Joseph T. Flannery-Sutherland, Armin Elsler, Alexander Farnsworth, Daniel J. Lunt, Michael J. Benton
{"title":"Landscape-explicit phylogeography illuminates the ecographic radiation of early archosauromorph reptiles","authors":"Joseph T. Flannery-Sutherland, Armin Elsler, Alexander Farnsworth, Daniel J. Lunt, Michael J. Benton","doi":"10.1038/s41559-025-02739-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02739-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Spatial incompleteness in the fossil record severely diminishes the observed ecological and geographic ranges of clades. The biological processes shaping species distributions and richness through time, however, also operate across geographic space and so clade biogeographic histories can indicate where their lineages must have successfully dispersed through these sampling gaps. Consequently, these histories are powerful, yet untapped tools for quantifying their unobserved ecographic diversity. Here, we couple phylogeographic modelling with a landscape connectivity approach to reconstruct the origins and dispersal of Permian–Triassic archosauromorph reptiles. We recover substantial ecographic diversity from the gaps in their fossil record, illuminating the cryptic first 20 million years of their evolutionary history, a peak in climatic disparity in the earliest Triassic period, and dispersals through the Pangaean tropical dead zone which contradict its perception as a hard barrier to vertebrate movement. This remarkable tolerance of climatic adversity was probably integral to their later evolutionary success.</p>","PeriodicalId":18835,"journal":{"name":"Nature ecology & evolution","volume":"99 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":16.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144260177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Accessibility for all","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s41559-025-02770-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02770-z","url":null,"abstract":"Scientists with disabilities face many barriers and challenges related to accessibility during their careers. We can all do more to help make science more accessible — and this is especially true for journals.","PeriodicalId":18835,"journal":{"name":"Nature ecology & evolution","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":16.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144260178","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
F. Affinito, S. H. M. Butchart, E. Nicholson, T. Hirsch, J. M. Williams, J. E. Campbell, M. F. Ferrari, M. Gabay, L. Gorini, B. Kalamujic Stroil, R. Kohsaka, B. Painter, J. C. Pinto, A. H. Scholz, T. R. A. Straza, N. Tshidada, S. Vallecillo, S. Widdicombe, A. Gonzalez
{"title":"Assessing coverage of the monitoring framework of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and opportunities to fill gaps","authors":"F. Affinito, S. H. M. Butchart, E. Nicholson, T. Hirsch, J. M. Williams, J. E. Campbell, M. F. Ferrari, M. Gabay, L. Gorini, B. Kalamujic Stroil, R. Kohsaka, B. Painter, J. C. Pinto, A. H. Scholz, T. R. A. Straza, N. Tshidada, S. Vallecillo, S. Widdicombe, A. Gonzalez","doi":"10.1038/s41559-025-02718-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02718-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is the most ambitious multilateral agreement on biodiversity to date. It calls for a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to halt and reverse biodiversity loss worldwide. The GBF’s monitoring framework lays out how Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity are expected to report on their progress. An expert group convened by the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group (AHTEG) on Indicators, provided guidance on its implementation, including a gap analysis to identify the strengths and limitations of the indicators in the monitoring framework. We present the results of the AHTEG gap analysis and provide recommendations on implementing and improving monitoring of the GBF. We compare three implementation scenarios, from worst-case to best-case: (1) Parties only report on required headline and binary indicators; (2) Parties also report on all headline indicator disaggregations and (3) Parties additionally report on all optional component and complementary indicators. In each case, the monitoring framework covers (1) between 19–40%, (2) 22–41% and (3) 29–47% of the elements in the GBF’s goals and targets. Even in the best-case scenario (3), no indicators are available for 12% of the GBF’s elements. In practice, the coverage and thus effectiveness of the monitoring framework will depend on which indicators (required and optional) and disaggregations countries apply. Substantial investment is required to collect the necessary data to compute indicators, infer change and effectively monitor progress. We highlight important next steps to progressively improve the efficacy of the monitoring framework.</p>","PeriodicalId":18835,"journal":{"name":"Nature ecology & evolution","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":16.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144252360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Calum X. Cunningham, Grant J. Williamson, David M. J. S. Bowman
