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Population dynamics of migratory animals can be driven by direct, indirect, and potentially opposing effects at wintering and breeding grounds. Here, Woodworthet al. show that migratory sparrow population growth rate is balanced by temperature at wintering grounds and density-dependence at breeding grounds.

Songbirds originated in Australia and have now diversified into approximately 5,000 species found across the world. Here, Moyle et al. combine phylogenomic and biogeographic analyses to show that songbird diversification was associated with the formation of islands providing a route out of Australia.

Socially synchronized rhythms in shorebirds were assessed during biparental incubation under natural circumstances and were exceptionally diverse, often not following the 24-h day, whereby risk of predation, not starvation, determined some of the variation in incubation rhythms.

Complex motor behaviors such as birdsong are learned through practice and are thought to depend on specific excitatory connectivity in premotor circuits. Here the authors show that song learning in Bengalese Finches is associated with enrichment of inhibitory network connectivity that can affect specific song features.

Children produce drawings prolifically throughout childhood. Here, the authors conducted a systematic study of how children create and recognize line drawings across development and suggest that changes in children’s drawings reflect refinements in how children represent visual concepts.

Although batesian and müllerian mimicry were identified 100 years ago, the dynamics of mimicry between unequally defended prey remain unresolved. This paper experimentally tests the contrasting theories, demonstrating that unequally defended (even edible) mimics gain survival benefits from their association with one another.

Even after a motor skill is overlearned, some variation remains every time it is performed. Such variation enables trial-and-error learning for adult bengalese finch song. Birds rapidly learned to make adaptive shifts in their vocalizations in response to auditory perturbations delivered to a subset of natural variations in their songs, consistent with the idea that motor variability is a form of exploration that can support continuous learning and optimization of performance.

Conservation efforts can be directed at multiple ecological scales, from species to ecosystems. This Perspective calls for conservation at the scale of ecological communities or assemblages and discusses the data and modelling advances that enable progress at this scale.

A species-wide study shows that the Hawaiian crow Corvus hawaiiensis is a highly proficient tool user, creating opportunities for comparative studies with tool-using New Caledonian crows and other corvids.

Control of sound production by fast vocal muscle is critical to vocal communication. Here the authors show that zebra finches need daily singing exercise to build and maintain peak vocal muscle performance. Lack of exercise alters vocal muscle physiology and reduces attractiveness to females.

Humpbacks have picked up a catchy tune sung by immigrants from a distant ocean.

An analysis of the impact of logging intensity on biodiversity in tropical forests in Sabah, Malaysia, identifies a threshold of tree biomass removal below which logged forests still have conservation value.

In mammals, embryos are considered to be sexually indifferent until the action of a sex-determining gene initiates gonadal differentiation. Here it is demonstrated that this situation is different for birds. Using rare, naturally occurring chimaeric chickens where one side of the animal appears male and the other female, it is shown that avian somatic cells possess an inherent sex identity and that, in birds, sexual differentiation is cell autonomous.

Reconstructing bacterial diversity dynamics from phylogenies, the authors estimate that there are about 1.4–1.9 million extant bacterial lineages and that diversity has been continuously increasing over the past 1 billion years, although most lineages to have inhabited Earth are now extinct.

Ecologists continue to debate whether local species assemblages result from habitat filtering or from turnover among the regional species pool. Here the authors develop a “dispersion field” method to mapping species range overlaps, showing that regional turnover processes are key to local assembly.

Reinforcement signals indicating success or failure are known to alter the probability of selecting between distinct actions. Here the authors examine the structure of learning at a millisecond timescale, suggesting that reinforcement can also guide learning of continuous action trajectories.

Analysing >5,000 population abundance time series for insects and other arthropods from 68 sites within the US Long Term Ecological Research network, the authors find high variation but no overall trend in abundance and diversity among sites and taxa.

Invertebrates are key components in the ecological functioning of tropical forests. Here, Ewers et al. show that, compared to primary forest, logging halves the contribution of invertebrate species to several key ecosystem processes, including litter decomposition.

