Palaeoecology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Parasitic interactions are difficult to document in the fossil record. Here, Zhang et al. analyze a large population of a Cambrian brachiopod and show it was frequently encrusted by tubes aligned to its feeding currents and that encrustation was associated with reduced biomass, suggesting a fitness cost.

    • Zhifei Zhang
    • , Luke C. Strotz
    •  & Glenn A. Brock

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The impact of late Pleistocene climate change on ecosystems has been hard to assess. Here, the authors sequence ancient DNA from Hall’s Cave, Texas and find that both plant and vertebrate diversity decreased with cooling, and though plant diversity recovered with rewarming, megafauna went extinct.

    • Frederik V. Seersholm
    • , Daniel J. Werndly
    •  & Michael Bunce

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biology can profoundly influence the planet’s climate, but over Earth’s long history these effects are poorly constrained. Here the authors show that on early Earth, the evolution of microbes producing and consuming methane likely controlled warming and glacial events, and thus Earth’s habitability

    • Boris Sauterey
    • , Benjamin Charnay
    •  & Régis Ferrière

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Key events in human evolution are thought to have occurred between 3 and 2.5 Ma, but the fossil record of this period is sparse. Here, Alemseged et al. report a new fossil site from this period, Mille-Logya, Ethiopia, and characterize the geology, basin evolution and fauna, including specimens of Homo.

    • Zeresenay Alemseged
    • , Jonathan G. Wynn
    •  & Joseph Mohan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The causes of the Upper Pleistocene megafauna extinction in Australia and New Guinea are debated, but fossil data are lacking for much of this region. Here, Hocknull and colleagues report a new, diverse megafauna assemblage from north-eastern Australia that persisted until ~40,000 years ago.

    • Scott A. Hocknull
    • , Richard Lewis
    •  & Rochelle A. Lawrence

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the development of human societies is influenced through their ecological environment and climatic conditions has been the subject of intensive debate. Here, the authors present multi-proxy data from southern Scandinavia which suggests that pre-agricultural population growth there was likely influenced by enhanced marine production.

    • J. P. Lewis
    • , D. B. Ryves
    •  & S. Juggins

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is unclear whether bird migration patterns are restricted to interglacial periods or are maintained during glacial maxima. Somveille et al. apply a global migration simulation model to climate reconstruction to show that the prevalence of this phenomenon has likely been largely maintained up to 50,000 years ago.

    • Marius Somveille
    • , Martin Wikelski
    •  & Walter Jetz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Numerous feathered dinosaurs and early birds have been discovered from the Jurassic and Cretaceous, but the early evolution of feather-feeding insects is not clear. Here, Gao et al. describe a new family of ectoparasitic insects from 10 specimens found associated with feathers in mid-Cretaceous amber.

    • Taiping Gao
    • , Xiangchu Yin
    •  & Dong Ren

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whether Australia’s Pleistocene megafauna extinctions were caused by climate change, humans, or both is debated. Here, the authors infer the spatio-temporal trajectories of regional extinctions and find that water availability mediates the relationship among climate, human migration and megafauna extinctions.

    • Frédérik Saltré
    • , Joël Chadoeuf
    •  & Corey J. A. Bradshaw

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Asian summer monsoons and their links to global temperature changes have been the subject of intense debate. Here the authors reconstruct the Asian monsoon climate since the late Miocene, using plant silica records of C4 and C3 grasses in central China, and find that global cooling caused Asian monsoon rainfall to decrease markedly in the late Pliocene.

    • Hanlin Wang
    • , Huayu Lu
    •  & Yichao Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Little is known about the long-term dynamics of mesopelagic fish despite their large contribution to total fish biomass. Here, the authors analyze the Santa Barbara Basin otolith record and suggest that mesopelagic fish populations were large but fluctuated with surface climate over the last ~2000 years.

    • William A. Jones
    •  & David M. Checkley Jr.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sea-level rise threatens coastal mangroves, with global consequences for these important blue carbon sinks. Here the authors analyse four Holocene sediment cores from islands in Florida Bay and find that mangroves that comprised the South Florida coastline 4–3000 years ago rapidly transitioned to estuarine conditions, despite low rates of sea-level rise, and propose that their demise was driven by high climate variability.

    • Miriam C. Jones
    • , G. Lynn Wingard
    •  & Christopher E. Bernhardt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hypsodonty is a durable pattern of dentition seen in mammals with abrasive diets. Here, Melo and colleagues describe new fossils of the stem-mammal Menadon besairiei from the Late Triassic, which show the convergent evolution of hypsodonty before mammals.