{"title":"Reply to: Increases in the world’s most extreme wildfire events probably driven by fire size and simultaneity","authors":"Calum X. Cunningham, Grant J. Williamson, David M. J. S. Bowman","doi":"10.1038/s41559-025-02745-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02745-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><span>replying to</span> S. J. Schütze & V. Resco de Dios <i>Nature Ecology & Evolution</i> https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02742-3 (2025)</p><p>Intensifying fire weather and inappropriate land management are fuelling an increase in wildfires that threaten ecosystems, societies and the climate. We<sup>1</sup> recently identified ‘energetically extreme’ fire events, defined by the daily sum of fire radiative power (ΣFRP) released by fires observed by the MODIS satellites. The central finding was that energetically extreme daily fire events (≥99.99th percentile; <i>n</i> = 2,913) more than doubled in frequency from 2003 to 2023, with the six most extreme years occurring within the last 7 years. This highlights a worsening dimension of fire behaviour, particularly in boreal forests and temperate conifer forests, with major implications for carbon storage<sup>2,3</sup> and human exposure to wildfire disasters<sup>4,5</sup>. In their recent communication, Schütze and Resco de Dios<sup>6</sup> question our findings using a fundamentally different way of characterizing fires using averages and single hotspots as opposed to indexing the energy released by broader fire events. Below we explain why their alternative analysis is inappropriate for tracking changes in globally energetically extreme wildfires.</p>","PeriodicalId":18835,"journal":{"name":"Nature ecology & evolution","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":16.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144237833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Increases in the world’s most extreme wildfire events probably driven by fire size and simultaneity","authors":"Simon Josua Schütze, Víctor Resco de Dios","doi":"10.1038/s41559-025-02742-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02742-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><span>arising from</span> Cunningham, C. X. et al. <i>Nature Ecology & Evolution</i> https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02452-2 (2024)</p><p>In contrast to the widespread perception of increases in extreme wildfire behaviour, quantitative evidence supporting presumed global increases of fire intensity is rare. Recently, Cunningham et al.<sup>1</sup> analysed temporal patterns of fire radiative power (FRP) and claimed that there had been an “increasing frequency and intensity of the most extreme wildfires on Earth between 2003 and 2023”. We applaud their intent at addressing the complex issue of changes in fire intensity, but note that major misunderstandings on the meaning and drivers of FRP challenge these findings. Our revised analyses, which control for active fire detections, indicate that the intensity of the “most extreme wildfire events”, as selected by them (ref. <sup>1</sup>), has probably decreased. We will first explain the problems in using their FRP product as an indicator of fire intensity and then revise their conclusions on changes in the frequency and intensity of fire events. Evidence for increases in global wildfire intensity remain elusive and the results from ref. <sup>1</sup> probably indicate increases in either size or number of simultaneous fires.</p>","PeriodicalId":18835,"journal":{"name":"Nature ecology & evolution","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":16.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144237836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Identifying ecological thresholds from functional traits for optimal ecosystem management","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s41559-025-02756-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02756-x","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":18835,"journal":{"name":"Nature ecology & evolution","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":16.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144228599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nathalie Pettorelli, Kevin J. Gaston, Jos Barlow, Miguel B. Araújo, Mercedes Maria da Cunha Bustamante, Steven L. Chown, Luisa Maria Diele-Viegas, William F. Laurance, Alexander C. Lees, Felipe P. L. Melo, E. J. Milner-Gulland, Gretta Pecl, Isabel Sousa-Pinto
