Analysing camera-trap data of 163 mammal species before and after the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns, the authors show that responses to human activity are dependent on the degree to which the landscape is modified by humans, with carnivores being especially sensitive.

In this Perspective, the authors discuss current knowledge of deep-time protein preservation and how the chemical changes undergone by proteins affect taphonomic and palaeoproteomic analyses.

The Anthropocene has been rejected as a formal epoch by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. Moving on and recognizing the deeper and more complex roots of human impacts on our planet will enable us to better, and more fairly, address them.

A surprisingly rare, yet iconic taxon is Susannah Maidment’s choice.

Isotope analysis of human and faunal remains dated to the Later Stone Age reveals a substantial plant-based component to hunter-gatherer diets at the site of Taforalt, several millennia prior to the development of agriculture in the Levant, renewing the question of why agriculture did not develop contemporaneously in North Africa.

Species distribution modelling for 69 European tree species under current climate conditions and projected conditions to 2100 (in decadal steps) demonstrates that, for climate suitability to be maintained throughout a tree’s lifespan, many fewer tree species are available to forest managers than are currently used.

Through genetic and molecular analyses of interspecific stigma–pollen interactions, the authors show that Brassicaceae plants use an integrated pollen discrimination system and a shared pollen rejection pathway to reject conspecific self-pollen and heterospecific pollen. This establishes a mechanistic link between self-incompatibility and speciation in this clade.

In an analysis of how biotic interactions regulate hominin evolutionary dynamics, the authors show that speciation is negatively related to species diversity in Australopithecus and Paranthropus, in the same way that it is in many other vertebrates, whereas the genus Homo is characterized by positive diversity-dependent speciation and negative diversity-dependent extinction.

Analysis of cell types and circuit design of the primary rod pathway in zebrafish suggests that this specialized downstream circuit for rod signalling has been established before the divergence of teleost fish and mammals.

A transcriptomic analysis of 8 tissues across 20 bilaterian species reveals that ancestral gains of tissue-specific gene expression were closely associated with whole-genome duplications in vertebrates and the diversification of ancestral tissue types.

Forests are spatially and temporally dynamic, such that forest degradation is best quantified across whole landscapes and over the long term. The European Union’s forest degradation policy, which focuses on contemporary primary forest conversion to plantations, ignores other globally prevalent forestry practices that can flip forests into a degraded state.

Evolutionary biologists should be proud of recent progress in their broad field. We highlight some developments in fundamental questions and the applied use of evolution.