Nature ecology & evolution,june 2021
Volume 5 Issue 6, June 2021
Flexible pollinators
Female longhorn bee (Melissodes sp.) on orange sneezeweed (Hymenoxys hoopesii) at Hannagan Meadow in Arizona. Native bees that are flexible in their interaction patterns are able to colonize different habitat patches in the landscape. This interaction flexibility could be a potential mechanism for ecological communities to maintain ecosystem function despite the pressures of different extinction drivers.
See Gaiarsa et al.
Image: Jessica L. Mullins. Cover Design: Allen Beattie.
Editorial
Editorial | 04 June 2021
Fossilized ethics
The ethical issues surrounding Burmese amber expose a tangle of problems within twenty-first century palaeontology, which has not fully reckoned with its genesis as a colonial science. This editorial accompanies an update to Nature Portfolio policy which takes a first step towards combatting parachute science in palaeontological, archaeological and geological fields.
Correspondence
Correspondence | 04 June 2021
Balance scientific and ethical concerns to achieve a nuanced perspective on ‘blood amber’
- Chao Shi
- Hao-hong Cai
- Robert A. Spicer
Correspondence | 04 June 2021
Parachute research is another ethical problem for Myanmar amber
- Zin-Maung-Maung-Thein
- Khin Zaw
Correspondence | 04 June 2021
Law, ethics, gems and fossils in Myanmar amber
- Paul M. Barrett
- Zerina Johanson
- Sarah L. Long
Comment & Opinion
World View | 12 May 2021
Ocean science and advocacy work better when decolonized
Ocean conservation is needed within various and complex contexts. A nuanced understanding of this will bring better results for the global oceans, argues Dyhia Belhabib.
- Dyhia Belhabib
News & Views
News & Views | 07 April 2021
Neanderthal assimilation?
Four new Late Pleistocene European modern human genomes had Neanderthal ancestors in their immediate family history, suggesting that interbreeding with the last Neanderthals was common.
- Carles Lalueza-Fox
News & Views | 29 March 2021
Distant drivers of deforestation
Combining detailed spatial maps of deforestation with international commodity trade patterns reveals that some countries’ consumption patterns play an outsized role in driving deforestation in others.
- Alexandra Marques
Reviews
Perspective | 10 May 2021
Bycatch levies could reconcile trade-offs between blue growth and biodiversity conservation
This Perspective outlines how financial levies on fisheries bycatch may aid biodiversity conservation both directly, by incentivizing bycatch prevention, and indirectly, through raising revenue that could be directed towards compensatory conservation.
- Hollie Booth
- William N. S. Arlidge
- E. J. Milner-Gulland
Perspective | 08 April 2021
Opportunities to improve China’s biodiversity protection laws
The authors review wildlife protection laws in China and provide recommendations on how sentencing could be improved to incentivize compliance.
- Xiushan Li
- Yu Wang
- Oliver Schweiger
Research
Matters Arising | 05 April 2021
Disentangling biology from mathematical necessity in twentieth-century gymnosperm resilience trends
- Tong Zheng
- Jordi Martínez-Vilalta
- Maurizio Mencuccini
Matters Arising | 05 April 2021
Reply to: Disentangling biology from mathematical necessity in twentieth-century gymnosperm resilience trends
- Xiangyi Li
- Shilong Piao
- Josep Peñuelas
Article | 15 April 2021
Animals, protists and bacteria share marine biogeographic patterns
Despite the fact that large animals and microorganisms face different environmental and anthropogenic pressures, this study finds that marine biogeographic patterns are similar for organisms in different kingdoms.
- Luke E. Holman
- Mark de Bruyn
- Marc Rius
Article | 22 April 2021
Soil microbiome predictability increases with spatial and taxonomic scale
A predictive model of soil microbiome composition is tested against community surveys from across the United States, showing an increase in predictability with spatial scale when using both functional and taxonomic groups.
- Colin Averill
- Zoey R. Werbin
- Michael C. Dietze
Article | 01 April 2021
Amazon tree dominance across forest strata
Most Amazon tree species are rare but a small proportion are common across the region. The authors show that different species are hyperdominant in different size classes and that hyperdominance is more phylogenetically restricted for larger canopy trees than for smaller understory ones.