{"title":"Six actions for ecologists in times of planetary crisis","authors":"Nathalie Pettorelli, Kevin J. Gaston, Jos Barlow, Miguel B. Araújo, Mercedes Maria da Cunha Bustamante, Steven L. Chown, Luisa Maria Diele-Viegas, William F. Laurance, Alexander C. Lees, Felipe P. L. Melo, E. J. Milner-Gulland, Gretta Pecl, Isabel Sousa-Pinto","doi":"10.1038/s41559-025-02759-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02759-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Climate breakdown and unprecedented biodiversity loss put humanity at grave risk, and threaten human lives, livelihoods and well-being globally. Ecologists have been instrumental in revealing and detailing some of the mechanisms that drive biodiversity decline, and regularly call for immediate action<sup>1</sup>. In response to this, a sense of emergency has entered public discourse, and is heightened with each new report and global summit; some ecological societies have been calling on their members to write to their political representatives, and many ecologists have been vocal about both scientific and societal issues on social media. Yet, despite these pockets of activity, it has been argued that the way that the discipline of ecology operates could reflect more clearly the urgency of the situation<sup>2,3</sup>.</p><p>Several factors might contribute to the current mismatch. First, as with any other scientists, ecologists have been encouraged to place themselves in a neutral, reporting, objective role<sup>4</sup>. Those who deviate from this tack have encountered increasing threats to their academic freedom and activities, especially with the rise of political populism and nationalism around the world<sup>5</sup>. Second, the emergence of conservation biology in the 1980s provided a clear home for mission-driven ecologists who aspire to go beyond applied science<sup>6</sup>. Third, the scientific community is embedded in societies and economic systems that are primarily hardwired to economic growth, in which (1) facts alone do little to address systemic issues that underlie biodiversity loss and climate change, and (2) high-level decisions about research funding are increasingly shaped by their perceived contribution to economic growth<sup>2,7</sup>.</p>","PeriodicalId":18835,"journal":{"name":"Nature ecology & evolution","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":16.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144228645","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Daria Gavriouchkina, Yongkai Tan, Elise Parey, Fabienne Ziadi-Künzli, Yuko Hasegawa, Laura Piovani, Lin Zhang, Chikatoshi Sugimoto, Nicholas Luscombe, Ferdinand Marlétaz, Daniel S. Rokhsar
{"title":"A single-cell atlas of the bobtail squid visual and nervous system highlights molecular principles of convergent evolution","authors":"Daria Gavriouchkina, Yongkai Tan, Elise Parey, Fabienne Ziadi-Künzli, Yuko Hasegawa, Laura Piovani, Lin Zhang, Chikatoshi Sugimoto, Nicholas Luscombe, Ferdinand Marlétaz, Daniel S. Rokhsar","doi":"10.1038/s41559-025-02720-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02720-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The cephalopod and vertebrate visual systems are a textbook example of convergent evolution with unknown molecular underpinnings. Here we characterize 98,537 single-cell transcriptomes in the bobtail squid <i>Euprymna berryi</i> to understand how the cephalopod retina and optic lobes relate to the vertebrate retina. We confirm the overall relative simplicity of the cephalopod retina but identify two related photoreceptor cell subtypes expressing distinct r-opsins. By contrast, the adult optic lobe contains a diverse repertoire of neuronal and glial cell types, with a predominance of dopaminergic neurons. We show that cephalopod-specific gene duplicates probably contributed to this cell type diversification. Comparing neuronal cell population in the optic lobes of hatchlings and adults, we reveal a switch towards dopaminergic neurotransmitter usage with age, indicative of a maturation process. We further identify an FMRF-amide-based retrograde signal from the optic lobe towards the retina that supports the functional analogy of the cephalopod optic lobe cortex and the vertebrate inner retina in visual signal processing from a molecular standpoint. Finally, comparative analyses with vertebrate and arthropod cells suggest a scenario in which two photoreceptor types and two neuronal populations may have already been present in the eye of the bilaterian ancestor.</p>","PeriodicalId":18835,"journal":{"name":"Nature ecology & evolution","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":16.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144228660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kathrin Nägele, Rebecca Kinaston, Dylan Gaffney, Mary Walworth, Adam B. Rohrlach, Selina Carlhoff, Yilei Huang, Harald Ringbauer, Emilie Bertolini, Monica Tromp, Rita Radzeviciute, Fiona Petchey, Dimitri Anson, Peter Petchey, Claudine Stirling, Malcolm Reid, David Barr, Ben Shaw, Glenn Summerhayes, Hallie Buckley, Cosimo Posth, Adam Powell, Johannes Krause
