Nature Ecology & Evolution, March 2021
Volume 5 Issue 3, March 2021
Parasexual recombination in cancer cells
Within a colony that originates from a single hybrid cell and is formed by spontaneous fusion of differentially labelled breast cancer cells, most cells maintain the expression of both parent-specific fluorescent markers. However, a subset of cells lost the expression of the green marker, with some cells migrating away from the colony, suggesting subclonal diversification within the progeny of the hybrid clone.
See…
Image: Andriy Marusyk et al. Cover Design: Allen Beattie.
Editorial
Editorial | 04 March 2021
High time to invest in biodiversity
The delay in final negotiations on the global post-2020 biodiversity framework is providing time for additional scientific evidence, and for strengthening ideas around natural capital.
Focus:
Correspondence
Correspondence | 04 January 2021
Monolingual searches can limit and bias results in global literature reviews
- Martin A. Nuñez
- & Tatsuya Amano
Comment & Opinion
Comment | 25 November 2020
A decade to study deep-sea life
The United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development presents an exceptional opportunity to effect positive change in ocean use. We outline what is required of the deep-sea research community to achieve these ambitious objectives.
- Kerry L. Howell
- Ana Hilário
- & Joana R. Xavier
Comment | 01 February 2021
The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands at 50
At 50, the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, 1971) has a mixed legacy. To survive and stay relevant in the Anthropocene, the convention will need to embrace new ecological thinking and conservation approaches.
- Peter Bridgewater
- & Rakhyun E. Kim
News & Views
News & Views | 04 January 2021
How natural selection shapes our later years
Natural selection does not disappear with age, according to a new evolutionary demographic model. This conclusion is at odds with the widespread belief that ending reproduction relaxes purifying selection on alleles that increase our ageing body’s vulnerability to diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s or diabetes.
- Emmanuel Milot
Reviews
Review Article | 18 January 2021
Mobilizing the past to shape a better Anthropocene
This Review highlights how information from archaeology, history, palaeoecology and other past sources can, and should, be used to inform plans to enhance the sustainability and resilience of our societies.
- Nicole Boivin
- & Alison Crowther
Perspective | 18 January 2021
Management implications of long transients in ecological systems
Ecosystems that exhibit long periods of transient dynamics pose particular challenges for management because state shifts can occur in the absence of exogenous drivers. In this Perspective, the authors outline how different transient behaviours can be influenced by management actions, and how understanding their causal mechanisms can guide future mitigation strategies.
- Tessa B. Francis
- Karen C. Abbott
- & Mary Lou Zeeman
Research
Article | 25 January 2021 | Open Access
Pandanus nutshell generates a palaeoprecipitation record for human occupation at Madjedbebe, northern Australia
Stable carbon isotope analysis of modern and archaeological pandanus nutshell from Australia’s oldest known archaeological site of Madjedbebe reveals precipitation fluctuations over the last 65,000 years.
- S. Anna Florin
- Patrick Roberts
- & Chris Clarkson
Article | 18 January 2021
Extinction risk controlled by interaction of long-term and short-term climate change
Using extinction data from the geological past, the authors compare the effects of synergistic palaeoclimate interactions, where short- and long-term trends are aligned, with antagonistic ones, where they are not, finding that the former can increase extinction risk by up to 40%.
- Gregor H. Mathes
- Jeroen van Dijk
- & Manuel J. Steinbauer
Article | 11 January 2021
Impacts of hypoxic events surpass those of future ocean warming and acidification
A meta-analysis of experimental effects of stressors on marine organisms shows that hypoxia could harm crustaceans, mollusks and fish to a larger extent than warming and acidification.
- Eduardo Sampaio
- Catarina Santos
- & Rui Rosa
Article | 25 January 2021
Environmental resistance predicts the spread of alien species
The authors show how a resistance index based on biotic assemblage resemblance can predict the spread of invasive bird species without having to estimate their ecological niche.
- Rebecca S. L. Lovell
- Tim M. Blackburn
- & Alex L. Pigot
Article | 25 January 2021
The evolution of niche overlap and competitive differences
A two-species eco-evolutionary model based on consumer–resource interactions and quantitative genetic inheritance shows how evolution among competitors changes the components of stable coexistence.
- Abigail I. Pastore
- György Barabás
- & Thomas E. Miller
Article | 11 January 2021
Experimental evolution of adaptive divergence under varying degrees of gene flow
This study uses evolve-and-resequence experiments with fission yeast populations subjected to disruptive ecological selection under different levels of migration to ask how gene flow, ancestral variation and genetic correlations affect the evolution of adaptive divergence.
- Sergio Tusso
- Bart P. S. Nieuwenhuis
- & Jochen B. W. Wolf
Article | 11 January 2021
Host diversity slows bacteriophage adaptation by selecting generalists over specialists
Propagating bacteriophage in cocultures of multiple host strains, the authors show that increasing host strain diversity decreases the rate of adaptation and selects for lower fitness generalists over higher fitness specialists.
- Duhita G. Sant
- Laura C. Woods
- & Michael J. McDonald
Article | 25 January 2021 | Open Access
A genome-wide investigation of the effect of farming and human-mediated introduction on the ubiquitous seaweed Undaria pinnatifida
Human-driven evolutionary changes are captured by comparison of the genomes of natural, cultivated and introduced populations of a globally distributed Pacific kelp.
- Louis Graf
- Younhee Shin
- & Hwan Su Yoon
Article | 18 January 2021
The emergence of the brain non-CpG methylation system in vertebrates
By studying brain DNA methylation across 13 distantly related animals, the authors show that non-CpG DNA methylation, which plays a regulatory role in cognition, is restricted to vertebrates and was assembled at the origin of the vertebrate lineage as a result of the ancestral vertebrate whole-genome duplication.
- Alex de Mendoza
- Daniel Poppe
- & Ryan Lister
Article | 18 January 2021
Spontaneous cell fusions as a mechanism of parasexual recombination in tumour cell populations
Although tumours evolve in a Darwinian fashion, they do not undergo sexual reproduction. The authors show experimentally and using mathematical modelling that spontaneous fusion between cancer cells allows recombination between clones and the possibility of exploring larger areas of the adaptive landscape.
- Daria Miroshnychenko
- Etienne Baratchart
- & Andriy Marusyk
Article | 04 January 2021
Evolutionary demographic models reveal the strength of purifying selection on susceptibility alleles to late-onset diseases
An age-structured population model shows that purifying selection is the norm in humans for alleles that increase susceptibility to many late-onset diseases, and that sociocultural factors need to be taken into account to understand apparent neutrality.
- Samuel Pavard
- & Christophe F. D. Coste
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