Search

Birds were once thought to have a large number of features exclusive to the group. One by one those features have also been identified in fossils of certain theropod dinosaurs. Now feathers join the list.

Ichthyornis dispar is a key extinct bird species from when birds were shedding characteristics of their dinosaur ancestors and evolving their current features. A reconstructed skull of I. dispar now illuminates this transition.

For a century, scientists pondered whether bird flight evolved by animals gliding down from trees or by creatures running and flapping from the ground up. A landmark 1974 paper reset the debate to focus on the evolution of the flight stroke instead.

Mammals host a diversity of parasites including lice. Using cophylogenetics and phylogenetic comparative methods, the authors show that the main lineages of placental mammal lice had a single common ancestor and find that all parasitic lice had an avian ancestral host.

Bird song is commonly seen as a male trait that plays a role in female attraction, but its origin and prevalence in females are unknown. Here, Odom et al.show that female song is widespread and that it was present in the common ancestor of modern songbirds.

Most work on phenological mismatch has focused on temporal trends only. Here, the authors analyse trends in spatial and temporal mismatch between trees, caterpillars and birds in the UK, and find delayed phenology of all species with increasing latitude and little spatial variation in the magnitude of mismatch between caterpillars and birds.

Data on beetle, bird, plant and mammal occupancy of woodland sites in UK agricultural landscapes demonstrate how contemporary spatial spillovers and legacies of past land use interact to affect species richness and community composition.

Using phylogenetic comparative methods across 237 species from disparate phyla, the authors show that species with fast-paced ecologies have higher temporal resolution of perception.

Autophagy has a highly complex and context-dependent role in cancer, challenging the development of autophagy-modulating strategies. This Review discusses the potential of targeting autophagy to counteract malignant transformation, prevent disease progression and enable anticancer immunosurveillance. Existing and emerging pharmacological strategies and the associated limitations are critically presented.

A newly discovered 66.7-million-year-old fossil bird excavated in Belgium provides us with the best evidence so far for understanding when the living groups of birds first evolved and began to diverge.

Analysing changes in observations of birds, butterflies and plants in Great Britain over more than 50 years, the authors show that climate change and land conversion have led to increases in richness, biotic homogenization and warmer-adapted communities over both the long and short terms.

A large-scale, five-year study in Indonesia finds that enriching oil palm-dominated landscapes with patches of trees bolsters biodiversity and ecosystem functioning without impairing oil palm yields but should not replace forest protection.

The extent and mechanisms by which developmental process may constraint natural variation are poorly understood. Here, Fritz et al. show that beak shape in songbirds is strongly constrained by developmental mechanics shared by several bird species.

Direct and cascading land-use effects alter biomass and species richness of taxa across trophic levels ranging from microorganisms to birds in a multi-taxon research initiative in Sumatra, Indonesia.

Small-scale farmers in Southeast Asia are increasingly turning to monocultures of oil palm and rubber to maximize income. Clough and colleagues demonstrate that this land-use change in Indonesia comes at a cost to a wide array of ecosystem functions and biodiversity.

Conversion of rainforest to plantations in Sumatra leads to higher energetic losses in animal food webs aboveground than belowground, with the belowground energy being reallocated from diverse arthropod communities to invasive earthworms.

Dinosaur relatives called pterosaurs are the earliest known flying vertebrates. The branch of the evolutionary tree from which pterosaurs evolved has been unclear, but new fossil discoveries offer a solution to the mystery.

The benefits and risks of nature to human health have been studied, however, robust empirical research on forest biodiversity and health outcomes is still lacking. Here the authors use a unique dataset from 164 European forest stands to explore the associations between forest types and well-being.

Ramaglia and colleagues show that aberrant formation of B cell-rich lymphoid structures in the brain meninges is associated with high CXCL13:BAFF ratios. Inhibiting the kinase BTK reduces the lymphotoxin signaling needed to sustain such structures, lowers CXCL13:BAFF ratios and reduces cortical tissue injury.

A full factorial experiment in a state-owned industrial oil palm plantation in Indonesia evaluates whether reduced management via reduced fertilization rates and mechanical weeding can decrease the negative impacts on ecosystem functions and biodiversity while maintaining profitability of the plantation.

Shoals of fish can more quickly solve a two-stage foraging task when individuals experienced in only one stage of each task are combined, demonstrating that pooling experiences can aid collective problem-solving in animal groups.

Time lags in the response of species to conservation interventions may mask success. In this Perspective, the authors explore the effects of time lags on biodiversity indicators using both theory and empirical data.

Our understanding of the origin of birds took a major step forward in 1998, thanks to the reported discovery of a remarkable fossil that unveiled the existence of feathered dinosaurs. Fossil publications that year caused a sensation.

Bird wings use microscopic hooks to maintain connection between feathers during flight. Kevin PT Haughn and colleagues report an electro-adhesive alternative for engineered morphing wings, thus fastening feathers to improve manoeuvrability in flight.

Six surveys show substantial public agreement with misinformation about wind farms. Agreement with diverse contrarian claims is best predicted by participants’ worldviews, most notably the tendency to believe conspiracy theories.

Cancer staging is an essential clinical attribute. However, it is not routinely recorded in electronic health records. Here, the authors present a generalizable method for the automated classification of TNM stage from pathology report text.

Petrels are wide-ranging, highly threatened seabirds that often ingest plastic. This study used tracking data for 7,137 petrels of 77 species to map global exposure risk and compare regions, species, and populations. The results show higher exposure risk for threatened species and stress the need for international cooperation to tackle marine litter.

Managing forests for the supply of multiple ecosystem services (ES) is key given potential trade-offs among services. Here, the authors analyse how forest stand attributes generate trade-offs among ES and the relative contribution of forest attributes and environmental factors to predict services.

A quantitative analysis of mite symbionts of a brood parasitic passerine bird indicates that conspecific horizontal transmission plays a key role in host colonization and it can also promote codiversification at the macroevolutionary scale.

Efficient electro-optic conversion is central to photonic computing, and thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) offers this capability. Here, the authors demonstrate computing circuits on the TFLN platform, enabling the next generation of photonic computing systems featuring both high-speed and low-power.