Biodiversity decline alters species interaction networks and can destabilise ecosystem functions. Fungal consumption by mammals supports ectomycorrhizal (ECM) spore dispersal, contributing to fungi-plant symbioses. The ecological impacts of losing mycophagous mammals and to what extent species roles are redundant or complementary remains poorly quantified. Using fungal ITS2 metabarcoding, we explore the fungal community in sca...

Gelatinous zooplankton are abundant in marine ecosystems, yet their trophic roles and functional diversity in food webs have only recently gained attention. Gelatinous zooplankton taxa including hydromedusae, ctenophores, siphonophores, chaetognaths, and pelagic tunicates span multiple phyla and are often grouped taxonomically, but trait‐based categorizations have emerged as an ecologically meaningful alternative. Considering...

Restoring ecosystem functions via conserving and translocating threatened species is an increasingly common conservation action and priority. Monitoring how a translocated species interacts with the recipient ecosystem and co-occurring species is rarely the focus of strategic management plans. Digging, mycophagous mammals play critical ecosystem roles including bioturbation and fungal spore dispersal. The fungal diets of trans...

Cell surface properties can strongly mediate microbial interactions with predators in soil and host‐pathogen systems. Yet, the role of microbial surface properties in avoiding or enhancing predation in the ocean is less well known. Appendicularians are globally abundant marine suspension feeders that capture marine microorganisms in a complex mucous filtration system. We used artificial microspheres to test whether the surface...

There is mounting evidence that invasive alien species (IAS) have adverse effects on plant health and the global economy, posing a significant threat to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Identifying and assessing emerging IAS, such as plant pathogens, is a proactive approach that might assist in prioritising potential pathogen threats before they become established or widespread, negatively affecting plant health, crop p...

Environmental hazards associated with the global food system threaten societal integrity. Yet, there is a major data gap in the global understanding of how the prevalence of hazards is changing over time, how different classes of hazard are distributed, and whether the combined literature represents hazard prevalence equitably across research, policy and legislation, and news. Here, we explore this data gap, leveraging global...

We investigated the trajectory of depressive symptoms (“depression”) from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa (March 2020) until 2021, between individuals with and without pre-pandemic depression, specifically regarding the role of food security. Our investigation used publicly available panel data (N = 6,930) from the South African National Income Dynamics Study Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (SA-NIDS-CRAM fro...

High mortality rates of cultured Pacific oysters ( Crassostrea gigas ) during the summer months have regularly occurred on oyster farms in British Columbia, Canada over the last 10 years, but little is known about the microbial and environmental conditions that contribute to such mortality events. The objective of the study was to determine correlative factors associated with the onset of a summer mortality event in oysters (m...

Industrialized environments, despite benefits such as higher levels of formal education and lower rates of infections, can also have pernicious impacts upon brain atrophy. Partly for this reason, comparing age-related brain volume trajectories between industrialized and non-industrialized populations can help to suggest lifestyle correlates of brain health. The Tsimane, indigenous to the Bolivian Amazon, derive their subsisten...

Transposable elements (TEs) are genetic elements that have evolved as crucial regulators of human development and cancer, functioning as both genes and regulatory elements. When TEs become dysregulated in cancer cells, they can serve as alternate promoters to activate oncogenes, a process known as onco-exaptation. This study aimed to explore the expression and epigenetic regulation of onco-exaptation events in early human deve...

Existing phenotype ontologies were originally developed to represent phenotypes that manifest as a character state in relation to a wild-type or other reference. However, these do not include the phenotypic trait or attribute categories required for the annotation of genome-wide association studies (GWAS), Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) mappings or any population-focussed measurable trait data. The integration of trait and biol...

A fully iterative ‘two-way’ fluid-structure interaction (FSI) tool of a commercially available composite windsurfer fin was developed, which was then used to investigate the normally hidden fin behaviour for a range of typical sailing conditions. The ‘two-way’ FSI analysis gave significantly better insights into the fin behaviour than the simpler ‘one-way’ non-iterative analysis. The tool also indicated that hydro-elastic tail...