    • Tomaz P. Melo
    • , Ana Maria Ribeiro
    •  & Marina Bento Soares

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The fossil record shows a decline in dinosaur diversity preceding their mass extinction. Here, the authors apply ecological niche modelling to show that suitable dinosaur habitat was declining in areas with present-day rock-outcrop, but not across North America as a whole, possibly generating sampling bias in the fossil record.

    • Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza
    • , Philip D. Mannion
    •  & Peter A. Allison

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Ediacara biota—the first large, complex organisms to evolve on Earth—disappeared prior to the radiation of animals during the Cambrian Period. Here, Muscente et al. perform network analysis of Ediacaran fossils and show that there were two global extinction events before the Cambrian radiation.

    • A. D. Muscente
    • , Natalia Bykova
    •  & Andrew H. Knoll

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The continental record of the end Permian mass extinction is limited, especially from high paleolatitudes. Here, Fielding et al. report a multi-proxy Permo-Triassic record from Australia, resolving the timing of local terrestrial plant extinction and the relationship with environmental changes.

    • Christopher R. Fielding
    • , Tracy D. Frank
    •  & James L. Crowley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It has been thought that land plants suffered a mass extinction along with animals at the end of the Permian. Here, Nowak et al. show that the apparent plant mass extinction is a result of biases in the fossil record and their reanalysis suggests a lower magnitude and more selective plant extinction.

    • Hendrik Nowak
    • , Elke Schneebeli-Hermann
    •  & Evelyn Kustatscher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The expansion of grassland plant diversity is thought to have facilitated diversification of herbivorous insects. Here, the authors show opposing evolutionary dynamics in a clade of African grasses and associated stemborers, opposing the hypothesis about grasslands as a 'cradle' of herbivore diversity.

    • Gael J. Kergoat
    • , Fabien L. Condamine
    •  & Bruno Le Ru

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Kalligrammatid lacewings were among the largest Mesozoic insects. Here, Liu et al. present an assemblage of Mesozoic kalligrammatid lacewings from amber and compression fossils, highlighting diversity in traits associated with pollination, chemical communication and defense against predators.

    • Qing Liu
    • , Xiumei Lu
    •  & Bo Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Evidence for a parasitic lifestyle in extinct species tends to be indirect. Here, the authors provide direct evidence through X-ray examination of approximately 30–40 million year old fossil fly pupae, revealing 55 parasitation events by four newly described wasp species.

    • Thomas van de Kamp
    • , Achim H. Schwermann
    •  & Lars Krogmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The amber deposits from Kachin, Myanmar have provided numerous insights into life in the Cretaceous ~99 million years ago. Here, Zheng and colleagues describe a new Late Cretaceous amber biota from Tilin, Myanmar, dating from ~72 million years ago and preserving a diverse insect assemblage.

    • Daran Zheng
    • , Su-Chin Chang
    •  & Bo Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Macrobioerosion, the boring of rock and other hard substrates by living organisms, is used as a marker of marine paleo-environments. Here, Bolotov et al. describe a rock-boring mussel and its associated community from freshwater in Myanmar, demonstrating that macrobioerosion is a wider phenomenon.

    • Ivan N. Bolotov
    • , Olga V. Aksenova
    •  & Oleg S. Pokrovsky

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Eemian period (120 ka) is considered a past analogue for future climatic warming, yet data from the high latitudes remains sparse. Here, the authors show that in Northern Europe, the Eemian saw dramatic climatic shifts, linked to changes in Earth’s orbit and North Atlantic oceanic circulation.

    • J. Sakari Salonen
    • , Karin F. Helmens
    •  & Miska Luoto

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantifying the vulnerability of tidal marsh ecosystems to relative sea-level rise (RSLR) is essential if the threat is to be mitigated. Here, the authors analyze the response of Great Britain’s tidal marshes to RSLR during the Holocene and predict an almost inevitable loss of this ecosystem by 2100 under rapid RSLR scenarios.

    • Benjamin P. Horton
    • , Ian Shennan
    •  & Timothy A. Shaw

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dinosaurs originated ~245 million years ago (mya) but did not diversify until some time in the Late Triassic. Here, Bernardi and colleagues synthesize palaeontological and dated stratigraphic evidence to show that dinosaur diversification followed the Carnian Pluvial Episode 234–232 mya.

    • Massimo Bernardi
    • , Piero Gianolla
    •  & Michael J. Benton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Triassic fossil record is biased towards large species, obscuring the anatomical diversity of small species. Here, the authors describe a new species, Colobops noviportensis, based on a 2.5 cm-long skull with proportionally large attachments for jaw muscles, expanding the known diversity of early diapsids.

