Evolutionary Biology

Ecological diversification in rapidly evolving populations

1. Daniel P.G.H. Wong
2. Benjamin H. Good

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  In this important theoretical contribution, the authors study the evolution of large microbial populations competing for resources in the challenging and relevant regime of overlapping ecological and evolutionary timescales. The modeling approach is overall convincing, anlthough its presentation would benefit from clarifications, e.g. on assumptions and approximations. The results will be of broad interest to researchers in evolutionary biology, ecology and microbiology.

Reviewed by eLife

Species biology and demographic history determine species vulnerability to climate change in tropical island endemic birds

1. Ratnesh Karjee
2. Vikram Iyer
3. Durbadal Chatterjee
4. Rajasri Ray
5. Kritika M Garg
6. Balaji Chattopadhyay

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Tropical single-island endemic bird populations are particularly vulnerable to climate change. This study investigates genetic evidence of how such species dealt with climate change in the past as a possible predictor of how they will respond in the future, which could provide an important example for the fields of conservation genetics and island biogeography. The authors' integration of genomics and habitat modeling is commendable, but we find that the support for their conclusions is currently inadequate: some model parameter choices do not seem to reflect the biology of the studied species or to be well founded, which can cause misalignment of modeled dynamics with glaciation windows crucial for interpreting the study's results against its claims.

Reviewed by eLife

Divergent C. elegans toxin alleles are suppressed by distinct mechanisms

1. Stefan Zdraljevic
2. Laura Walter-McNeill
3. Giancarlo N Bruni
4. Joshua S Bloom
5. Daniel HW Leighton
6. Heriberto Marquez
7. Noah Alexander
8. Leonid Kruglyak

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study identifies a new toxin/antidote (T/A) system in the model nematode C. elegans. These results suggest there are alternative mechanisms to neutralize selfish genetic elements. The authors present solid data that robustly support their central conclusion. This work will be of broad interest to investigators in evolutionary biology and reproductive biology.

Reviewed by eLife

Most Beefalo cattle have no detectable bison genetic ancestry

1. Beth Shapiro
2. Jonas Oppenheimer
3. Michael P Heaton
4. Kristen L Kuhn
5. Richard E Green
6. Harvey D Blackburn
7. Timothy PL Smith

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study used whole-genome data to investigate Beefalo ancestry for the first time, providing insight into the genetics of Beefalo cattle and challenging the long-held claim of 37.5% bison ancestry reported by the American Beefalo Association. Despite some limitations regarding sequencing depth and sampling, the expert use of a comprehensive set of population-genomic methods allowed the authors to demonstrate convincingly that Beefalo and bison hybrid ancestry profiles are consistent with repeated backcrossing to either parental species. The work will be of significant interest to evolutionary biologists, population geneticists, animal breeders, and those involved in the conservation genetics of bovine species.

Reviewed by eLife

Somatic Programmed DNA Elimination is widespread in free-living Rhabditidae nematodes

1. Caroline Launay
2. Eva Wenger
3. Brice Letcher
4. Marie Delattre

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  In this manuscript, the authors investigate programmed DNA elimination (PDE) across nematodes using a large-scale cytological approach. This work is potentially significant because it expands PDE beyond a few known nematodes to a much broader set of Rhabditidae species, providing an important resource for investigating PDE's evolutionary origins and functions. The strength of evidence, however, is incomplete; the technique used to evaluate PDE is insufficient to provide unambiguous support for the phenomenon, so additional methods, such as genomic sequencing from a few species spanning the range of elimination levels, would be required to confirm these findings. This research would be of interest to geneticists, evolutionary biologists, and those working on the regulation of genome integrity.

Reviewed by eLife

Constraints on the G1/S transition pathway may favor selection of multicellularity as a passenger phenotype

1. Tom Louis Ducrocq
2. Damien Laporte
3. Bertrand Daignan-Fornier

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study implicates that changes in cell regulation may contribute to the evolution of multicellularity. The evidence supporting the conclusions is convincing, with rigorous methods used to test alternative hypotheses. The work will be of broad interest to cell and evolutionary biologists and those studying the cell cycle and cancer.

Reviewed by eLife

Quantifying microbial fitness in high-throughput experiments

1. Justus Wilhelm Fink
2. Michael Manhart

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This manuscript applies a theoretical analysis to two published datasets on yeast and bacterial evolution to compare different ways of quantifying fitness. It makes an important advance by clarifying how discrepancies can arise by using different approaches and provides recommendations for best practices. Overall, this is an impressive and highly beneficial study that is based on convincing evidence and has the potential of setting standards in this rapidly growing field.

Reviewed by eLife

Host and antibiotic jointly select for greater virulence in Staphylococcus aureus

1. Michelle Su
2. Kim L Hoang
3. McKenna Penley
4. Michelle H Davis
5. Jennifer D Gresham
6. Levi T Morran
7. Timothy D Read

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study examines the evolution of virulence and antibiotic resistance in Staphylococcus aureus under multiple selection pressures, specifically host immune function and antibiotic exposure. The evidence presented is convincing, supported by rigorous phenotypic and genomic data from within-host evolution experiments. The manuscript now provides a nuanced and robust interpretation of how pathogens adapt to complex selective landscapes.

Reviewed by eLife

A protein interactome for the last eukaryotic common ancestor illuminates the biochemical basis of modern genetic diseases

1. Rachael M. Cox
2. Ophelia Papoulas
3. Shirlee Shril
4. Chanjae Lee
5. Tynan Gardner
6. Zoya Ansari
7. Anna M. Battenhouse
8. Muyoung Lee
9. Kevin Drew
10. Claire D. McWhite
11. David Yang
12. Janelle C. Leggere
13. Dannie Durand
14. Friedhelm Hildebrandt
15. John B. Wallingford
16. Edward M. Marcotte

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

The emergence of medusa-specific cell states in the scyphozoan Aurelia coerulea

1. Oliver Link
2. Stefan M. Jahnel
3. Kristin Janicek
4. Daniel Guerguerian
5. Johanna Kraus
6. Juan D. Montenegro
7. Bob Zimmerman
8. Brittney Wick
9. Konstantin Khalturin
10. Alison G. Cole
11. Ulrich Technau

Reviewed by Review Commons