Nature ecology & evolution最新文献

Cave-dwelling bat species rely on echolocation to perceive their environment, but also experience high levels of acoustic interference from conspecific calls when flying at the same time (especially when emerging from the cave). Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, Goldshtein et al. explore how greater mouse-tailed bats (Rhinopoma microphyllum) cope with acoustic sensory overload, sometimes called the ‘cocktail party nightmare’. By combining high-resolution GPS tracking with individual-level acoustic data collected via miniature onboard microphones, they show that bats leaving their cave on collective foraging expeditions experience high levels of acoustic masking (weak echoes from nearby bats that are not detected). This occurs especially at the mouth of the cave, when thousands of individuals emerge within the space of a minute and the risk of collisions between individuals is high. However, the probability of masking decreased rapidly 25 m beyond the cave entrance, as does the proportion of echo-jamming by conspecifics (calls that overlap with echoes, but are louder). As a result, groups are able to still maintain collective movement over several kilometres, while avoiding collisions. Goldshtein et al. support these findings using a biologically plausible sensorimotor model that predicts a rapid decrease in bat collision rate beyond the cave entrance, as the probability of detecting echoes from conspecifics increases alongside reductions in the proportion of acoustic masking and echo-jamming.

Original reference: Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 122, e2407810122 (2025)

Long-term selective breeding of crops can result in reduced genetic diversity and high sensitivity to pathogenic diseases. The de novo domestication of the wild relatives of such crops can facilitate the identification and breeding of disease-resistant variants, but this requires knowledge of the evolutionary origins of crop cultivars and specific metabolites or genomic regions that confer disease resistance. Writing in Nature Genetics, Liu and colleagues take on this challenge in sweet orange — an important fruit crop that is sensitive to a bacterial disease known as citrus canker. They assessed the nuclear and chloroplast genomes of 305 citrus accessions (plant materials from a single species collected at one time from a specific location) from southern China, including accessions of sweet orange, sour orange, pummelo and mandarin. Having inferred that sweet orange originated from hybridization between a sour orange accession (probably the maternal parent) and a mandarin, they confirmed it with artificial hybridization experiments between a canker-resistant sour orange and a mandarin. Using comparative metabolomic analysis and experiments with antibacterial agents, they also identified plant metabolites with broad antibacterial activity that confer resistance to citrus canker. Of 215 hybrids generated in the experiment, 3 had remarkable phenotypic similarity to commercial sweet oranges. One also accumulated higher levels of defense-related metabolites than its canker-resistant sour orange progenitor and was resistant to citrus canker when inoculated with the causative bacterium. These findings offer a feasible route to using sour oranges for the de novo domestication of disease-resistant sweet oranges.

Original reference: Nat. Genet. 57, 754–762 (2025)

Seaweed diversity and biomass is in decline in many regions worldwide. In China, for example, 44% of seaweed species have become locally extinct around Yushan Island since 1989 (ref. ¹); 286 species have been lost from Hainan since the 1970s²; and natural seaweed beds of Sargassum horneri in Nanji Islands have almost disappeared since the 1980s. These losses are alarming. Seaweeds (macroalgae) underpin rocky coastal ecosystems, where they provide habitat, food and spawning grounds, and drive nutrient cycling³. Seaweed species also benefit people as a direct source of food, medicines and chemicals, in addition to improving water quality and buffering storm surges^4,5. Yet acknowledgement of the ecological and economic importance of diverse seaweeds is conspicuously lacking from high-level policy discussions. Specific attention to the sustainable use and safeguarding of seaweed resources and biodiversity is sorely needed.

There are several drivers of seaweed declines. Urbanization and coastal development (including construction of artificial structures such as seawalls, ports, piers, pontoons and mariculture rafts) have transformed natural habitats and environments (Fig. 1a). This sprawl of artificial shorelines is happening worldwide; in China, it has increased from 24% to 71% of the coast over the past four decades⁹. Many seaweed species do not survive in these artificial environments; this leads to diversity loss and macroalgal blooms — often of single species that can grow well in these altered habitats¹⁰. In addition, extreme weather events driven by climate change (such as marine heatwaves and storm surges) can decimate seaweeds by killing and removing them from hard substrata^11,12. Seaweed species that trap gas for flotation (for example, Ulva and Sargassum spp.) can survive and drift on the sea surface; sinking and decomposition of species without this flotation can cause harmful reductions in oxygen levels. The overharvesting of edible species has also contributed to the sharp reduction in seaweed diversity, particularly on the extensive rocky shores of China.

Species distributions are a product of both current spatial configuration of habitats and legacies of historical land use. Here we explore current and historical drivers of species distributions, considering combined effects of spatial spillovers and temporal legacies, both within and between habitat types. We fit Bayesian hierarchical occupancy models to data on 373 species from four taxa (ground beetles, birds, vascular plants and small terrestrial mammals) from a chronosequence of 134 woodlands (10 to >250 years old) in temperate agricultural landscapes in the UK. Both spillovers and legacies affect species richness and community composition and, critically, these effects interact. Real-world combinations of spillovers and legacies result in different biodiversity responses compared with the individual factors in isolation. Woodland patches in landscapes with more old woodland and lower amounts of historical woodland loss tend to host more bird and plant but fewer beetle species. Failing to account for these drivers (in particular, legacy effects) gives a distorted view of habitat suitability. In consequence, the same management actions may result in unexpectedly different outcomes depending on the spatial and historical context within the landscape. A better understanding of spillovers and legacy effects on species distributions is required to design biodiversity-friendly, cost-effective land management.

