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In an analysis of how biotic interactions regulate hominin evolutionary dynamics, the authors show that speciation is negatively related to species diversity in Australopithecus and Paranthropus, in the same way that it is in many other vertebrates, whereas the genus Homo is characterized by positive diversity-dependent speciation and negative diversity-dependent extinction.

Analysing camera-trap data of 163 mammal species before and after the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns, the authors show that responses to human activity are dependent on the degree to which the landscape is modified by humans, with carnivores being especially sensitive.

A meta-analysis synthesizes the range of effects of megafauna on ecosystems, finding that megafauna significantly increase ecosystem heterogeneity and impact a wide range of ecosystem properties by altering soil nutrient availability, promoting open vegetation structure and reducing the abundance of smaller animals.

Using multiple remote-sensing datasets, the authors show that temporal and spatial scale influence the detection of tree-mortality events and explain why there has been a seemingly conflicting pattern of both overall greening but also extensive tree mortality in recent decades.

An analysis of three ancient Iberian lynx genomes shows that genetic admixture with the Eurasian lynx contributed to levels of modern Iberian lynx genetic diversity higher than those experienced millennia ago, despite recent population decline.

It is unclear when multicellular animals first invaded the microscopic ecological niche between sediment grains given the absence of such animals from the fossil record. Microscopic Loriciferans are described from the Cambrian period, showing an early occupation of this important niche.

Exploring pollen records from 13 South Pacific islands, the authors find that floristic homogenization commenced following human arrival beginning around 3,000 years ago.

In a replicated ecosystem-scale natural experiment across ten islands in the Indian Ocean, invasive black rats disrupted nutrients provided by seabirds, leading to a coral reef fish having larger territories and investing less time in aggression than on rat-free islands.

The authors compiled body size data from mammal and bird museum collections in North America to show that intraspecific variation in body size, but not mean body size, has increased over time.

Analysing 20,000 plant-pollinator interactions over 3 yr in a fragmented island ecosystem, the authors show that forest edges benefit community diversity and network robustness to extinction in the face of declining forest area.

Certain mutations are characteristic of specific lineages across the phylogeny of birds, reptiles and mammals. Here, protein structural information is used to separate out such mutations that are adaptive from those that compensate changes at other sites.

A compilation of survey data from pre- and post-2000 for 42 raptor species across parts of West, Central, East and southern Africa shows 88% of species in population decline and reveals trends across regions, protected areas and species size.

Vegetation patterns may be a useful indicator of environmental gradients. Here, the authors use remote-sensing and field surveys to show that patch-size distribution in drylands is related to different ecosystem multifunctionality states.

In an analysis of forest edge-to-interior transects in Europe, the authors show that different facets of biodiversity and different types of ecosystem service are found in forest interiors versus edges, suggesting that both have a role to play in the provisioning of ecosystem services in landscapes.

Conducting a simulated turtlegrass herbivory experiment across 650 experimental plots and 13 seagrass meadows, the authors show that the negative effects of herbivory increase with latitude, driven by low levels of light insolation at high latitudes.

The authors used multiple lines of evidence including behavioural assays, quantitative genetics and transcriptomics to explore schooling behaviour in guppies. Both genomic and transcriptomic analyses indicated that genes involved in neuron migration and synaptic function played key roles in the evolution of schooling behaviour.

Analysing a database of >1,800 field studies in the terrestrial Arctic, the authors identify large spatial biases in sampling, with nearly one-third of all citations derived from sites located within 50 km of two research stations.

Abundance data for marine fish populations show that those shifting poleward rapidly due to climate change experience substantial population declines, suggesting that rapid range shifts are not sufficient to maintain stable populations.

Across terrestrial and aqueous ecosystems, vertebrates increase litter decomposition, both directly and indirectly, by 6.7% on average, and this effect interacts with but generally occurs at a later stage of decomposition than the effect of invertebrates.

The authors analyse 8,790 prokaryotic pangenomes to identify the ecological variables associated with recent versus old horizontal gene transfer events, finding that gene transfers are more common among co-occurring, highly abundant or host-associated species.

Camera-trap data for 159 mammalian species at 1,002 sites across 16 tropical-forest protected areas show how local survival and colonization probabilities of specialist and generalist species are differently affected by human-induced stressors at different spatial scales, such as human population density and forest fragmentation.

An evidence map of global biodiversity loss research over the past decade suggests foci do not match predicted severity and impact, and that research and policy need to be realigned.

Reconstructing river networks over the past 80 Ma reveals the role of Andean uplift in creating a dynamic habitat leading to increased fish species diversity in western Amazonia.