    • Adam C. Pritchard
    • , Jacques A. Gauthier
    •  & Bhart-Anjan S. Bhullar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ocean heat is important in forcing ice sheet retreat, yet past ocean temperature data from proximal ice sheet locations are sparse. Here, the authors present temperature reconstructions from the Wilkes Land subglacial basin during the mid-Miocene, and show that warm waters sustained ice sheet retreat 17–14.8 Ma.

    • Francesca Sangiorgi
    • , Peter K. Bijl
    •  & Henk Brinkhuis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The effect of CO2 concentrations on 13C/12C ratios in C3 plants, comprising most of Earth’s vegetation, is currently debated. Here, using ice core records and plant and animal fossils, Hare et al. find evidence for a pCO2 effect, with implications for palaeoecology and plant responses to climate change.

    • Vincent J. Hare
    • , Emma Loftus
    •  & Christopher Bronk Ramsey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fossils of ticks are rare, and little is known about their ancient hosts. Here, Peñalver and colleagues describe ticks in Cretaceous amber, including representatives of the new family Deinocrotonidae, which are associated with a dinosaur feather and nest biota.

    • Enrique Peñalver
    • , Antonio Arillo
    •  & Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Numerous gaps remain in our knowledge of how groups of organisms interacted in ancient ecosystems. Here, Feng and colleagues describe a late Permian fossil wood-boring beetle microcosm, with the oldest known example of complex tunnel geometry, host tissue response, and the presence of fungi within.

    • Zhuo Feng
    • , Jun Wang
    •  & Conrad Labandeira

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Water is a fundamental resource, but its role in hominin evolution is not well explored. Here, the authors use a combination of groundwater, climate and agent-based models to show that groundwater availability may be critical to past patterns of taxonomic diversity in hominin development in East Africa.

    • M. O. Cuthbert
    • , T. Gleeson
    •  & G. M. Ashley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Species richness increases with area sampled, potentially confounding biodiversity patterns from the fossil record. Here, the authors standardize spatial sampling to control for this bias and show that terrestrial vertebrate diversification was bounded during the Mesozoic but that equilibria were reset following the K/Pg extinction.

    • Roger A. Close
    • , Roger B.J. Benson
    •  & Richard J. Butler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fossil microorganisms older than 1.7 billion years are challenging to interpret due to their size, simple shapes, and alteration. Here, in 1.88 billion year old microfossils, the authors show a pattern of cellular preservation and internal iron nanominerals consistent with oxygenic photosynthetic bacteria.

    • Kevin Lepot
    • , Ahmed Addad
    •  & Emmanuelle J. Javaux

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Agarics (gilled mushrooms) are rarely preserved as fossils, which has obscured their evolutionary history. Here, the authors describe new forms of agarics as well as new species of rove beetles with morphological specializations for mushroom feeding discovered in 99-million-year-old Burmese amber.

    • Chenyang Cai
    • , Richard A. B. Leschen
    •  & Diying Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Megafaunal extinction in Australia has been attributed to both climate change and human causation. Here, van der Kaarset al. present a 150,000 year record offshore southwest Australia in which they refine the timing and nature of regional ecosystem changes and megafaunal population collapse.

    • Sander van der Kaars
    • , Gifford H. Miller
    •  & Scott J. Lehman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many insects mimic plants in order to avoid detection by predators. Here, Garrouste and colleagues describe a katydid fossil that extends the record of leaf mimicry to the Middle Permian, more than 100 million years earlier than previously known fossil specimens of plant mimicry.

    • Romain Garrouste
    • , Sylvain Hugel
    •  & André Nel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The early fossil record of metatherian mammals, the group including marsupials, is limited. Here, Wilson and colleagues describe a fossil skull of the Late Cretaceous metatherianDidelphodon vorax, providing insight into the ecology of this species as well as the North American origin of marsupials.

    • Gregory P. Wilson
    • , Eric G. Ekdale
    •  & Abby Vander Linden

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Social insects are commonly parasitized by beetles that live inside colonies and consume nest resources or even the brood. Here, Yamamotoet al. present fossil evidence that social parasitism by beetles dates back at least 99 million years—contemporaneous with the earliest fossil indications of ant and termite eusociality.

    • Shûhei Yamamoto
    • , Munetoshi Maruyama
    •  & Joseph Parker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many of the theropod dinosaurs, the group including Tyrannosaurus rex, had bony ornamentation on their skulls. Here, Gates et al. show that such ornaments are associated with greater body size and accelerated body size evolution in theropods; however, these relationships are absent in the maniraptoriform dinosaurs, which had evolved pennaceous feathers.

    • Terry A. Gates
    • , Chris Organ
    •  & Lindsay E. Zanno

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