Niche contiguity occurs when only current climatic conditions are used to estimate the niche of a species, ignoring potential niche expansion under climate change. An assessment of 24,944 species shows that nearly half exhibit niche contiguity, which can lead to overestimates of biodiversity loss under climate change.

Long-term high-resolution data on social relationships, space use and microhabitat in a wild population of mice (Apodemus sylvaticus), accompanied by sampling of the gut microbiota, show that distinct sets of microorganisms dominate social and environmental transmission routes of microbiota. Microorganisms with low oxygen tolerance are more reliant on social transmission.

A 15-year experiment at rocky intertidal sites on the northwestern US coast documents kelp, barnacle and mussel abundances before, during and after a multi-year marine heatwave and an outbreak of sea star wasting disease, including changes to communities that did not recover after return to baseline conditions.

Achieving inclusive and sustainable ocean economies, long-term climate resilience and effective biodiversity conservation requires urgent and strategic actions from local to global scales. We discuss fundamental changes that are needed to allow equitable policy across these three domains.

A systematic review of 12,854 articles that use species distribution modelling shows that only 1,429 include human predictors as well as environmental ones. Half of those that include human predictors alongside future climate projections keep the human factors constant over time. The article discusses the need for greater inclusion of human predictors to inform policy and management.

The authors investigate epifaunal tiering and ecological succession within the oldest preserved animal communities, those of the Ediacaran Avalon assemblage (574–560 Ma), identifying four community types that form irrespective of succession and finding that tiering is prevalent in three community types.

Using a deep learning method that extracts morphological features from images of marine fossils, the authors explore morphological disparity dynamics over a time series of 4 million years, spanning the Permian–Triassic mass extinction event.

This study develops a somatic molecular clock based on the accumulation of fixed somatic genetic variation that segregates among clonally produced organisms and applies it to the eelgrass Zostera marina.

Xing Xu picks a puzzler.

Data repositories are the best way of sharing data both before and after publication, and Nature journals offer integrated data uploading at initial manuscript submission.

Recent media coverage gives the impression that the very idea of tackling climate change by slowing tropical deforestation is a scam — this is not true and the idea could harm forests.