Blog

Bird species with a higher propensity towards innovative behaviours are at a lower risk of global extinction and are more likely to have increasing or stable populations than less innovative birds

• Simon Ducatez
• Daniel Sol
• […]
• Louis Lefebvre

A new radiocarbon chronology for the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition at the Bulgarian site of Bacho Kiro reveals Homo sapiens-associated sediments as early as 46,940 yr bp.

• Helen Fewlass
• Sahra Talamo
• […]
• Jean-Jacques Hublin

The loss of biodiversity at the global scale has been difficult to reconcile with observations of no net loss at local scales. Vegetation surveys across European temperate forests show that this may be explained by the replacement of small-ranged species with large-ranged ones, driven by nitrogen deposition.

• Ingmar R. Staude
• Donald M. Waller
• […]
• Lander Baeten

In 355 coastal coral reef fish species, body size changed with warming, but the direction of a species’ body size response to warming through time was generally consistent with its response to temperature changes through space, rather than generally negative.

• Asta Audzijonyte
• Shane A. Richards
• […]
• Julia L. Blanchard

Modelling nonlinear habitat dynamics shows that delayed compensation of human impacts (‘no net loss’) will lead to biodiversity declines by the middle of the century. Instead, the authors recommend fixed targets (such as ‘zero loss’) as part of the post-2020 biodiversity framework.

• Falko Buschke
• Susie Brownlie

Genomic comparisons with a new amphioxus chromosome-scale genome assembly reveal details of the early evolution of vertebrate genomes.

• Oleg Simakov
• Ferdinand Marlétaz
• […]
• Daniel S. Rokhsar

Analysis of transcripts in hybrids of two closely related sea urchins with divergent developmental gene expression suggests limited pleiotropic effects of mutations that contribute to divergence in gene expression.

• Lingyu Wang
• Jennifer W. Israel
• […]
• Gregory A. Wray

A genome assembly of the sterlet, Acipenser ruthenus, reveals a whole-genome duplication early in the evolution of the entire sturgeon lineage and provides details about the rediploidization of the genome.

• Kang Du
• Matthias Stöck
• […]
• Manfred Schartl

Flies with different numbers of Y chromosomes are used to show a potential link between de-repression of repetitive DNA and ageing.

• Emily J. Brown
• Alison H. Nguyen
• Doris Bachtrog

Experimental evolution shows that host–plasmid coevolution in the presence of antibiotics promoted the emergence of multidrug resistance via two distinct conjugative plasmids in communities of Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae once antibiotics were removed.

• Hannah Jordt
• Thibault Stalder
• […]
• Benjamin Kerr

A mathematical model that integrates biological and clinical data shows that the ecology of the stroma is an important determinant of tumour evolution in prostate cancer.

• Ziv Frankenstein
• David Basanta
• […]
• Alexander R. A. Anderson