Ecology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Large-scale effects of climate on the distribution of insects are unclear. Here, the authors use data from European butterflies and dragonflies to show that light-coloured insect species are favoured in warmer climates, which has implications in forecasting the potential impact of climate change.

    • Dirk Zeuss
    • , Roland Brandl
    •  & Stefan Brunzel

  • Article |

    Seed dispersal can determine the ability of plant species to track shifting climates; therefore, it can influence future biodiversity outcomes. Here, the authors model seed dispersal by fruit-eating vertebrates across the Australian Wet Tropics rainforest and find that it is projected to markedly decrease for many plant species.

    • Karel Mokany
    • , Soumya Prasad
    •  & David A. Westcott

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Seagrass beds are effective blue-carbon sinks, yet their role as a lime mud source in the tropical carbonate factory is less well known. Here, the authors demonstrate that the species Thalassia testudinumcan significantly contribute to carbonate production via the precipitation of aragonite needles.

    • Susana Enríquez
    •  & Nadine Schubert

  • Article |

    For comprehensive biodiversity conservation efforts, knowledge of the number and distribution of species is required. Here, Westgate et al.perform a meta-analysis to show that studies of cross-taxon congruence rarely give consistent results between different locations, undermining the assumption that a subset of taxa can be representative of biodiversity.

    • Martin J. Westgate
    • , Philip S. Barton
    •  & David B. Lindenmayer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forest recovery after past disturbances can help to understand how forests will respond to future scenarios. Here, the authors analyse palaeoecological records from tropical forests and find that Central American and African forests have recovered faster after disturbances than those in South America and Asia.

    • Lydia E. S. Cole
    • , Shonil A. Bhagwat
    •  & Katherine J. Willis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rice false smut, caused by the pathogenic ascomycete fungus Ustilaginoidea virens (Cooke) Takah, has a significant economic impact on crop production. Here, Zhang et al. report the draft genome sequence of U. virensand provide insight into the evolution of genes involved in pathogenicity and adaptation to a biotrophic and floret-infecting lifestyle.

    • Yong Zhang
    • , Kang Zhang
    •  & Wenxian Sun

  • Article |

    Primary and secondary organic aerosols emitted by road vehicles are hazardous to health and climate, with diesel trucks and cars considered the main offenders. Platt et al.show that, despite constituting a small fraction of the fleet, two-stroke scooters can dominate vehicular pollution in some cities.

    • S.M. Platt
    • , I.El. Haddad
    •  & A.S.H. Prévôt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The risks of flooding to coastal communities are increasing due to coastal development and climate change. Here, the authors use meta-analyses to quantitatively show that coral reefs can significantly reduce risks from natural hazards, and that reef defences can be enhanced cost effectively.

    • Filippo Ferrario
    • , Michael W. Beck
    •  & Laura Airoldi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Discards from fishing vessels are food for scavenging species, so ending the practice may have ecological consequences. Here, Heath et al. show that improving selectivity so that unwanted fish are not caught, achieves conservation benefits, while simply requiring that vessels land their entire catch, does not.

    • Michael R. Heath
    • , Robin M. Cook
    •  & Douglas C. Speirs

  • Article |

    The filamentous fungus Eurotium rubrum is one of the few organisms able to survive in the hypersaline Dead Sea. Here Kis-Papo et al. provide genomic and transcriptomic data that reveal potential cellular and metabolic mechanisms underlying adaptation to hypersaline stress in E. rubrum.

    • Tamar Kis-Papo
    • , Alfons R. Weig
    •  & Eviatar Nevo

  • Article |

    Species interactions are known to promote biodiversity and ecosystem stability. Here, the authors assess the effect of habitat alteration on a species network that considers multiple interaction types, and find that plants mediate the response of pollinators and seed dispersers to habitat degradation.

    • Jörg Albrecht
    • , Dana Gertrud Berens
    •  & Nina Farwig

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tree rings are widely used to reconstruct historical records of surface temperature. Here, Stine and Huybers analyse tree-ring records north of 50°N and show that changes in the light environment associated with both volcanic eruptions and global dimming significantly influence tree-ring growth.

    • A. R. Stine
    •  & P. Huybers

  • Article |

    Ecosystems may irreversibly change after perturbations once the tipping point is reached. Here, the authors assess the dynamics of an experimental ecosystem on the brink of collapse and find that the producer populations grow in size as the environment deteriorates, but the collective dynamics slows down near the tipping point.

