Evolution articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article |

    Theory predicts trade-offs between investments in precopulatory and postcopulatory sexual traits, but empirical evidence is inconsistent. Here, Lüpold et al.show that the covariance between pre- and postcopulatory sexual traits shifts from positive to negative with increasing male–male competition.

    • Stefan Lüpold
    • , Joseph L. Tomkins
    •  & John L. Fitzpatrick

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Locusts are destructive agricultural pests and serve as a model organism for studies of insects. Here, the authors report a draft genome sequence of the migratory locust, Locusta migratoria, and provide insight into genes associated with key survival traits such as phase-change, long-distance migration and feeding.

    • Xianhui Wang
    • , Xiaodong Fang
    •  & Le Kang

  • Article |

    It is generally assumed that ecologically relevant intraspecific diversity is restricted to DNA sequence variation. Here, Latzel et al.show that epigenetic diversity can increase the productivity of plant populations as well as their ability to suppress competitors.

    • Vít Latzel
    • , Eric Allan
    •  & Oliver Bossdorf

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mechanical cues can induce morphogenetic processes during development. Here the authors show that mechanical changes during embryonic development in both zebrafish and Drosophilalead to nuclear localization of β-catenin, which regulates genes required for early mesoderm development in both species.

    • Thibaut Brunet
    • , Adrien Bouclet
    •  & Emmanuel Farge

  • Article |

    Allosauroids were common Jurassic–Cretaceous megapredators that disappeared in the Late Cretaceous faunal turnover. Here, Zanno and Makovicky describe Siats meekerorum, a giant new North American allosauroid from the Late Cretaceous, demonstrating that this clade co-occurred with and competitively excluded smaller tyrannosaurs.

    • Lindsay E. Zanno
    •  & Peter J. Makovicky

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chemical communication can evolve from compounds used for other purposes, but experimental evidence is scarce. Here, Weiss et al.show a gradual evolution of a defensive compound into a competition avoidance mediator and a sex pheromone, which was accompanied by diversification of chemical messengers to obtain the required specificity.

    • Ingmar Weiss
    • , Thomas Rössler
    •  & Johannes Stökl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The effect of the rate of forming and breaking social ties on cooperative behaviour is not clear. Here the authors experimentally test the effect of rewiring the connections between individuals, and find that optimal levels of cooperation are achieved at intermediate levels of change in ties.

    • Hirokazu Shirado
    • , Feng Fu
    •  & Nicholas A. Christakis

  • Article |

    Body clocks modulate physiological processes to follow a day–night cycle, but whether animals exposed to constant darkness express circadian rhythms is unknown. Here the authors examine the expression of circadian genes in Mexican cavefish, and find that these resemble a pattern expected from exposure to constant daylight.

    • Andrew Beale
    • , Christophe Guibal
    •  & David Whitmore

  • Article |

    Animal colouration is the product of competing selection pressures. Here the authors analyse the diversity of facial colouration in Old World monkeys and apes, and find that colour patterns are linked to social factors, whereas the different levels of facial pigmentation arise as a result of ecological pressures.

    • Sharlene E. Santana
    • , Jessica Lynch Alfaro
    •  & Michael E. Alfaro

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The early steps in the evolution of multicellularity are poorly understood. Here, Ratcliff et al. show that multicellularity can rapidly evolve in the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, demonstrating that single-cell developmental bottlenecks may evolve rapidly via co-option of the ancestral phenotype.

    • William C. Ratcliff
    • , Matthew D. Herron
    •  & Michael Travisano

  • Article |

    The evolutionary origins of the chordate neural tube and notochord are unclear. Here the authors show the expression patterns of chordate patterning genes in a hemichordate, which suggest that the hemichordate endoderm and collar cord might be homologous to the chordate notochord and neural tube, respectively.

    • Norio Miyamoto
    •  & Hiroshi Wada

  • Article |

    Cladodontomorph sharks are Palaeozoic stem chondrichthyans thought to have disappeared at the end-Permian mass extinction. Here, Guinot et al.report the finding of a shark tooth assemblage from the Early Cretaceous recovered from southern France, which shows that this group survived the mass extinction in deep-sea refuges.

    • Guillaume Guinot
    • , Sylvain Adnet
    •  & Henri Cappetta

  • Article |

    Cells can adapt rapidly to survive and efficiently exploit constantly changing environments by varying their mutation rate. Here the authors construct an in silicosystem to modulate mutation rate, and demonstrate that this method can be used in the laboratory to create specific phenotypes.

    • Howard H. Chou
    •  & Jay D. Keasling

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Scorpions have maintained the primary anatomical features of their Paleozoic arthropod ancestors. Here, the authors report the genome sequence of Mesobuthus martensiiand highlight evidence of genetic and morphological evolution that represents a unique adaptation model of arthropods.

    • Zhijian Cao
    • , Yao Yu
    •  & Wenxin Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA variation has four major founders whose sources are difficult to trace due to the rarity of Ashkenazi Jews in the general population. Here, the authors provide evidence that all four major founders originated from Europe and provide a genealogical record of the Ashkenazi.

    • Marta D. Costa
    • , Joana B. Pereira
    •  & Martin B. Richards

  • Article |

    Spatial scale is important for ecological and evolutionary processes, yet objectively identifying critical scales has been challenging. Here, the authors illustrate how network modularity can identify critical scales in animal movement and significantly alter our understanding of ecological processes.

    • Robert J. Fletcher Jr
    • , Andre Revell
    •  & James D. Austin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Differences in resource availability or inequality of wealth are common both in nature and in human societies. Here the authors find that such inequality facilitates cooperation when the generation of public goods is inefficient, but hinders cooperation when the efficiency of joint actions is high.

