Evolutionary ecology articles from across Nature Portfolio

Social regurgitation and fluid sharing evolved when worker reproduction became constrained and when ants began drinking sugary liquids as angiosperms flourished. Evolution of this behaviour led to larger colonies and increased net diversification.

Diversification of a mid-wavelength opsin appears to play an important role in the visual ecologies of bioluminescent shrimps with a higher diversity of opsins in taxa that migrate to shallower waters with more variable light conditions.

A comparative analysis of bat genomes, including five newly assembled chromosome-scale genomes, provides insights into the diversification of horseshoe bats and reveals molecular adaptations with a potential role in antiviral immune response.

Climate warming is accelerating successional processes, leading to late-successional species (fir) quickly outcompeting pioneer species (birch) at Himalayan treelines. This finding offers insights into the composition and interactions of future forest species, as well as their influences on ecosystem services.

A long-running coevolution experiment on bacteria and yeasts shows that adaptive evolution can shift the tipping points that trigger critical transitions in a community.

Long-term experimental evolution in brewer’s yeast reveals how the transition to simple multicellularity can drive ecological divergence and maintain diversity.

There are 5 million fungal species. However, the discovery and classification of fungi are in high flux. Modern concepts indicate that the three kingdoms of “fungi” are Chromista, Fungi and Protozoa. Strong support for the wrong phylogeny can occur without correct analytical methods. In the current Collection we envisaged fungi representing extremely diverse and ancient eukaryotic organisms, with familiar groups such as mushrooms, yeasts and “moulds”. We collected 6 fascinating papers in three areas of Diversity, Chemical Diversity and Evolution.

Identifying the metal micronutrients required by early life could help to illuminate how primitive organisms arose, but which metals were biologically available in ancient seawater has not been determined. A new experimental framework suggests how the precipitation of iron minerals from seawater reduced the availability of key metals, particularly zinc, copper and vanadium.

A catastrophic flooding event offered an unusual chance to demonstrate that spatial sorting — the differential dispersal of phenotypes — occurs in soapberry bugs as they recolonize after a major disturbance. But this process does not always prove to be adaptive.