- Frederick C. Draper
- Flavia R. C. Costa
- Christopher Baraloto
Article | 15 April 2021
The island rule explains consistent patterns of body size evolution in terrestrial vertebrates
A phylogenetic meta-analysis of patterns and drivers of body size evolution across a global sample of paired island–mainland populations of terrestrial vertebrates shows that ‘island rule’ effects are widespread in mammals, birds and reptiles, but less evident in amphibians, which mostly tend towards gigantism.
- Ana Benítez-López
- Luca Santini
- Joseph A. Tobias
Article | 01 April 2021
Pollinator interaction flexibility across scales affects patch colonization and occupancy
Flexibility in interaction patterns could help species adapt to global change. Here the authors show that pollinators with higher interaction flexibility are more likely to colonize new patches in a landscape.
- Marília Palumbo Gaiarsa
- Claire Kremen
- Lauren C. Ponisio
Article | 05 April 2021
Balancing selection maintains hyper-divergent haplotypes in Caenorhabditis elegans
The genomes of 609 wild Caenorhabditis elegans strains isolated across the world reveal hyper-divergent regions, often shared among many wild strains, that are enriched for genes that mediate environmental response, which might have enabled the species to thrive in diverse environments.
- Daehan Lee
- Stefan Zdraljevic
- Erik C. Andersen
Article | 01 April 2021
Divergence-time estimates for hominins provide insight into encephalization and body mass trends in human evolution
The authors apply a Bayesian total evidence dating approach to a recent hominin phylogeny, estimating that the origin of Homo probably occurred 4.3–2.56 million years ago. Ancestral state reconstructions show the onset of a trend towards greater body mass with the origin of the genus and gradual but accelerating encephalization rates throughout hominin evolution.
- Hans P. Püschel
- Ornella C. Bertrand
- Thomas A. Püschel
Article | 07 April 2021
A genome sequence from a modern human skull over 45,000 years old from Zlatý kůň in Czechia
The authors present the genome sequence of a >45,000-year-old female Homo sapiens individual from the site of Zlatý kůň, Czechia. Although radiometric dating of the human remains was inconclusive, the authors were able to use molecular methods to demonstrate that she was probably among the earliest Eurasian inhabitants following expansion out of Africa.
- Kay Prüfer
- Cosimo Posth
- Johannes Krause
Article | 12 April 2021
A theoretical analysis of tumour containment
Adaptive therapies based on evolutionary principles propose that, under certain conditions, tumour containment, rather than elimination, might be the best strategy to treat cancer. This study presents a theoretical analysis of different models of tumour containment.
- Yannick Viossat
- Robert Noble
Article | 08 April 2021
A metric for spatially explicit contributions to science-based species targets
The species threat abatement and restoration (STAR) metric quantifies the contributions that abating threats and restoring habitats offer towards reducing species’ extinction risk in specific places.
- Louise Mair
- Leon A. Bennun
- Philip J. K. McGowan
Focus:
Article | 29 March 2021
Mapping the deforestation footprint of nations reveals growing threat to tropical forests
The authors use economic input–output modelling to reveal how consumption patterns contribute to deforestation domestically and internationally across nations.
- Nguyen Tien Hoang
- Keiichiro Kanemoto
Focus:
Article | 29 April 2021
Limited protection and ongoing loss of tropical cloud forest biodiversity and ecosystems worldwide
A global assessment of the status of tropical cloud forests shows that they have declined overall by ~2.4% since 2001, with much of this occurring despite formal protection and with up to 8% loss in some regions.
- Dirk Nikolaus Karger
- Michael Kessler
- Walter Jetz
Amendments & Corrections
Publisher Correction | 16 April 2021
Publisher Correction: Evolutionary assembly of flowering plants into sky islands
- Hong Qian
- Robert E. Ricklefs
- Wilfried Thuiller
Author Correction | 22 April 2021
Author Correction: On the causes of geographically heterogeneous parallel evolution in sticklebacks
- Bohao Fang
- Petri Kemppainen
- Juha Merilä
Author Correction | 14 May 2021
Author Correction: Moth biomass has fluctuated over 50 years in Britain but lacks a clear trend
- Callum J. Macgregor
- Jonathan H. Williams
- Chris D. Thomas
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