Evolution articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Endothermy facilitated mammalian species radiation, but the events leading to sustained thermogenesis are not clear. Here, the authors report functional brown adipose tissue in a protoendothermic mammal, linking nonshivering thermogenesis directly to the roots of eutherian endothermic evolution.

    • Rebecca Oelkrug
    • , Nadja Goetze
    •  & Carola W. Meyer

  • Article |

    Energy demand in muscle is largely due to maintaining the membrane potential of muscle fibres. Jimenez et al.study the metabolic cost of maintaining the membrane potential of muscle fibres across different species of crustaceans and fishes, and find that larger fibres are metabolically cheaper to maintain.

    • Ana Gabriela Jimenez
    • , Richard M. Dillaman
    •  & Stephen T. Kinsey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The evolutionary origins of the costal and neural bony plates of the turtle shell have long remained elusive. Here the authors show, through comparative morphological and embryological analyses, that the most of the carapace is derived from endoskeletal ribs.

    • Tatsuya Hirasawa
    • , Hiroshi Nagashima
    •  & Shigeru Kuratani

  • Article |

    Environmental fluctuation is known to promote biodiversity on ecological timescales, but its consequences for the evolution of biodiversity are unknown. Here, the authors report that alternations in environmental conditions help maintain evolved biodiversity in rapidly diversifying bacterial populations.

    • Jiaqi Tan
    • , Colleen K. Kelly
    •  & Lin Jiang

  • Article |

    Excessive and costly defensive traits sometimes evolve contrary to what is expected based on the individual fitness. Here the authors provide evidence that asymmetrical natural selection explains the evolution of excessive investments in defence against enemies, including autoimmune responses.

    • Mark C. Urban
    • , Reinhard Bürger
    •  & Daniel I. Bolnick

  • Article |

    Kin selection predicts female-biased sex ratios in haplodiploid eusocial insects because sisters are more related to each other than to their brothers. Here the authors provide evidence that sex ratio bias also occurs in diploid eusocial insects, which do not show asymmetric relatedness.

    • Kazuya Kobayashi
    • , Eisuke Hasegawa
    •  & Kenji Matsuura

  • Article |

    The Hula painted frog was the first amphibian to be declared extinct, and it has survived undetected for almost 60 years. Here Gafny and colleagues report a surviving Hula painted frog and provide evidence that it belongs to the otherwise extinct genus Latonia.

    • Rebecca Biton
    • , Eli Geffen
    •  & Sarig Gafny

  • Article |

    Modern crocodylian diversity is in decline and sympatry is rare, with usually no more than two or three species occurring in the same geographic area. Here Scheyer et al. identify a diversity peak in sympatric occurrence of at least seven new and previously characterized crocodylian species during the Miocene in South America.

    • T. M. Scheyer
    • , O. A. Aguilera
    •  & M. R. Sánchez-Villagra

  • Article |

    Rates of molecular evolution vary significantly between species, but the reasons behind this variation remain unclear. Lanfear et al.show that height accounts for one-fifth of the rate variation measured in plant genomes, and suggest that is because taller plants copy their genomes less frequently.

    • Robert Lanfear
    • , Simon Y. W. Ho
    •  & Andrew P. Allen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The South African archaeological record contains evidence of the early flourishing of the human mind. Ziegler et al. provide new paleoclimate reconstructions, which suggest that rapid fluctuations in global climate have played a key role in the evolution of these early human cultures.

    • Martin Ziegler
    • , Margit H. Simon
    •  & Rainer Zahn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    5,000 years ago, the Minoans established the first advanced civilization of Europe, but their origin remains unclear. Here the authors show that the Minoans were a European population, genetically similar to other ancient European populations and to the present inhabitants of the island of Crete.

    • Jeffery R. Hughey
    • , Peristera Paschou
    •  & George Stamatoyannopoulos

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The endemic Tibetan antelope is adapted to high-altitude environments with low partial pressure of oxygen and high level of ultraviolet radiation. Here Ge et al. report a draft genome of this species and by comparison with other mammals, present possible genetic bases of highland adaptation.