Giant panda conservation is often considered a global success story. Through habitat protection and a breeding programme that is bolstered by over 20 zoos worldwide, panda populations have been increasing and their extinction risk level was downgraded from ‘endangered’ to ‘vulnerable’ in 2016 (ref. ¹). However, a series of recent investigative reports published by the New York Times^2,3,4 raised doubts over the integrity of the global panda breeding programme. Although we commend the investigation for highlighting some issues that have previously been overlooked, we contend that this reporting misrepresents the breeding programme and its conservation effects. Indeed, most of the critiques of the reports were based on practices that were occurring more than two decades ago, despite being presented as the current situation.

Overall, the reports criticize the panda breeding programme as being primarily driven by financial gain and political leverage, and argue that the programme has failed to fulfil its commitments to panda reintroduction and uphold animal welfare during artificial breeding procedures. Although China has indeed leveraged the programme to foster international collaborations and participating zoos have benefited from increased visitations due to pandas, the programme has nonetheless made substantial contributions to the conservation of giant pandas in the wild. Here, we clarify three key points to rectify these misconceptions.

Ongoing and sharply increased global forest fires, especially extreme large-scale fires (LFs) with their greater destructiveness, have significantly altered forest structures and functions. However, long-term variations in the severity of LFs and corresponding effects on the natural post-LF recovery time of global forests remain unclear. Here, we rigorously identified 3,281 global large-scale (>10 km²) single-time fire events (LSFs) from 2001 to 2021, and used multiple indicators to understand the post-LSF recovery dynamics from different perspectives and comprehensively reveal major driving factors across regions and forests types based on multiple models. Compared with pre-2010, LSFs after 2010 caused greater forest damage, with the fire severity expanding further from low to high latitudes and from humid to arid regions, particularly affecting evergreen needleleaf forests. Fewer than one-third of the forests recovered successfully within 7 years, and most of these were tropical, moisture-rich broadleaf forests. The average time required for three indicators to recover to pre-fire conditions increased by 7.5% (vegetation density), 11.1% (canopy structure) and 27.3% (gross primary productivity). Moreover, the positive sensitivity of recovery time to increased fire severity was significantly intensified. Notably, more forests experienced recovery stagnation with increased severity, especially in boreal forests, further extending recovery time. The negative impact of the severity of LSFs on forest recovery was much stronger than that of post-LSF climate conditions. Soil moisture after LSFs was identified as the primary facilitating factor. Temperature generally had a positive role before 2010, but a strong negative influence on post-LSF forest recovery after 2010. These findings provide a useful reference for better understanding global forest recovery mechanisms, estimating forest carbon sinks and implementing post-LSF management accordingly.

Evidence is accumulating of declines in widespread, abundant insect species. The consequences of these losses for ecosystem functioning are predicted to be severe but remain poorly tested in real-world ecosystems. Here we tested the relative importance of functional redundancy versus complementarity in conferring stability of multifunctional performance in the face of dominant insect species decline. We conducted an experimental manipulation of functional trait-space occupancy within naturally occurring ant communities in Australia. Experimental suppression of dominant ant species in multiple trait groupings caused a counterintuitive increase in multifunctional performance, which was associated with an increase in species richness. The resident ant community had high functional redundancy, contributing to rapid compensatory dynamics following suppression. However, colonization by new species with increased trait complementarity drove higher multifunctional performance. This increased multifunctionality probably occurred via reduced interspecific competition but at the cost of increased sensitivity of ecosystem multifunctionality to further species loss. Our findings show that functional redundancy can buffer multifunctional performance of a community against decline of dominant insect species but suggest that future stability of ecosystem multifunctionality depends more on functional complementarity and altered competitive interactions.

Uncertainties related to species’ physiological requirements and microclimatic fluctuations hinder predictions of the effects of climate change on biodiversity. A study published in Nature tackles both of these gaps for amphibians, which are particularly sensitive to warming and aridification. Pottier et al. combined a database of empirical observations with phylogenetic model-based imputation to quantify thermal limits for 5,203 amphibian species. This provided estimates of the temperatures that these animals can physiologically tolerate. Next, Pottier et al. leveraged recent advances in microenvironmental data and biophysical modelling to quantify the environmental temperatures that amphibians actually experience in the wild. By estimating the hourly microclimates experienced by amphibians around the world, they found that 104 species are already likely to experience fatal overheating despite retreating to microclimatic refugia. This number is projected to quadruple under future climate conditions in a high-emissions scenario, driven particularly by the growing exposure of arboreal and terrestrial species to extreme temperatures. Pottier et al. found that many species would overheat even under vegetation shade. Notably, the study reports a nonlinear relationship between thermal safety margins — the difference between species’ temperature tolerance and the environmental temperature — and overheating risk. In other words, species with apparently similar thermal vulnerability can face markedly different probabilities of overheating. Such an insight underscores the importance of accounting for small-scale spatiotemporal variation in climate.

Original reference: Nature 639, 954–961 (2025)