Blog

Image: Sam Binding. Cover Design: Lauren Heslop.

Editorial

• Editorial | 20 August 2020

  Three-pronged pandemic prevention

  The importance of biodiversity protection for disease prevention is now obvious from evolutionary, ecological and economic angles.

Correspondence

Correspondence | 20 July 2020

Integrating agroecological production in a robust post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework

• Thomas C. Wanger
• Fabrice DeClerck
• Wolfgang Weisser

Correspondence | 23 June 2020

Ecological and epidemiological models are both useful for SARS-CoV-2

• Miguel B. Araújo
• Frederico Mestre
• Babak Naimi

Correspondence | 29 July 2020

Don’t gamble the COVID-19 response on ecological hypotheses

• Colin J. Carlson
• Joseph D. Chipperfield
• Robert B. O’Hara

Comment & Opinion

Comment | 22 June 2020

COVID-19 lockdown allows researchers to quantify the effects of human activity on wildlife

Reduced human mobility during the pandemic will reveal critical aspects of our impact on animals, providing important guidance on how best to share space on this crowded planet.

• Christian Rutz
• Matthias-Claudio Loretto
• Francesca Cagnacci

News & Views

News & Views | 26 June 2020

A planktonic picoeukaryote makes big changes to the green lineage

The genome sequence of the algal species Prasinoderma coloniale reveals a novel phylum of green plants.

• Gwenael Piganeau

Reviews

Perspective | 20 July 2020

Build up conservation research capacity in China for biodiversity governance

Recent institutional and vertebrate conservation scientists’ publication data suggest that China has a growing conservation research capacity deficit. Here the authors outline steps China must take to build up this capacity in order to safeguard the country’s exceptionally rich biodiversity.

• Peng-Fei Fan
• Li Yang
• Tien Ming Lee

Perspective | 27 July 2020

Self-disseminating vaccines to suppress zoonoses

Vaccines that can spread autonomously through animal populations could help to prevent zoonoses before they spillover into humans. This Perspective discusses the epidemiological theory and the practical challenges associated with transmissible and transferable vaccines.

• Scott L. Nuismer
• James J. Bull

Research

Brief Communication | 13 July 2020

Echolocation at high intensity imposes metabolic costs on flying bats

The costs of echolocation during flight were thought to be negligible for bats, but here it is shown that this is true only below a certain intensity threshold. Above 130 dB, the costs of sound production become too expensive for small bats.

• Shannon E. Currie
• Arjan Boonman
• Christian C. Voigt

Article | 06 July 2020

Rib cage anatomy in Homo erectus suggests a recent evolutionary origin of modern human body shape

Three-dimensional reconstructions of Homo erectus, Homo sapiens and a Neanderthal suggest a recent evolutionary origin for the comparatively shallow modern human thorax.

• Markus Bastir
• Daniel García-Martínez
• Fred Spoor

Article | 06 July 2020

Speleothem record attests to stable environmental conditions during Neanderthal–modern human turnover in southern Italy

Unstable and harsh climates have been implicated as partial causes of Neanderthal demise. Here a speleothem palaeoenvironmental record spanning the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition attests to stable and moderate conditions in the Mediterranean during this time suggesting a more complicated picture than previously thought.

• Andrea Columbu
• Veronica Chiarini
• Jo De Waele

Article | 06 July 2020

Global biogeography of marine dispersal potential

Analysing data on egg size and planktonic duration from >750 marine species with a larval period, the authors show that temperature, life-history and oceanographic processes interact to shape peaks of dispersal at low and high latitudes.

• Mariana Álvarez-Noriega
• Scott C. Burgess
• Dustin J. Marshall

Article | 13 July 2020

Heterogeneity–diversity relationships differ between and within trophic levels in temperate forests

An analysis across multiple species groups and different facets of stand-level heterogeneity in temperate forests from Central Europe reveals that heterogeneity–diversity relationships are not generalizable and predictable as modelling approaches suggest, varying even between ecologically similar species groups.

• Lea Heidrich
• Soyeon Bae
• Jörg Müller

Article | 13 July 2020

Phylogenetic analyses with systematic taxon sampling show that mitochondria branch within Alphaproteobacteria

Phylogenetic analysis shows that site-exclusion methods produce erratic phylogenetic estimates of mitochondrial origin and support an origin of mitochondria within Alphaproteobacteria.

• Lu Fan
• Dingfeng Wu
• Ruixin Zhu

Article | 22 June 2020 | Open Access

The genome of Prasinoderma coloniale unveils the existence of a third phylum within green plants

Genome analysis of the pico-eukaryotic marine green alga Prasinoderma coloniale CCMP 1413 unveils the existence of a novel phylum within green plants (Viridiplantae), the Prasinodermophyta, which diverged before the split of Chlorophyta and Streptophyta.

• Linzhou Li
• Sibo Wang
• Huan Liu

Article | 06 July 2020

The delayed and geographically heterogeneous diversification of flowering plant families

A new study of the divergence time of angiosperm families shows that although most angiosperm families originated during the middle Cretaceous (~100–90 million years ago), the diversification of families into extant diversity was delayed until the Palaeocene (~66–56 million years ago), this time lag being geographically heterogeneous, and longer in tropical than in temperate and arid biomes.

• Santiago Ramírez-Barahona
• Hervé Sauquet
• Susana Magallón

Article | 29 June 2020

Birth of a pathway for sulfur metabolism in early amniote evolution

Invasion of land required changes of vertebrate metabolism. Here, the authors report a pathway for sulfur metabolism present in chick embryos but not in mammals, which originated around 300 million years ago in a proto-reptile.

• Marco Malatesta
• Giulia Mori
• Riccardo Percudani

Article | 13 July 2020

Step-wise evolution of neural patterning by Hedgehog signalling in chordates

Manipulation of Hh and other genes involved in neural development of the chordate amphioxus reveals conservation and differences in neural patterning mechanisms between vertebrates and amphioxus.

• Qiongqiong Ren
• Yanhong Zhong
• Guang Li

Article | 06 July 2020

Metagenome-wide association analysis identifies microbial determinants of post-antibiotic ecological recovery in the gut

Discovery cohorts from three continents, plus experiments in mouse models, are used to identify microbial species and mechanisms involved in post-antibiotic gut community recovery.

• Kern Rei Chng
• Tarini Shankar Ghosh
• Niranjan Nagarajan

Article | 06 July 2020

Dysbiosis individualizes the fitness effect of antibiotic resistance in the mammalian gut

The cost of the same antibiotic resistance mutation in the mouse gut is shown to vary between hosts as the result of differences in microbiota.

• Luís Leónidas Cardoso
• Paulo Durão
• Isabel Gordo

Amendments & Corrections

Author Correction | 13 July 2020

Author Correction: Speleothem record attests to stable environmental conditions during Neanderthal–modern human turnover in southern Italy

• Andrea Columbu
• Veronica Chiarini
• Jo De Waele

Author Correction | 16 July 2020

Author Correction: The genome of Prasinoderma coloniale unveils the existence of a third phylum within green plants

• Linzhou Li
• Sibo Wang
• Huan Liu