{"title":"The impact of human dispersals and local interactions on the genetic diversity of coastal Papua New Guinea over the past 2,500 years","authors":"Kathrin Nägele, Rebecca Kinaston, Dylan Gaffney, Mary Walworth, Adam B. Rohrlach, Selina Carlhoff, Yilei Huang, Harald Ringbauer, Emilie Bertolini, Monica Tromp, Rita Radzeviciute, Fiona Petchey, Dimitri Anson, Peter Petchey, Claudine Stirling, Malcolm Reid, David Barr, Ben Shaw, Glenn Summerhayes, Hallie Buckley, Cosimo Posth, Adam Powell, Johannes Krause","doi":"10.1038/s41559-025-02710-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02710-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The inhabitants of New Guinea and its outlying islands have played an important role in the human history of the Pacific region. Nevertheless, the genetic diversity, particularly of pre-colonial communities, is still understudied. Here we present the ancient genomes of 42 individuals from Papua New Guinea (PNG). The ancient genomic results of individuals from Watom Island (Bismarck Archipelago) and the south and northeastern coasts of PNG are contextualized with new (bio-) archaeological data. The individuals’ accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dates span 2,500 years of human habitation, and our results demonstrate the influences of different dispersal events on the genetic make-up of ancient PNG communities. The oldest individuals show an unadmixed Papuan-related genetic signature, whereas individuals dating from 2,100 years before present carry varying degrees of an East-Asian-related contribution. These results and the inferred admixture dates suggest a centuries-long delay in genetic mixture with local communities after the arrival of populations with Asian ancestry. Two geographically close communities on the South Coast, AMS dated to within the past 540 years, diverge in their genetic profiles, suggesting differences in their interaction spheres involving groups with distinct ancestries. The inferred split time of these communities around 650 years before present coincides with intensified settlement activity and the emergence of regional trade networks.</p>","PeriodicalId":18835,"journal":{"name":"Nature ecology & evolution","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":16.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144211273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
R. Bernardo-Madrid, M. González-Suárez, M. Rosvall, M. Rueda, E. Revilla, M. Carrete, J. L. Tella, J. Astigarraga, J. Calatayud
{"title":"A general rule on the organization of biodiversity in Earth’s biogeographical regions","authors":"R. Bernardo-Madrid, M. González-Suárez, M. Rosvall, M. Rueda, E. Revilla, M. Carrete, J. L. Tella, J. Astigarraga, J. Calatayud","doi":"10.1038/s41559-025-02724-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02724-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Life on Earth is a mosaic distributed across biogeographical regions. Their regional species pools have experienced distinct historical and eco-evolutionary pressures, leading to an expected context-dependent organization of biodiversity. Here we identify a general spatial organization within biogeographical regions of terrestrial and marine vertebrates, invertebrates and plants (more than 30,000 species). We detect seven types of areas in these biogeographical regions that reflect unique combinations of four fundamental aspects of biodiversity (species richness, range size, endemicity and biogeographical transitions). These areas form ordered layers from the core to the transition zones of the biogeographical regions, reflecting gradients in the biodiversity aspects, experiencing distinct environmental conditions, and exhibiting taxonomic dissimilarities due to nestedness. These findings suggest this ubiquitous organization is mainly driven by the action of two complementary environmental filters, one acting on species from regional hotspots and the other on species from permeable biogeographical boundaries. The influence of these regional filters extends across spatial scales and shapes global patterns of species richness. Regional biodiversity follows a universal core-to-transition organization governed by general forces operating across the tree of life and space.</p>","PeriodicalId":18835,"journal":{"name":"Nature ecology & evolution","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":16.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144211224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}