By leveraging quantitative environmental DNA metabarcoding and ecological network analysis, influential organisms in rice fields are identified, thereby revealing potential avenues for environmentally friendly agricultural practices.
Pratik Rajan Gupte, Gregory F Albery ... Franz J Weissing
The introduction of infectious pathogens to a simulated animal population leads to rapid evolutionary transitions in how individuals move in a social context, with distinct movement morphs evolved that make trade-offs between sociality and infection risk.
Hui Zhen Tan, Justin JFJ Jansen ... Frank E Rheindt
Application of museomics facilitates characterization of the contribution of historical factors to genetic diversity declines in Numenius shorebirds and highlights that extinction of ecosystem-engineering megafauna may have been detrimental for open-landscape species.
A 2-year field experiment reveals that plant secondary metabolites can be harnessed to increase crop productivity through plant-soil feedbacks under agronomically realistic conditions.
Michael R Stehnach, Richard J Henshaw ... Jeffrey S Guasto
A multiplexed microfluidic device was developed to facilitate high-throughput screening of bacterial chemotaxis on a single chip and demonstrated across a range of microbes, chemostimulants, and chemical gradient conditions.
Alexander Lobanov, Samantha Dyckman ... Babak Momeni
Investigating microbial communities in a spatial environment in silico suggests that spatial structure promotes higher coexistence by allowing spatial self-organization, but can hinder coexistence by weakening interactions mediated through diffusible metabolites.
Sixteen new mermithid nematodes associated with their insect hosts are discovered from mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber and they are more abundant in non-holometabolous insect hosts, revealing what appears to be a vanished history of nematodes parasitism.
Kenneth De Baets, Karina Vanadzina, James Schiffbauer
Analysis of specimens preserved in amber from the Cretaceous period suggests that nematodes changed their host preference towards insects with a complete metamorphosis more recently.
Fish environmental DNA remaining in a cup of seawater provides information about interaction strengths among marine fish species in nature, highlighting the potential impact of global climate change on community dynamics and stability.
