We here pioneer a low-cost assembly strategy for 20 Heliconiini genomes to characterize the evolutionary history of the rapidly radiating genus Heliconius. A bifurcating tree provides a poor fit to the data, and we therefore explore a reticulate phylogeny for Heliconius...

Little is known about ecosystem structure and nutrient flux in the pelagic zone of seasonal upwelling systems in the tropics, despite their global importance to marine production. The Tropical Eastern Pacific (TEP) is responsible for around 10% of global ocean productiv...

Marine megafauna, the largest animals in the oceans, serve key roles in ecosystem functioning. Yet, one-third of these animals are at risk of extinction. To better understand the potential consequences of megafaunal loss, here we quantify their current functional divers...

There is a considerable controversy about whether western Amazonia was ever covered by marine waters during the Miocene [23 to 5 Ma (million years ago)]. We investigated the possible occurrence of Miocene marine incursions in the Llanos and Amazonas/Solimões basins, usi...

We infer the phylogeny of fishes in the New World Cynoscion group (Cynoscion, Isopisthus, Macrodon, Atractoscion, Plagioscion) using 1603bp of DNA sequence data from three mitochondrial genes. With the exception of Plagioscion, whose position was ambiguous, the Cynoscio...

Background: Universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities is an essential human right, recognised in the Sustainable Development Goals as crucial for preventing disease and improving human wellbeing. Comprehensive, high-resolution estimates are impor...

Nutrient inputs and biogeochemical cycles in estuaries are strongly influenced by river discharge and suspended particulate matter (SPM). We evaluated temporal differences in nutrient bioavailability and net ecosystem productivity (NEP) and analyzed the effect of SPM on...

Group foraging has been suggested as an important factor for the evolution of sociality. However, visual cues are predominantly used to gain information about group members' foraging success in diurnally foraging animals such as birds, where group foraging has been stud...

Bats host a broad diversity of coronaviruses (CoVs), including close relatives of human pathogens. There is only limited data on neotropical bat CoVs. We analysed faecal, blood and intestine specimens from 1562 bats sampled in Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador and Brazil for ...

We investigated the influence of solar radiation on biogeochemical parameters of the sea surface microlayer (SML), including the spectroscopic composition of FDOM, and biotic and abiotic parameters. We calculated the humification index, biological index, and recently pr...