A study in eastern Canada finds that forest-management strategies that lead to simplified forest structure and composition have resulted in loss of breeding habitat and associated population losses for many bird species.

Analysing 27 years of freshwater invertebrate biomonitoring data from European rivers, the authors show that although some commonly used biodiversity metrics can reflect anthropogenic impacts at broad spatial scales, there was little consistency among other metrics in accurately reflecting community responses.

Analysing the distributions of >99% of the world’s seed plant flora, the authors find evidence supporting the evolutionary imbalance hypothesis, with species originating from large, biodiverse regions being more successful at naturalizing beyond their native ranges.

Remote sensing often detects higher vegetation greenness for croplands than for forests, despite forests having a greater leaf area. This study shows that this is an artefact of shadows caused by forest structures and explores how to correct for this when interpreting global vegetation change data.

The authors show how a resistance index based on biotic assemblage resemblance can predict the spread of invasive bird species without having to estimate their ecological niche.

The authors use a simulation framework to assess how the dynamics of species’ diversification changed with ecological niche shifts under historical climate conditions. Modelling scenarios with niche conservatism resulted in higher rates of net diversification, recapitulating empirical biodiversity patterns.

Combining phylogenetic, morphological and environmental data on range overlap among 1,115 pairs of bird species, the authors show that coexistence is best explained by a model integrating both dispersal-assembly and niche-assembly processes.

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.

Analysis of a newly sequenced genome of the inshore hagfish, Eptatretus burgeri, together with genomes of lampreys and jawed vertebrates, provides insights into whole-genome duplication events and their implications for vertebrate genome evolution.

The genetic basis of collective behaviour is complex. Single-cell transcriptomics of honeybee brains and gene regulatory network analysis showed differences in brain gene regulation and gene regulatory network plasticity between aggressive soldiers and non-aggressive foragers.

Analysing a global dataset of >24,000 observations of coral reef benthic cover, the authors show that high macroalgal cover is largely restricted to the Western Atlantic, where alongside the Central Pacific there have also been marked declines in coral cover since the late 1990s.

Comparative analysis of whole-genome sequencing of six zokor species that live at different altitudes show the contribution of deletions and inversions to adaptation to high altitude in these subterranean rodents.

The authors explore dental development in a stem-chondrichthyan ischnacanthid acanthodian to inform our understanding of the ancestral gnathostome dental condition, finding that although dermal oral tubercles are a conserved feature of early gnathostomes, the complex cyclic shedding dentitions and whorls appear to have evolved multiple times.

Trees are likely to show lagged responses to climate change because they are sessile and long-lived. Here, the authors show that dominant tree species in North America are out of equilibrium with climate, with range contraction outpacing expansion.

Spatial indicators of ecosystem-critical transitions have so far only been confirmed in the lab. Here, the authors show that increasing recovery length provides a spatial signature of critical slowing down in a natural intertidal community.

Thanks to phylogenomics, reconstruction of the tree of life is now possible, yet different datasets and methods can yield contradictory relationships. Here, the authors quantify phylogenetic signals and show that contentious relationships can be supported by a tiny amount of data.

By analysing the abundance distributions of two key plant functional traits in global dryland communities, the authors identify a scaling relationship that quantifies how much trait diversity is required to maximize local ecosystem multifunctionality.

Phylogenetic analysis of behavioural data across all living mammalian orders suggests the earliest mammals were nocturnal, and other modes such as cathemerality and strict diurnality did not arise until the end of the Cretaceous and early Cenozoic.

Climatic change and human control over river flow are likely to affect aquatic species distributions. Here, the authors model alterations to natural flow regimes and show that even small modifications can have consequences for the structure of riparian plant networks.

Mathematical modelling combined with activity-tracking data from 73 terrestrial carnivore species reveals positive scaling between body size and the proportion of active time devoted to foraging until around 5 kg, after which negative scaling occurs.

Newly sequenced transcriptomes are combined with existing data to establish Ctenophora as the sister group to all other animals and suggest a radiation around 350 Ma as well as multiple transitions from a pelagic to a benthic lifestyle.

Integrating bioenergetic models and global coral reef fish community surveys, the authors show that there are functional trade-offs, meaning that no community can maximize all functions, and that dominant species underpin local functions, but their identity varies geographically.

The authors link fungal diversity to the stability of terrestrial ecosystem productivity across three global datasets, finding that richness of decomposers and mycorrhizae are positively associated with stability while the richness of plant pathogens is negatively related to stability.

Phylogenetic analysis shows that site-exclusion methods produce erratic phylogenetic estimates of mitochondrial origin and support an origin of mitochondria within Alphaproteobacteria.