    • Ádám Kun
    •  & Ulf Dieckmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Between 8000 and 4000 BP, agriculture spread throughout Europe changing consumption patterns and increasing populations. Shennan et al. analyse radiocarbon date distributions and paleoclimate proxies to show that agriculture also triggered regional population oscillations and that climate forcing is an unlikely cause.

    • Stephen Shennan
    • , Sean S. Downey
    •  & Mark G. Thomas

  • Article |

    Tooth shapes vary greatly amongst mammals, but the genetic underpinnings and functional relevance of new dental morphologies are largely unknown. Gomes Rodrigues et al. show that Eda and Edargenes modulate molar crest development in mice, enabling incipient adaptation to highly fibrous diets.

    • Helder Gomes Rodrigues
    • , Sabrina Renaud
    •  & Laurent Viriot

  • Article |

    Some early flying dinosaurs, such as the Early Creataceous Microraptor, possessed four wings, but their aerodynamic performance is poorly understood. Dyke et al. show that Microraptordid not require sophisticated wing morphology to undertake effective glides, supporting the view that the origin of feathers in dinosaurs is not associated with flight.

    • Gareth Dyke
    • , Roeland de Kat
    •  & Bharathram Ganapathisubramani

  • Article |

    Size-related craniofacial ontogenetic shape variation is known to occur in mammals: large individuals tend to be long-faced and small individuals have large braincases. Carnini and Polly now demonstrate that cranial size and shape co-vary in adults across a range of mammalian groups.

    • Andrea Cardini
    •  & P. David Polly

  • Article |

    Social groups often need to take decisions and solve problems together, with each member contributing to the solution in a different way. Zafeiris et al.provide a family of models that allow the definition of the ideal distribution of competences in a group to solve a given task.

    • Anna Zafeiris
    •  & Tamás Vicsek

  • Article |

    Deep-sea coelacanth female fish were thought to enhance genetic variability in their offspring by mating with multiple males. Here, Lampert et al.analyse the paternity of the offspring of two females, and present evidence that coelacanth females are in fact monogamous.

    • Kathrin P. Lampert
    • , Katrin Blassmann
    •  & Manfred Schartl

  • Article |

    Many different factors contribute to the acquisition of drug resistance in cancer cells. Using single-cell analyses of leukaemia cells, the authors here provide evidence for an inductive mode of resistance, where cells express MDR1 in response to drug exposure, rather than selection of pre-existing, partially resistant cells.

    • Angela Oliveira Pisco
    • , Amy Brock
    •  & Sui Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hydrogenosomes and mitosomes are mitochondria-related organelles with distinct properties. Here the authors find that the mitochondria-related organelle of the salmon parasite Spironucleus salmonicidahas characteristics of both diplomonad mitosomes and of parabasalid hydrogenosomes, suggesting the presence of hydrogenosomes in the last common ancestor.

    • Jon Jerlström-Hultqvist
    • , Elin Einarsson
    •  & Staffan G. Svärd

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A central tenet of population genetics is that the probability of fixing beneficial new alleles in a population is twice their fitness effect, but this has not been empirically proven. Chelo et al. show experimentally, using nematode worms, that extinction rates decrease when the number of beneficial alleles increases.

    • Ivo M. Chelo
    • , Judit Nédli
    •  & Henrique Teotónio

  • Article |

    Mosasaurs were the dominant marine reptiles in the Late Cretaceous. Lindgren et al. report a mosasaur fossil with preserved soft tissue, providing the first evidence that mosasaurs were propelled by hypocercal tail fins.

    • Johan Lindgren
    • , Hani F. Kaddumi
    •  & Michael J. Polcyn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is still not clear when the introduction of animal domestication in northwestern Europe occurred. Here the authors provide evidence that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Northern Germany already possessed domestic pigs, and pigs were present in the region ~500 years earlier than previously thought.

    • Ben Krause-Kyora
    • , Cheryl Makarewicz
    •  & Almut Nebel

  • Article |

    MADS-box genes regulate flowering plant development, but their evolutionary origins are unclear. Here, Ruelens et al.show that three major, apparently flowering plant-specific, MADS-box gene clades are derived from a single ancestral tandem duplication, and identify FLOWERING LOCUS C-like genes in cereals.

    • Philip Ruelens
    • , Ruud A. de Maagd
    •  & Kerstin Kaufmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Unicellular ancestors of metazoans can provide significant insights into the origin of multicellularity. Suga et al. present the first complete genome of the filasterean Capsaspora owczarzakiand suggest an evolutionary mechanism for the transition from unicellular protists to metazoans.

    • Hiroshi Suga
    • , Zehua Chen
    •  & Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo

  • Article |

    Sequencing whole microbial genomes has become standard practice and methods to examine their phylogenetic relationships need to match the increasing demand. Segata et al. present a new computational pipeline that allows fast and accurate taxonomic assignment of microbial species.

    • Nicola Segata
    • , Daniela Börnigen
    •  & Curtis Huttenhower

  • Article |

    Uncovering the factors that influence the generation of copy number variation (CNV) across the genome may increase our understanding of the role of CNVs in disease. Here, Makino et al.provide insights into the mechanisms underlying CNV formation and suggest a method for identifying disease-associated CNVs.

    • Takashi Makino
    • , Aoife McLysaght
    •  & Masakado Kawata

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Abscisic acid plays an essential role in the induction of vegetative desiccation tolerance in bryophytes. Here the authors show that elimination of protein phosphatases 2C is sufficient for the mossPhyscomitrella patensto survive desiccation without the assistance of abscisic acid.

    • Kenji Komatsu
    • , Norihiro Suzuki
    •  & Yoichi Sakata

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