Research Briefing

Across the planet, microorganisms that are phylogenetically related can be found in similar communities, which suggests shared ecological preferences. This global pattern, which we term ‘community conservatism’, parallels well-established macroscopic ecological concepts such as phylogenetic signal and niche conservatism.

Global climate change has the potential to shift the roles and prevalence of mutualisms, including the positive interactions between plants and microorganisms. A combination of field surveys and common garden experiments has revealed a paradox: fungal mutualists promote long-term, range-wide population persistence of their host plants, especially under drought, yet are selected against by interannual climate variability.

A Europe‑wide survey of 10,000 respondents shows strong backing for the recovery of wolves, lynx and bears, as well as opposition to hunting and culling, but also shows that a majority opposes any further population growth. Many respondents remain neutral, which indicates that large carnivore recovery is far less polarizing than commonly portrayed.

By disentangling the mechanisms that underpin changes in community biomass, we show that local arthropod biomass declines are overwhelmingly associated with species losses, independent of which species are lost and with only minor contributions of abundance change. High plant diversity and low land-use intensity mitigate arthropod biomass declines and community homogenization.

Population genomic data from five species of brood parasitic birds, representing three independent origins of the trait, enabled the identification of shared signatures of natural selection reflecting repeated adaptation in species with this lifestyle. This repeated signal of adaptation is present in particular in genes involved in spermatogenesis and neural development.

By leveraging a spatially representative dataset that comprises more than 300,000 trees from 3,396 natural forest plots, we fill crucial knowledge gaps regarding fine-grained spatial patterns, driving mechanisms and the future potential of tree species richness and structural diversity in China’s natural forests.

We showed the robustness of space-for-time substitutions in approximating temporal biodiversity responses of German grasslands to land-use intensification, which is a major driver of biodiversity decline. Our research calls for more standardized temporal data to fine-tune approximated biodiversity trends.

Comparative analyses of the behaviour of individual animals across multiple populations are rare. We analysed the relationship between local population density and individual behaviour across 36 wild animal populations, which revealed that both spatial and social networks increase in connectivity with density, nonlinearly, and that there are strong differences between these networks.

Climatic memory complicates interpretation of the relationship between plant productivity and precipitation. We find that the influence of preceding-year precipitation on plant productivity is comparable to that of current-year precipitation. The lagged precipitation effect varies with aridity and exerts a positive influence in dry regions and a negative influence in wet regions.

Geochemical chronologies in surface increments and exposed cross-sections of naturally fractured hominin enamel from the South African sites of Swartkrans and Kromdraai indicate that Paranthropus robustus exploited both forest and grassland habitats, and that individuals did not move on the landscape in a manner analogous to extant African apes.

Vegetation responses to water limitation are difficult to predict owing to large variation across space and time. Our global analysis of soil moisture dynamics reveals that plant water-use strategies vary systematically by ecosystem type in response to recent ecological and climatic conditions.

An in-depth analysis of the breastbone (sternum) of bird ancestors reveals its importance in the origin and evolution of flight in dinosaurs as they evolved into birds.

Interspecies comparative analyses of single-cell transcriptomic data reveal that a proximal limb gene program is reactivated during bat wing formation. Our results illustrate how evolutionary innovations can arise from the reutilization of an existing gene set, activated through species-specific regulatory repertoires.

Using theoretical and empirical analyses, we demonstrate that species synchrony itself and its relationships with species diversity and competition strength could exhibit opposite patterns in short versus long time series. This finding challenges the implicit assumption in ecological studies that observational length should not qualitatively alter patterns of interest.

Climatic conditions from the northwestern European margins indicate that warmer summer conditions after the last cold glacial period existed there around 15,200 years ago. The presence of prey species in this landscape, combined with warmer summer conditions, presented an environment that supported the reoccupation of these northern marginal latitudes by Late Upper Palaeolithic humans.

The efficiency with which plants use carbon assimilated through photosynthesis has a key role in controlling biomass accumulation and nature’s capacity to offset human carbon dioxide emissions. Leveraging a network of global eddy covariance observations and ecological theory, our study reveals the patterns of vegetation carbon use efficiency worldwide.

Unlike the inner retina of vertebrates, bobtail squids process visual signals in a brain optic lobe that relies on a wide repertoire of predominantly dopaminergic cell types. Single-cell transcriptomics provided evidence of extensive molecular diversification in cephalopods that confirms Cajal’s century-old model of the ‘deep retina’.

Identifying ecological thresholds — that is, when and where small environmental changes can potentially cause large effects on ecosystems — is key to managing ecosystems under global changes. We used trait distributions to detect ecological thresholds and reveal how land use intensification drastically alters the ecosystem structure, stability and biodiversity of grasslands.

Newly hatched orchid mantises display black–red coloration and change to pink–white coloration after their first moult. This colour transition is mediated by the novel pigment transporter Redboy, which enables a shift from mimicking stink bugs (for predator avoidance) as hatchlings to floral camouflage (for both predator avoidance and prey attraction) in older nymphs.

The increasing severity of global large-scale fires is hindering forest recovery, which is observed as an increase in the recovery time and likelihood of recovery stagnation. Coupled with the adverse effects of climate change (such as warming and drought), recovery challenges might signify a high risk of forest decline.