This Week in Evolution

This week's picks:

On the origins of sexual dimorphism in butterflies "In some lineages, eyespots and bands arise in a single sex [Darwin's hypothesis], whereas in other lineages they appear in both sexes but are then lost in one of the sexes [Wallace's hypothesis]. "

Evidence for competition and cooperation among climbing plants "mixed groups tended to allocate more mass to roots than comparable sibling groups"

Kin-informative recognition cues in ants "Contrary to the theoretical prediction, we show that the cuticular hydrocarbons of ant workers in all four colonies are informative enough to allow full-sisters to be distinguished from half-sisters with a high accuracy"

Deciphering the Rhizosphere Microbiome for Disease-Suppressive Bacteria "we identified key bacterial taxa and genes involved in suppression of a fungal root pathogen... [using] nonribosomal peptide synthetases"

Evolution of tolerance by magpies to brood parasitism by great spotted cuckoos "estimated tolerance as the slope of the regression of number of magpie fledglings (i.e. host fitness) on number of cuckoo eggs"

Earth's earliest non-marine eukaryotes "1 Gyr ago... far earlier than previously thought."