    • Andrew Chen
    • , Alvaro Sanchez
    •  & Jeff Gore

  • Article |

    Reconstructing patterns of diversification of early animals is challenging. Here, Vannier et al.describe complex digestive organs in arthropods from the early Cambrian of China and Greenland and show similarities with modern crustaceans, suggesting that these structures might have promoted ecological diversification.

    • Jean Vannier
    • , Jianni Liu
    •  & Allison C. Daley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Current methods to identify the geographical origin of humans based on DNA data present limited accuracy. Here, the authors develop a new algorithm, the Genographic Population Structure (GPS), and demonstrate its ability to place worldwide individuals within their country or, in some cases, village of origin.

    • Eran Elhaik
    • , Tatiana Tatarinova
    •  & Janet S. Ziegle

  • Article |

    Mass mortality events of fish and invertebrates are increasingly frequent in coastal zones, yet it is often difficult to identify their causes. Here, the authors provide evidence that a combined field and genomics approach could help identifying the specific cause of mass mortality events.

    • Pierre De Wit
    • , Laura Rogers-Bennett
    •  & Stephen R. Palumbi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    El Niño Southern Oscillation has a strong impact on current strength and ocean temperatures off the western Australian coast, but long-term variability is poorly understood. Zinke et al.show a strong link between La Niña and El Niño events and decadal Leeuwin current variability in coral records since 1795.

    • J. Zinke
    • , A. Rountrey
    •  & M.T. McCulloch

  • Article |

    The function of zebra stripes remains unclear as none of the options have been validated ecologically. Here, the authors, matching striping patterns to environmental variables, test the main hypotheses against each other and find that biting fly avoidance best explains the presence of stripes in equids.

    • Tim Caro
    • , Amanda Izzo
    •  & Theodore Stankowich

  • Article |

    A transition from microbial-dominated Ediacara biota into modern ecosystems marks the beginning of the Cambrian. Here, Buatois et al.describe Ediacaran microbial mats in an early Cambrian formation in Canada suggesting that Ediacara biota persisted in the early Cambrian and abruptly disappeared later on.

    • Luis A. Buatois
    • , Guy M. Narbonne
    •  & Paul Myrow

  • Article |

    Marine cone snails use venom for defence and predation. Here, Dutertre et al.show that cone snails produce structurally and functionally distinct venoms for each purpose and that defence toxins are potent on fish and mammalian targets, suggesting that they have evolved specifically for protection.

    • Sébastien Dutertre
    • , Ai-Hua Jin
    •  & Richard J. Lewis

  • Article |

    Hyposmocomais a diverse lineage of moths that occur across the entire Hawaiian Archipelago. Here, Haineset al. show that Hyposmocomais about 15 million years old, much older than the most recent islands, and that these moths have dispersed from remote Northwestern islands in many independent events.

    • William P. Haines
    • , Patrick Schmitz
    •  & Daniel Rubinoff

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The world’s tropical forests represent a terrestrial carbon sink, yet its size is uncertain. Espírito-Santo et al.characterize full Amazon disturbances combining forest inventories and remote sensing data, and use statistical modelling to quantify the Amazon aboveground forest carbon balance.

    • Fernando D.B. Espírito-Santo
    • , Manuel Gloor
    •  & Oliver L. Phillips

  • Article |

    Competition can promote genetic divergence and speciation, but empirical evidence for this is scarce. Here, Winkelmann et al.show that competition between cichlid fish in Lake Tanganyika promotes the use of rocks or shells for shelter, contributing to morphological and genetic divergence.

    • Kai Winkelmann
    • , Martin J. Genner
    •  & Lukas Rüber

  • Article |

    Little is known about extracellular electron uptake by microbes. Here Bose et al. show that the anoxygenic photoautotroph Rhodopseudomonas palustrisTIE-1 accepts electrons from a poised electrode, which can be uncoupled from photosynthesis, and the pioABC system has a role in this uptake.

    • A. Bose
    • , E.J. Gardel
    •  & P.R. Girguis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spirodela, or duckweed, is a basal monocotyledonous plant with both pharmaceutical and commercial value. Here, the authors sequence the genome of Spirodela polyrhiza, suggesting its genome has evolved by neotenous reduction and clonal propagation, and provide a platform for future comparative genomic studies in angiosperms.

