Organisms living in arid environments are predicted to be at increased risk of extinction under climatic and anthropogenic change. Response to past climate change can provide some insights into these risks; however, our understanding of the diversification and evolutionary history of many arid‐adapted species is still limited, particularly in Australia. Here, we evaluate the demographic and evolutionary history of a widespread...

Background Cereal crops dominate arable agriculture and underpin global food supply. Cereal grain yield is closely related to crop nitrogen (N) uptake. However, excessive inputs of N fertiliser in cereal production systems can have negative environmental consequences and represent high financial risk for farmers. Scope This review explores opportunities to reduce the current reliance of the global staples, wheat ( Triticum aes...

Lipid nanoparticle-messenger RNA (LNP-mRNA) drug products are a growing class of drug modalities. The unique composition of these drug products requires multiple measurements to account for the different components of these drug modalities. Pharmacokinetic (PK) measurements include measurement of the encapsulated mRNA and components of the LNP in circulation to understand the effectiveness of the therapeutic mRNA. The PK measu...

Translocation programmes are increasingly being informed by genetic data to monitor and enhance conservation outcomes for both natural and established populations. These data provide a window into contemporary patterns of genetic diversity, structure and relatedness that can guide managers in how to best source animals for their translocation programmes. The inclusion of historical samples, where possible, strengthens monitori...

Genomic‐scale datasets, sophisticated analytical techniques, and conceptual advances have disproportionately failed to resolve species boundaries in some groups relative to others. To understand the processes that underlie taxonomic intractability, we dissect the speciation history of an Australian lizard clade that arguably represents a “worst‐case” scenario for species delimitation within vertebrates: the Ctenotus inornatus...

The emerging use of qPCR and dPCR in regulated bioanalysis and absence of regulatory guidance on assay validations for these platforms has resulted in discussions on lack of harmonization on assay design and appropriate acceptance criteria for these assays. Both qPCR and dPCR are extensively used to answer bioanalytical questions for novel modalities such as cell and gene therapies. Following cross-industry conversations on th...

Tropical freshwater lakes are well known for their high biodiversity, and particularly the East African Great Lakes are renowned for their adaptive radiation of cichlid fishes. While comparative phylogenetic analyses of extant species flocks have revealed patterns and processes of their diversification, little is known about evolutionary trajectories within lineages, the impacts of environmental drivers, or the scope and natur...

Doliolids are common gelatinous grazers in marine ecosystems around the world and likely influence carbon cycling due to their large population sizes with high growth and excretion rates. Aggregations or blooms of these organisms occur frequently, but they are difficult to measure or predict because doliolids are fragile, under sampled with conventional plankton nets, and can aggregate on fine spatial scales (1–10 m). Moreover...

When in 2010 the world's governments pledged to increase protected area coverage to 17% of the world's land surface, several Central African countries had already set aside 25% of their northern savannas for conservation. To evaluate the effectiveness of this commitment, we analyzed the results of 68 multispecies surveys conducted in the seven main savanna national parks in Central Africa (1960–2017). We also assembled informa...

The processes responsible for cytonuclear discordance frequently remain unclear. Here, we employed an exon capture data set and demographic methods to test hypotheses generated by species distribution models to examine how contrasting histories of range stability vs. fluctuation have caused cytonuclear concordance and discordance in ground squirrel lineages from the Otospermophilus beecheyi species complex. Previous studies in...

Large quantities of the greenhouse gas methane (CH 4 ) are stored in the seafloor. The flux of CH 4 from the sediments into the water column and finally to the atmosphere is mitigated by a series of microbial methanotrophic filter systems of unknown efficiency at highly active CH 4 ‐release sites in shallow marine settings. Here, we studied CH 4 ‐oxidation and the methanotrophic community at a high‐CH 4 ‐flux site in the north...

Nitrogen (N) transformations and fluxes at the sediment‐water interface (SWI) were measured in Missisquoi Bay, Lake Champlain, to clarify the role of N in cyanobacterial blooms in temperate, eutrophic lakes. N sources (e.g., N fixation and tributary inputs), sinks (e.g., denitrification/anammox), and internal “links” (e.g., dissimilatory reduction to ; DNRA) were evaluated at a river discharge (PRM) and in the central basin (M...

We evaluated the seasonal variation of denitrification, anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox), and dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium (DNRA) rates in the sediments and the integrative N (and O) isotopic signatures of dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) compounds in the overlying water column of the monomictic Lake Lugano south basin. Denitrification was the dominant NO − 3 reduction pathway, whereas the contribution o...

In our 2011 synthesis (Bowman et al ., Journal of Biogeography , 2011, 38 , 2223–2236), we argued for a holistic approach to human issues in fire science that we term ‘pyrogeography’. Coughlan & Petty ( Journal of Biogeography , 2013, 40 , 1010–1012) critiqued our paper on the grounds that our ‘pyric phase’ model was built on outdated views of cultural development, claiming we developed it to be the unifying explanatory framew...

The rarity of parthenogenesis, reproduction without sex, is a major evolutionary puzzle. To understand why sexual genetic systems are so successful in nature, we must understand why parthenogenesis sometimes evolves and persists. Here we use DNA sequence data to test for similarities in the tempo and mode of the evolution of parthenogenesis in a grasshopper and a lizard from the Australian desert. We find spectacular congruenc...