Biodiversity

A collection of short dispatches from the field of climate microbiology conveys the contributions that single-celled life forms make to our climate system, and how we can work with them to address climate change.

Scientists reconstructed 500 million years of evolutionary history to reveal which came first: colorful signals or the color vision needed to see them.

By speedrunning ecosystems with microbes, researchers revealed intrinsic properties that may make a community susceptible to invasion.

More than 50 years after Bob Paine’s experiment with starfish, hundreds of species have been pronounced “keystones” in their ecosystems. Has the powerful metaphor lost its mathematical meaning?

Because tree seedlings don’t grow as well when close to their parents, more tree species can be packed into tropical forests.

New modeling work suggests why nature is more diverse than niche-based ecological theory predicts.

A new, deeper understanding of how the breeding structure of species affects their genetic diversity is giving conservationists better tools for saving animals.

On Mount Everest and in the Peruvian Andes, Tracie Seimon uses DNA to study how species and ecosystems respond to climate change, pathogens and other influences.

The first large-scale comparison of mutation rates gives insights into how quickly species can evolve.