    • W. Wang
    • , G. Haberer
    •  & J Messing

  • Article |

    Rusinga Island in Kenya is home to important fossil beds, including remains of the early ape Proconsul. Here the authors reconstruct the Early Miocene environment in Rusinga Island, and find that Proconsul lived in a dense closed-canopy tropical seasonal forest, a warm and relatively wet local habitat.

    • Lauren A. Michel
    • , Daniel J. Peppe
    •  & Kieran P. McNulty

  • Article |

    The microbes responsible for releasing the potent greenhouse gas methane from thawing permafrost remain largely unknown. Mondav and Woodcroft et al. investigate methane flux across a thaw gradient in Sweden and recover a near-complete genome of the dominant methanogen Candidatus ‘Methanoflorens stordalenmirensis’.

    • Rhiannon Mondav
    • , Ben J. Woodcroft
    •  & Gene W. Tyson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ocean acidification is affecting the stability of coral reefs, but the exact mineralogical response is poorly understood. Diaz-Pulido et al.show that, under warming conditions, the relative abundance of dolomite increases by as much as 200% and could therefore slow the climate-induced break-up of coral reefs.

    • Guillermo Diaz-Pulido
    • , Merinda C. Nash
    •  & Ulrike Troitzsch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mesopelagic fishes dominate the global fishes biomass, yet there exist major uncertainties regarding their global biomass. Irigoien et al.analyse acoustic data collected during a circumglobal cruise and show that biomass estimates should be raised by an order of magnitude.

    • Xabier Irigoien
    • , T. A. Klevjer
    •  & S. Kaartvedt

  • Article |

    Early Permian sphenacodontid synapsids were the first terrestrial large-bodied apex predators. Here, Brink and Reisz show that sphenacodontids had a diverse dentition associated with the evolution of changes in feeding style at the onset of the first well established, complex terrestrial ecosystems.

    • Kirstin S. Brink
    •  & Robert R. Reisz

  • Article |

    Iron emitted from hydrothermal vents is stabilized by organic matter and dispersed into the world ocean, yet the pathways leading to iron–carbon interactions are unknown. Dick et al.propose that a new ‘microbial iron pump’ is responsible for converting hydrothermal iron into bioavailable forms.

    • Meng Li
    • , Brandy M. Toner
    •  & Gregory J. Dick

  • Article |

    Theory predicts trade-offs between investments in precopulatory and postcopulatory sexual traits, but empirical evidence is inconsistent. Here, Lüpold et al.show that the covariance between pre- and postcopulatory sexual traits shifts from positive to negative with increasing male–male competition.

    • Stefan Lüpold
    • , Joseph L. Tomkins
    •  & John L. Fitzpatrick

  • Article |

    Species response to environmental change can have an impact on community assemblages and ecosystem functioning. Here, the authors assess the combined impact of regional land use and climate change on bird functional diversity and find that global changes may lead to uniform species assemblages across Europe.

    • Wilfried Thuiller
    • , Samuel Pironon
    •  & Niklaus E. Zimmermann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Food security and the conservation of natural ecosystems largely rely on the increase in crop yields. Here, the authors examine global crop yield trends since 1960, and establish a robust statistical framework for estimating historical trajectories and identifying yield plateaus.

    • Patricio Grassini
    • , Kent M. Eskridge
    •  & Kenneth G. Cassman

  • Article |

    Recent increases in the dissolved organic carbon (DOC) content of northern aquatic systems are likely to lead to increases in CO2 emissions, yet the mechanisms are poorly understood. Here, evidence from hundreds of Canadian aquatic systems suggests a causal link between DOC concentrations and CO2flux.

    • Jean-François Lapierre
    • , François Guillemette
    •  & Paul A. del Giorgio

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mechanical cues can induce morphogenetic processes during development. Here the authors show that mechanical changes during embryonic development in both zebrafish and Drosophilalead to nuclear localization of β-catenin, which regulates genes required for early mesoderm development in both species.

    • Thibaut Brunet
    • , Adrien Bouclet
    •  & Emmanuel Farge

  • Article |

    Animal colouration is the product of competing selection pressures. Here the authors analyse the diversity of facial colouration in Old World monkeys and apes, and find that colour patterns are linked to social factors, whereas the different levels of facial pigmentation arise as a result of ecological pressures.

    • Sharlene E. Santana
    • , Jessica Lynch Alfaro
    •  & Michael E. Alfaro

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