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.

Systematic analysis of viperin sequences, a family of immune genes that are highly conserved across diverse prokaryotes and eukaryotes, shows that eukaryotic viperins were acquired from archaea and provides information about their evolutionary dynamics.

Drylands face multiple anthropogenic stressors globally. Here the authors assess protected area coverage and current threats of vertebrate diversity in global drylands and project impacts under future climate and socioeconomic scenarios.

Measurements of plant–pollinator interactions and crop yields for 32 crops in 120 study systems show that 28–61% of crop systems globally are pollinator limited and that realistic increases in pollinator visitation could close yield gaps.

A longitudinal analysis of microbial community assembly dynamics reveals that communities cultured in metabolically complex media are more different from each other than those cultured in simpler media. Using consumer-resource model simulations, the authors demonstrate that the breakdown of complex metabolites by specialist taxa may promote cross-feeding between community members and allow for the assembly of more diverse communities.

A chromosome-level genome assembly for the Ninu (greater bilby) and genome sequences for the extinct Yallara (lesser bilby), together with resequenced genomes, shed light on the demographic history of Ninu and inform conservation plans for this culturally and ecologically important marsupial.

A comparative analysis of community metabolomics and herbivore-induced damage in tropical, subtropical and subalpine tree communities shows that both phytochemical diversity and herbivory were higher in tropical communities, providing support to the latitudinal biotic interactions hypothesis.

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.