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In this study, the microbiota of multiple body sites from 101 marine fish species from Southern California were sampled and analysed. The authors compared diversity measures while also establishing a method to estimate microbial biomass. Body site is shown to be the strongest driver of microbial diversity and patterns of phylosymbiosis are observed across the gill, skin and hindgut.

Human populations in the southern Africa interior were collecting non-utilitarian objects at around 105,000 years ago, suggesting that the development of this innovative behaviour did not depend on exploiting coastal resources.

Humans adapt social and asocial learning to dynamically changing contexts, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Here, the authors clarify these mechanisms and show that the degree of social and asocial adaptivity predicts individual performance.

Technique could help researchers probe strange properties of 2D metals — plus, five years after the pandemic, how did COVID change virology?

It is thought that dinosaurs laid hard-shelled eggs, whereas ancient marine reptiles gave birth to live young. However, new discoveries of fossilized soft-shelled eggs challenge these long-held tenets of reproductive evolution.

There are gaps in international efforts to monitor the wildlife trade, with many species potentially being undetected by the established monitoring groups. Here the authors use an automated web search to document the sale of reptiles online, revealing over 36% of all known reptile species are in trade, including many missing from official databases.

The team select some of their favourite stories from the past 12 months.

An analysis of 24,202 critical cases of COVID-19 identifies potentially druggable targets in inflammatory signalling (JAK1), monocyte–macrophage activation and endothelial permeability (PDE4A), immunometabolism (SLC2A5 and AK5), and host factors required for viral entry and replication (TMPRSS2 and RAB2A).

Methods to demonstrate genomic linkages between pathogens across One Health compartments have not been established. Here, the authors compile a collection of E coli genomes from humans, animals, and the environment in Australia and investigate genomic evidence of cross-source clusters.

One hypothesis for the latitudinal diversity gradient is based on an assumption of stronger species interactions at lower latitudes. Here, Roesti et al. estimate pelagic fish predation from long-term fishing records and find evidence of stronger predation at higher latitudes and with lower fish species richness.

Analysis of data from Gaia Data Release 3 and other large spectroscopic surveys shows that nearly 60% of high-quality young clusters within 1 kpc of the Sun originated from just three distinct star-forming complexes.

The neural codes underlying working memory are not fully understood. Here the authors recorded neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortex of male macaque monkeys, during a working memory task, and identify activation sequences that encode target locations in the task.

A free-living trial in people with overweight or obesity found that minimally processed diets led to greater weight loss and cardiometabolic improvements than ultraprocessed diets following UK healthy eating guidelines at 8 weeks.

This paper investigates the stress levels and behavior of wild animals when approached by remote-operated vehicles versus humans for data collection in field research

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.

Machine-learning algorithms trained on 25,000 geolocated soil samples are used to create high-resolution global maps of mycorrhizal fungi, revealing that less than 10% of their biodiversity hotspots are in protected areas.

Andrew Tilker, Jesse F. Abrams et al. assessed habitat degradation and hunting on tropical terrestrial mammals and birds in Southeast Asia. They find higher levels of functional extinction and consistently lower animal occupancy in hunted sites, suggesting that indiscriminate hunting is a more immediate threat for tropical animal communities.

In an updated report on 70 laboratory-confirmed highly pathogenic avian influenza A H5N1 cases in the USA between March 2024 and May 2025, the absence of human-to-human transmission to date was confirmed, with no known mutations of resistance to neuroaminidase inhibitors.

Many abiotic and biotic factors shape the macroevolution of phenotype, but these factors are rarely disentangled across large radiations. Here, Miller et al. investigate plumage evolution across woodpeckers, finding influences of habitat and climate, but also convergence apparently driven by mimicry

Polymorphisms in the avian influenza A virus (IAV) polymerase restrict its host range during transmission from birds to mammals. Here, the authors investigate differences in the host chromatin regulator ANP32A regarding IAV polymerase adaptation, and profile ANP32A splicing to predict avian species associated with pre-adaptive human-signatures in the virus.

The discovery of the fossil remains of a tetrapod-like fish sheds light on the order in which important tetrapod characters arose.

Data collected from more than 2,000 taxa provide an unparalleled opportunity to quantify how extreme wildfires affect biodiversity, revealing that the largest effects on plants and animals were in areas with frequent or recent past fires and within extensively burnt areas.

Analysis of a new dissolved iron, ligand and particulate iron seasonal dataset shows that authigenic iron phases help control ocean dissolved iron distributions and the coupling between dissolved and particulate iron pools.

The auditory systems of animals that perceive sounds in air are organized so that mechanosensory hair cells located at different positions respond to specific frequencies. Here, Mann et al. find that a gradient of Bmp7 controls the determination of frequency-specific hair cell characteristics in the chick auditory system.

Ecological network research has typically focused on flows of matter and energy, but species also exchange information signals and cues that influence behaviour and movement. This Perspective argues that the information network of nature is a crucial aspect of community organization.

The cryo-EM structure of the bovine rod CNG channel, isolated from retina, sheds light onto the structural basis for the subunit stoichiometry and reveals an additional gate within the ion conduction pathway contributed by the CNGB1 subunit.

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.

Research also shows that skills don’t transfer in the other direction either — plus, a new study of crowd movements could help prevent tragedy.

Auditory stereocilia are mechanosensitive protrusions with precise dimensions that are formed around a core of long actin filaments. Here, the authors discover that stereocilia widening requires a population of myosin-regulated short actin filaments.

The distribution and uptake of siderophores across a meridional section of the eastern Pacific Ocean suggests that iron availability limits microbial metabolism in the upper mesopelagic in several large ocean basins.

Reanalysis of bipedal trackways from Laetoli site A in Tanzania suggest that the footprints were made by a hominin that coexisted with at least one other hominin species.

Loading of osmolytes into the phloem drives a pressure-flow transport mechanism. A maize sucrose transporter1 loss-of-function mutant has much reduced export of carbon from leaves, but increased potassium concentrations maintain phloem pressure.

Chronic infection with SARS-CoV-2 leads to the emergence of viral variants that show reduced susceptibility to neutralizing antibodies in an immunosuppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma.

Sera from vaccinated individuals and some monoclonal antibodies show a modest reduction in neutralizing activity against the B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2; but the E484K substitution leads to a considerable loss of neutralizing activity.