    • Ri-Li Ge
    • , Qingle Cai
    •  & Jian Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hermaphrodites develop and maintain male and female reproductive organs in a single individual. Chong et al. show that a DM domain transcription factor is required for male germ cell regeneration and maintains ‘maleness’ in a hermaphrodite, the planarian flatworm Schmidtea mediterranea.

    • Tracy Chong
    • , James J. Collins III
    •  & Phillip A. Newmark

  • Article |

    The adaptive significance of predation on conspecifics in non-carnivorous species is unclear. Here Vijendravarma et al. show that predatory cannibalism in Drosophila larvae has hallmarks of a functional behaviour, is genetically variable, and is favoured during experimental evolution under nutritional stress.

    • Roshan K. Vijendravarma
    • , Sunitha Narasimha
    •  & Tadeusz J. Kawecki

  • Article |

    The brains of rock- and sand-dwelling Lake Malawi cichlid fishes differ in telencephalon partitioning. Sylvester et al. show that these differences can be attributed to divergence in Hedgehog and Wingless signalling during development.

    • J B. Sylvester
    • , C A. Rich
    •  & J T. Streelman

  • Article |

    Here, Brotherton and colleagues sequence 39 mitochondrial genomes from ancient human remains. They track population changes across Central Europe and find that the foundations of the European mitochondrial DNA pool were formed during the Neolithic rather than the post-glacial period.

    • Paul Brotherton
    • , Wolfgang Haak
    •  & Janet S. Ziegle

  • Article |

    Troodontid dinosaurs share a close ancestry with birds and were distributed widely across the northern hemisphere before the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs. Goswami et al. report the discovery in South India of the first Gondwanan troodontid, extending their geographic range by nearly 10,000 km.

    • A. Goswami
    • , G. V. R. Prasad
    •  & R. B. J. Benson

  • Article |

    Robustness to mutations can give rise to cryptic variation —a bottled-up genetic potential, which is of undetermined importance in developmental processes. Kienle and Sommer show the occurrence of cryptic variation in nematode vulva development and identify cis-regulatory evolution of the transcription factor’s HAIRY-binding site as mechanism.

    • Simone Kienle
    •  & Ralf J. Sommer

  • Article |

    Inhibition of return describes a mechanism in humans and monkeys whereby the visual detection of recently attended objects or locations is impaired. Gabay et al.find that inhibition of return is also present in archer fish, meaning that a fully developed cortex is not needed for this mechanism.

    • Shai Gabay
    • , Tali Leibovich
    •  & Ronen Segev

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Trunk exoskeleton elements of non-tetrapods such as scales and fin rays are believed to derive from the neural crest. Shimada and colleagues use long-term cell labelling methods to show that these elements are actually derived from the mesoderm.

    • Atsuko Shimada
    • , Toru Kawanishi
    •  & Hiroyuki Takeda

  • Article |

    Biologists have struggled to explain the existence of sex-role reversal since Darwin first formulated his theory of evolution. Liker et al.show for the first time that sex roles are predicted by adult sex ratio in wild populations of birds: sex-role reversal emerges at male-biased adult sex ratios.

    • András Liker
    • , Robert P. Freckleton
    •  & Tamás Székely

  • Article |

    The origins of the enigmatic extinct Falkland Islands wolf have remained a mystery since first records in the seventeenth century. Ancient DNA data and evidence from submarine terraces reveal that the species colonized the islands during the Last Glacial Maximum via a shallow, potentially frozen, marine strait.

    • Jeremy J. Austin
    • , Julien Soubrier
    •  & Alan Cooper

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Camels originated in North America during the Eocene period ~45 million years ago. This study reports evidence of a High Arctic camel from Ellesmere Island, which extends the range of North American camels northward by ~1,200 km to a lineage of giant camels that were well established in a forested Arctic.

    • Natalia Rybczynski
    • , John C. Gosse
    •  & Mike Buckley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Xenoturbella is a simple marine worm recently suggested to be either a deuterostome or an early branching bilaterian. Nakano et al. report the first observations of naturally spawned eggs and embryos from Xenoturbella, and uncover new insights into the evolutionary history of metazoan development.

