Fruit bats create tight colonies that behave as one major host of their fur microbiome. It is a fine example for the reflection of a species’ ecology in the composition and temporal dynamics of its microbiome.

Our paper, published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution, provides a direct test of the quality of species diversity as a surrogate for conserving phylogenetic and functional diversity

Determining gender with certainty in a fossil organism (in which typically all that is preserved is skeletal remains) is notoriously difficult, unless of course the species has a baculum.

Jellyfish are unusual creatures. They are one of the few invertebrates recognized and loved by the public, but they are such poor swimmers that aquariums have to house them in special tanks. They have no brain or central nervous system, but have surprisingly complex sensory structures (some even have full-blown eyes). They are one of the oldest lineages of animal life, but are adapted to feed on other animals (which begs the question, what did the earliest jellyfish eat?)

Our paper in Nature Communications suggests that sexual conflict could help explain an unusual aspect of human demography – women live longer than men, but are less healthy than men late-in-life. A role of sexual conflict in this “male-female, health-survival” paradox has, so far, been largely neglected. We wish to highlight how evolutionary theory might provide new insights into human health and that collaboration between evolutionary biologists, human demographers and biomedical scientists provides fertile ground for exciting new research.