Research articles

Ecological communities may arise through distinct assembly processes, which are difficult to disentangle. Here the authors show that deterministic niche-based, not neutral dispersal, assembly processes explain the vast majority of the structure of a tropical forest liana community.

An estimated AU$583 billion per year cost of in situ recovery of terrestrial and freshwater species in Australia, including through habitat restoration and retention and management of invasive species, is not an expected conservation budget, but exemplifies the severe cost of nature declines.

A phylogenetic comparative analysis of male and female body size across tetrapods globally shows that directional change in size is usually greater in males but reveals different underlying mechanisms among lineages.

Simulating a metapopulation of human evolution without Neanderthal introgression into Homo sapiens still identifies Neanderthal fragments in simulated genomes, and an admixture event that never took place. This indicates that population structure must be accounted for in human evolutionary genomics and that putative ancient hybridization events should be reinterpreted in this light.

A meta-analysis finds that decreasing diversity of pollinator species has a negative affect on multiple measures of plant reproductive success, with wild plant species affected more than cultivated species, and loss of invertebrate, nocturnal and wild pollinators being particularly problematic.

Tropical forest landscapes are increasingly being modified by human activities. Here the authors apply a causal inference approach to Neotropical forest data to disentangle the role of landscape-level and local drivers and reveal replacement of ‘loser’ by ‘winner’ tree species with distinct functional profiles.

Climate change is inducing widespread shifts in the phenology of terrestrial organisms. This global analysis reveals a growing asymmetry between plant and animal responses, with more pronounced phenological shifts in plants.

Analysis of habitat data, quantitative trait locus mapping of seed size and selective sweeps show parallel selection acting on inversions in two independent dune ecotypes of the prairie sunflower, Helianthus petiolaris.

Combining a large-scale dataset of 23 ungulate species (in which newborns follow contrasting tactics of predator avoidance) with continuous-time stochastic movement models, the authors reveal that there are multiple dimensions of maternal movement behaviour and space use.

Functional diversity and phylogenetic diversity are expected to be positively correlated. Here the authors show that the covariation between these metrics in vascular plant communities around the world is often either inconsistent or negative.

This modelling study integrates comprehensive regional plant inventories, environmental conditions and palaeogeographical reconstructions to assess the relative roles of environmental filtering and dispersal barriers in shaping global seed plant diversity, demonstrating that environmental filtering has a persistent effect on species distribution patterns across evolutionary timescales.

Based on phylogenomic and geometric morphometric analyses of 132 anglerfish species, the authors infer a Cretaceous origin of the clade and show that bathypelagic anglerfish are undergoing rapid phenotypic diversification despite inhabiting a relatively homogeneous deep-sea habitat.

A series of case studies is used to illustrate how concepts from causal interference can be used to guide research into the effects of weather on the transmission and population dynamics of infectious diseases.

A comparative analysis of morphological data across 149 species of Drosophilidae shows that sperm length in males has co-evolved with the length of the sperm-storage organ in females. Combining a genome-wide association study of these traits in Drosophila melanogaster with molecular evolutionary analyses of the genomes of 15 Drosophila species, the authors find that the genetic architecture underlying sperm length is associated with indirect genetic benefits in females, providing support for the ‘good genes’ hypothesis.

Based on a combination of experiments and modelling, this study shows large stochastic fluctuations in genotype frequencies caused by intrinsic and extrinsic factors, with implications for population dynamics and evolution.

The authors show that DNA methylation patterns in one tissue can inform on those in another, under certain conditions, and devise an algorithm that allows identification of differential DNA methylation. They applied it to an archaic human dataset, revealing information about human brain evolution in the absence of preserved brain tissue.

A 43-year dataset of rodents in the Hu region of China reveals how urbanization-induced changes to land-use configuration affect rodent community composition, including benefitting striped field mice, the primary local hosts of the zoonotic pathogen Hantaan virus.

An assessment of the Australian carbon credit units scheme finds that most current projects under the scheme overlap the habitats of few threatened species. The findings generate lessons for the planned development of a national biodiversity market based on the ACCU scheme.

Measuring how mutations in the promoter of a metabolic gene modified its expression level and affected growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in four environments, the authors show that the effects of mutations on gene expression and the relationships between expression levels and fitness vary among environments.

Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and may have disproportionate effects on carbon cycling. Here, the authors quantify the impact of warm extreme occurrences on terrestrial carbon sequestration capacity over the past 40 years.