    • Hiroaki Nakano
    • , Kennet Lundin
    •  & Michael C. Thorndyke

  • Article |

    It has been thought that the evolution of mammals similar to modern grass-eating horses in South America ∼38 million years ago was a response to the spread of grasslands. This study uses microscopic plant silica fossils from southern Argentina to show that these presumed grass-eating mammals evolved in forests, not grasslands.

    • Caroline A.E. Strömberg
    • , Regan E. Dunn
    •  & Alfredo A. Carlini

  • Article |

    It is generally believed that jaws evolved from a gill arch, but this is unsupported by palaeontological or developmental data. Gillis et al. study three gnathostome taxa and identify a conserved molecular mechanism that delineates the dorsal and ventral skeletal segments of the jaw, hyoid and gill arches.

    • J. Andrew Gillis
    • , Melinda S. Modrell
    •  & Clare V. H. Baker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Chinese tree shrew, Tupaia belangeri chinensis, has been proposed as a potential animal model in biomedical research and drug safety testing. This study presents the full genome of the Chinese tree shrew, identifying common features between the tree shrew and primates.

    • Yu Fan
    • , Zhi-Yong Huang
    •  & Yong-Gang Yao

  • Article |

    Trichoplaxis the most primitive multicellular animal on Earth and thus provides insight into the earliest stages of evolution. Delving deep into the proteome, Heck and colleagues observe a burst in tyrosine phosphorylation, confirming the hypothesis that at the onset of this new communication system a surplus of phosphorylation took place.

    • Jeffrey H. Ringrose
    • , Henk W.P. van den Toorn
    •  & Albert J.R. Heck

  • Article |

    Feathered dinosaurs from the Middle-Late Jurassic of north-eastern China have recently been described. Here, a new paravian dinosaur, characterized by less extensive feathers on its limbs and tail, shows that the plumage of theropods was already diversified and adapted to different ecological niches by the Late Jurassic.

    • Pascal Godefroit
    • , Helena Demuynck
    •  & Philippe Claeys

  • Article |

    Specimens of the Early Cretaceous bird C. sanctuswith ornamental tail feathers are commonly interpreted as male, and those without as female. In this study, in support of this theory, medullary bone—a tissue unique to reproductively active female birds—is found in a specimen without ornamental feathers.

    • Anusuya Chinsamy
    • , Luis M. Chiappe
    •  & Zhang Fengjiao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plant pathogens encode effector proteins that trigger immunity in plants carrying appropriate resistance genes. Here Qutob et al. show non-Mendelian interactions between naturally occurring Phytophthora sojaealleles that result in transgenerational gene silencing and gain of virulence in soybean plants.

    • Dinah Qutob
    • , B. Patrick Chapman
    •  & Mark Gijzen

  • Article |

    The rise of open-habitat ecosystems in southern South America is thought to have occurred with the spread of hypsodont mammals 26 million years ago. In this study, the fossil record of plants preserved in Patagonia suggests that open-habitat ecosystems emerged 15 million years later than previously assumed.

    • Luis Palazzesi
    •  & Viviana Barreda

  • Article |

    In Müllerian mimicry two or more harmful species share a similar appearance for mutual benefit. This study identifies a large Müllerian mimicry complex in North American velvet ants, where 65 species mimic each other through shared colour patterns gained as the result of independent evolution.

    • Joseph S. Wilson
    • , Kevin A. Williams
    •  & James P. Pitts

  • Article |

    The mammalian transcription factors Oct4 and Pou2 are implicated in germ cell pluripotency induction and maintenance. Tapia and colleagues find that axolotl Pou2 and Oct4 reprogram mouse and human fibroblasts to a pluripotent state, suggesting ancestral Oct4 and Pou2 gene function is evolutionarily conserved.

    • Natalia Tapia
    • , Peter Reinhardt
    •  & Hans R. Schöler

  • Article |

    Enzymes are traditionally viewed as being highly specific for their substrates. Tokuriki et al.follow the accumulation of mutations during the laboratory evolution of a phosphotriesterase into an arylesterase, and postulate that many naturally occurring enzymes may not be optimal for their substrates.

    • Nobuhiko Tokuriki
    • , Colin J. Jackson
    •  & Dan S. Tawfik

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