Evolutionary theory articles within Nature

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Models show that human cooperation cannot evolve reliably under repeated interactions or under intergroup competitions, but combining the two mechanisms predicts a distinctive strategy, observed experimentally in Papua New Guinea, in which individuals exhibit cooperative reciprocity with ingroup partners and uncooperative reciprocity with outgroup partners.

    • Charles Efferson
    • , Helen Bernhard
    •  & Ernst Fehr

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Assembly theory conceptualizes objects as entities defined by their possible formation histories, allowing a unified language for describing selection, evolution and the generation of novelty.

    • Abhishek Sharma
    • , Dániel Czégel
    •  & Leroy Cronin

  • Article |

    A numerical analysis of mutualistic interactions between species shows that indirect effects from species they do not interact with directly are the biggest source of variation and cause the largest decreases to species fitness.

    • Leandro G. Cosmo
    • , Ana Paula A. Assis
    •  & Paulo R. Guimarães Jr

  • Article |

    Morphological diversification in living birds is analysed, with substantial variation in evolutionary modes among subgroups and skeletal parts found, along with an important role for environmental divergence in structuring the radiation of crown-group birds.

    • Guillermo Navalón
    • , Alexander Bjarnason
    •  & Roger B. J. Benson

  • Article |

    Using microcomputed tomographic scans, whole-skeletal reconstruction of the tiny Scleromochlus taylori from the early Late Triassic of Scotland reveals new anatomical details, identifying it as a cousin of pterosaurs.

    • Davide Foffa
    • , Emma M. Dunne
    •  & Paul M. Barrett

  • Article |

    Two new species of well-preserved jawed fishes with complete bodies from the early Silurian period (Telychian age, around 436 million years ago) of Chongqing, South China are described: a jawed stem gnathostome, Xiushanosteus mirabilis, and a chondrichthyan, Shenacanthus vermiformis.

    • You-an Zhu
    • , Qiang Li
    •  & Min Zhu

  • Letter |

    Cooperation is more likely to evolve in a public-goods-distribution game when payoffs can change between rounds so that the stakes increase when players cooperate and decrease when players defect.

    • Christian Hilbe
    • , Štěpán Šimsa
    •  & Martin A. Nowak

  • Letter |

    Using estimates of metabolic costs of the brain and body, mathematical predictions suggest that the evolution of adult Homo sapiens-sized brains and bodies is driven by ecological rather than social challenges and is perhaps strongly promoted by culture.

    • Mauricio González-Forero
    •  & Andy Gardner

  • Letter |

    A derivation of Hamilton’s rule that considers explicit environmental stochasticity can predict when organisms should pay a cost to influence the variance in the reproductive success of their relatives, formalizing the link between bet-hedging and altruism.

    • Patrick Kennedy
    • , Andrew D. Higginson
    •  & Seirian Sumner

  • Letter |

    Focusing attention on the expansion of taxa, rather than their survival, resolves the apparent contradiction between seemingly deterministic patterns of waxing and waning of taxa over time and the randomness of extinction implied by the Red Queen’s hypothesis.

    • Indrė Žliobaitė
    • , Mikael Fortelius
    •  & Nils C. Stenseth

  • Letter |

    The authors derive a condition for how natural selection chooses between two competing strategies on any graph for weak selection, elucidating which population structures promote certain behaviours, such as cooperation.

    • Benjamin Allen
    • , Gabor Lippner
    •  & Martin A. Nowak

  • Letter |

    A study of more than 2,000 bird species shows that diversity in bill shape expands towards extreme morphologies early in avian evolution in a series of major jumps, before switching to a second phase in which bills repeatedly evolve similar shapes by subdividing increasingly tight regions of already occupied niche space.

    • Christopher R. Cooney
    • , Jen A. Bright
    •  & Gavin H. Thomas

  • Letter |

    The ‘big-sperm paradox’, the observed production of few, gigantic sperm by some fruit flies (seemingly at odds with fundamental theory addressing how sexual selection works) is shown to be a result of co-evolution driven by genetic and functional relationships between sperm length, design of the female reproductive tract and features of the mating system.

    • Stefan Lüpold
    • , Mollie K. Manier
    •  & Scott Pitnick

  • Letter |

    In human societies, individuals who violate social norms may be punished by third-party observers who have not been harmed by the violator; this study suggests that a reason why the observers are willing to punish is to be seen as more trustworthy by the community.

    • Jillian J. Jordan
    • , Moshe Hoffman
    •  & David G. Rand

  • Letter |

    The Trivers–Willard theory proposing that maternal condition influences offspring sex ratio is extended by analysing how differences in mortality rates, age‐specific reproduction and life history tactics between males and females may affect adaptive offspring sex ratio adjustment in two systems.

    • Susanne Schindler
    • , Jean‐Michel Gaillard
    •  & Tim Coulson

  • Letter |

    An intergenerational cooperation game has been developed to study decision-making regarding resource use: when decisions about resource extraction were made individually the resource was rapidly depleted by a minority of defectors; the resource was sustainably maintained across generations, however, when decisions were made democratically by voting.

    • Oliver P. Hauser
    • , David G. Rand
    •  & Martin A. Nowak

  • Article |

    Examination of demographic age trajectories for species from a wide range of taxonomic groups shows that these species have very diverse life-history patterns; mortality and reproduction vary greatly with age for both long- and short-lived species, and the relationships between ageing, mortality and reproduction are clearly complex.

    • Owen R. Jones
    • , Alexander Scheuerlein
    •  & James W. Vaupel

  • Brief Communications Arising |

    • Michael S. Breen
    • , Carsten Kemena
    •  & Fyodor A. Kondrashov

  • Letter |

    Tooth development is used as a model to examine which aspects of phenotype can be optimized by natural selection; this reveals that the complexity of the relationship between genotypic and phenotypic variation can affect adaptation

    • Isaac Salazar-Ciudad
    •  & Miquel Marín-Riera

  • Books & Arts |

    From geology to mould, the naturalist's publications form a coherent whole, finds Eugenie Scott.

    • Eugenie Scott

  • Books & Arts |

    Samir Okasha is intrigued by a proposed universal law of biology: that complexity inevitably increases in the absence of other evolutionary forces.

    • Samir Okasha

  • Letter |

    It is generally assumed that life had a single origin — or, at least, that all extant life descended from a 'universal common ancestor' (UCA) — although this view has been called into question by evidence for extensive horizontal gene transfer. Here, the UCA view is framed as a formal hypothesis and tested (crucially, without assuming that genetic similarity reflects genetic kinship). The UCA view triumphs: a single origin of life is overwhelmingly more likely than any competing hypothesis.

    • Douglas L. Theobald

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