Vultures are scavengers with a high tolerance to bacterial toxins in decaying meat. Here, Roggenbuck et al.show that the vulture’s gut microbiome displays unique features and is dominated by Clostridia and Fusobacteria, two bacterial groups commonly associated with infectious disease in other animals.

Schooling or flocking of animals in nature is generally explained via an energy optimization approach. Here, Beckeret al. mimic the conditions for an infinite array of swimmers in a water tank and show that fluid dynamic interactions alone are sufficient to lead to coherent and collective locomotion.

Discards from fishing vessels are food for scavenging species, so ending the practice may have ecological consequences. Here, Heath et al. show that improving selectivity so that unwanted fish are not caught, achieves conservation benefits, while simply requiring that vessels land their entire catch, does not.

Chimeric antigen receptor T cells in the clinic currently target cell-type-specific extracellular antigens on malignant cells. Here, authors engineer tumor-specific chimeric antigen receptor T cells that target human leukocyte antigen-presented neoantigens derived from mutant intracellular proteins.

In this study, the authors report that a bat influenza A (H9N2) virus shows receptor binding features similar to avian influenza viruses, efficiently infects ex-vivo human respiratory cells and replicates in the lungs of mice and upper respiratory tract of ferrets following airborne transmission.

Inositol pyrophosphates are key nutrient messengers in fungi, plants and animals. This study uncovers the structure and function of a critical enzyme involved in their production and breakdown, revealing how cells control inositol pyrophosphate levels to regulate nutrient signaling.

Global-scale analyses of marine, terrestrial and freshwater assemblages found that temporal rates of species replacement were faster in locations with faster temperature change, including warming and cooling, and vulnerable assemblages were especially responsive.

The largest dense-water plume feeding the lower limb of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation from the Nordic seas comes from Denmark Strait overflow water. Measurements of hydrography and water velocity north of Iceland and ocean model simulations indicate that a significant part of this water is supplied by the North Icelandic Jet.

T cell responses can be generated to either pathogen infection or from priming with a vaccine. Here the authors compare T cell generation, phenotype and single cell transcriptome of participants vaccinated with a mpox vaccine or infected with the virus showing that the virus induced T cells showed more effective function and phenotype.

Strontium isotope analysis can be applied to animal and plant tissues to help determine their provenance. Here, the authors generate a strontium isoscape of sub-Saharan Africa using data from 2266 environmental samples and demonstrate its efficacy by tracing the African roots of individuals from historic slavery contexts.

An extinction-risk assessment of reptiles shows that at least 21.1% of species are threatened by factors such as agriculture, logging, urban development and invasive species, and that efforts to protect birds, mammals and amphibians probably also benefit many reptiles.

Whole-genome sequencing, transcriptome-wide association and fine-mapping analyses in over 7,000 individuals with critical COVID-19 are used to identify 16 independent variants that are associated with severe illness in COVID-19.

Frogs are an ancient and ecologically diverse group of amphibians that include important model systems. This paper reports genome sequences of multiple frog species, revealing remarkable stability of frog chromosomes and centromeres, along with highly recombinogenic extended subtelomeres.

Data from 1,279 time series across 29 taxonomic classes analysed with a Bayesian phylogenetic model shows that species phenology has advanced by 3.1 days per decade on average, with the timing of events varying by phylogeny but no evidence of differences in phenological shifts by trophic level.

Plunge into a profusion of brilliant summer reads suggested by regular reviewers and editors, far away from the lab and lecture hall.

Although co-occurring species may differ widely in their response traits, coordinated functional trait shifts may emerge at the community level in response to environmental factors. Here, the authors use data from 150 grassland sites to identify a coordinated slow-fast strategy response to land-use intensification across above- and belowground taxa.

Micropillars made of liquid crystal elastomers and exposed to light exhibit diverse stroke-like motions, leading to complex dynamic pattern evolution and collective communication  in arrays.