toll-Riera
    •  & R. Craig MacLean

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The evolution of neuropeptide signalling in insects is poorly understood. Here the authors map renal tissue architecture in the major insect Orders, and show that while the ancient neuropeptide families are involved in signalling in nearly all species, there is functional variation in the cell types that mediate the signal.

    • Kenneth A. Halberg
    • , Selim Terhzaz
    •  & Julian A. T. Dow

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sexual reproduction introduces genetic conflict between family members, but direct empirical evidence is lacking. Here, the authors show, in an insect with maternal care, that genetic trade-offs that differ in shape across offspring stages affect the scope for parent–offspring conflict.

    • Mathias Kölliker
    • , Stefan Boos
    •  & Joël Meunier

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Claspers are copulatory organs found in male cartilaginous fishes. Here, the authors show that androgen receptor signalling maintains the Shh pathway to promote clasper development in male skates and suggest the importance of hormonal regulation in the evolution of male copulatory organs.

    • Katherine L. O’Shaughnessy
    • , Randall D. Dahn
    •  & Martin J. Cohn

  • Article |

    Sequential segmentation in development is best described in vertebrates, where it relies on cell proliferation and shows regular periodicity. Here, the authors show that in the flour beetle segments are added with irregular rate and their elongation during periods of fast growth relies mostly on cell movements.

    • A. Nakamoto
    • , S. D. Hester
    •  & T. A. Williams

  • Article
    | Open Access

    H7N9 bird flu viruses cause mild disease in poultry but can occasionally infect humans with fatal consequences. Here, the authors show that viral genetic diversification is low in ferrets and high in chickens, suggesting that a genetic bottleneck limits H7N9 adaptation to mammals

    • Hassan Zaraket
    • , Tatiana Baranovich
    •  & Richard J. Webby

  • Article |

    Despite apparent morphological diversity, developmental interactions create predictable patterns of variation. Here the authors show that variation in the proportion of limbs, digits and somites and their response to artificial selection follow a rule that predicts the size of sequentially forming structures.

    • Nathan M. Young
    • , Benjamin Winslow
    •  & Kathryn Kavanagh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Populations of bacterial pathogens can be diverse within colonized individuals. Here, the authors sequence the genomes of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureusisolated from staff and animal patients at a veterinary hospital and show considerable within-host diversity that can rise and fall over time.

    • Gavin K. Paterson
    • , Ewan M. Harrison
    •  & Mark A. Holmes

  • Article |

    The 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic exposed major gaps in our knowledge of the spatial ecology and evolution of swine influenza A viruses. Here Nelson et al. perform an extensive phylogenetic analysis of these viruses and show that the global trade of live swine strongly predicts their spatial dissemination.

    • Martha I. Nelson
    • , Cécile Viboud
    •  & Philippe Lemey

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