Royal Society Publishing

16/01/2025

Proceedings B is pleased to welcome Professor James Bull, of the University of Swansea, and Professor Devi Stuart-Fox, of the University of Melbourne, as Senior Editors.

They discuss their research backgrounds, their experience as Associate Editors on the board, and also provide advice to prospective authors: https://royalsociety.org/blog/2025/01/proceedings-b-welcomes-new-senior-editors/

15/01/2025

The smallest Zosterophyllum plant from the Devonian of South China reveals divergent life-history strategies of these early vascular land plants | New in Proceedings B: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2024.2337

When and how divergent strategies of sexual reproduction evolved in early land plants is not well understood. In this article, the authors demonstrate that varied life history strategies have evolved in Early Devonian zosterophyllopsids and its type genus Zosterophyllum. They describe the smallest species of Zosterophyllum, which is only ca. 50 mm high and shows tiny spikes with five to ten sporangia. This plant is most likely r-selected, completing its whole lifespan in a short time, while most other zosterophyllopsids are larger in body size and have greater investments in fertile tissues reflected in the size and total number of sporangia.

10/01/2025

Professor Georgina Mace (1953–2020) spent her career examining the ecological and evolutionary processes that underpin ecological communities and ecosystems, stressing the importance of slowing and reversing the loss of nature, and reimagining our economic and social relationship to it. In a new theme issue, we build on Georgina’s enormous contributions by exploring and reviewing new ways that scientists and economists are taking her work forward into the coming crucial decades. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/2025/380/1917

09/01/2025

Dormancy in the origin, evolution and persistence of life on Earth | A new Review in Proceedings B this week: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2024.2035

Life has existed on Earth for most of the planet's history, yet unresolved questions remain about how it first arose and persisted. Dormancy—the ability for individuals to enter a reversible state of reduced metabolic activity—is one potentially important but overlooked process. The authors here consider how dormancy shaped nascent living systems by buffering stochastic processes in small populations, protected against large-scale planetary disturbances, aided dispersal in patchy landscapes, and facilitated adaptive radiations. Given that dormancy is a fundamental and easily evolved property on Earth, it is also likely a feature of life elsewhere in the universe.

08/01/2025

Trypanosoma brucei, the parasite causing African sleeping sickness, exhibits social motility (SoMo) on gel surfaces, where colonies expand in characteristic flower like patterns. While this behaviour is known, measuring it has been challenging.

Kuhn and colleagues developed new methods using image analysis and computer simulations, identifying two growth phases: initial circular expansion followed by finger formation. These methods can also be applied to other expanding microbial colonies, offering researchers new tools to study collective behaviours across various experiments and gain deeper insights into trypanosome biology.

Take a look at the new research in Interface: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2024.0469

07/01/2025

Echidnas and platypuses are unusual animals as monotremes, known for being egg-laying mammals. Their unique anatomy and physiology extends even further than this, including to their gastric anatomy. Join us on 14 January at 9am (UK) to hear from Open Biology author Jackson Bryce Dann on how the genetics of monotremes provide insight to this unique gastric physiology. Find out more & sign up:

The enzymatic breakdown and regulation of food passage through the vertebrate antral stomach and pyloric sphincter (antropyloric region) ...

24/12/2024

This week's Phil. Trans. A issue explores a selection of research activities that are underpinned by the quantum theory of light. The development of the field has been punctuated by the three editions of Rodney Loudon’s seminal text “The Quantum Theory of Light". This theme issue serves to celebrate these editions and, with them,
the fundamental contributions Rodney Loudon made to our understanding of what light is. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rsta/2024/382/2287

20/12/2024

As SARS-CoV-2 has transitioned from a novel pandemic-causing pathogen into an established respiratory virus, focus has shifted to long COVID. Beams and colleagues developed mathematical models to help identify key sources of uncertainty in long COVID trajectories. Results indicate that it is most important to know how well vaccines prevent infection and onward transmission to others, as opposed to how much they reduce symptoms and risk of long COVID during infection. In order to reliably forecast the future prevalence of long COVID, accurate understanding of the transmission of infection remains essential.

Take a look at the new research in Interface: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2024.0438

19/12/2024

Thank you to everyone who chose to read our papers and publish in our journals this year! As we count down to 2025, we’re celebrating the top 10 most popular articles of the year according to Altmetric: https://royalsociety.org/blog/2024/12/popular-papers-2024/

19/12/2024

When beauty filters reality – a recent study in Royal Society Open Science explores cognitive biases in human-AI interaction with a closer look at the impact of beauty filters. The authors tell us more about their findings: https://royalsociety.org/blog/2024/12/when-beauty-filters-reality/

18/12/2024

The potential of remote sensing for improved infectious disease ecology research and practice | New Review in Proceedings B this week: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2024.1712

Data collected from satellites and aircraft can help scientists better understand the natural world. For over a century, these data have been valuable for studying and managing infectious diseases in humans, plants, and wildlife because they reveal how the environment affects disease risk. For some plant diseases, high-resolution data can even help detect infections. This review summarizes the main current uses of satellite and airborne data in disease ecology research and highlights promising avenues for future development. New missions and sensors can provide important data on vegetation type, weather, and landscape features with ever-higher resolution and accuracy.

Photo by Deane Bayas: https://www.pexels.com/photo/aerial-view-of-trees-in-the-forest-5944974/

12/12/2024

What is a unit of nature? Measurement challenges in the emerging biodiversity credit market | Introducing Proceedings B’s inaugural Georgina Mace review in conservation biology: https://royalsociety.org/blog/2024/12/introducing-proceedings-b-inaugural-georgina-mace-review-in-conservation-biology/

11/12/2024

Linguistic rules form the cornerstone of human communication, enabling people to understand and interact with one another effectively. However, there are always irregular exceptions to regular rules, with one of the most notable being the past tense of verbs in English.

In this work, a naming game approach is developed to investigate the collective effect of social behaviours on language dynamics, which encompasses social learning, self-learning with preference, and forgetting due to memory constraints. The findings highlight the significant impact of network structure and social behaviours on the transition of opinions, from consensus to polarization, demonstrating its importance in language dynamics.

Check out the research in Interface: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2024.0406

08/12/2024

The effectiveness of antiviral treatment with remdesivir against COVID-19 has been investigated in clinical trials. Recent studies have repeatedly reported a rather modest beneficial effect.

Quantifying individual viral levels using nasal swabs, Lea Schuh and colleagues studied the clinical course of SARS-CoV-2 infections across illness severity. This included both untreated and individuals treated with remdesivir. Using a mathematical model, they provide quantitative evidence underscoring the importance of early medical intervention for severe COVID-19. However, the model estimated a limited antiviral activity of remdesivir. The results give valuable insights into the clinical course of COVID-19 during antiviral treatment and suggest the need for alternatives.

Take a look at the paper in Interface: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2024.0536

06/12/2024

Pop or Opera? Voice preferences deeply affect human interactions, but very little empirical research has explored what drives these preferences. New research from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics suggests that our appreciation of singing and speaking voices is highly idiosyncratic. The authors tells us more about their findings published in Royal Society Open Science: https://royalsociety.org/blog/2024/12/appreciation-of-singing-and-speaking-voices-is-highly-idiosyncratic/

05/12/2024

Taking cues from ecological and evolutionary theories to expand the landscape of disgust | New Review in Proceedings B this week: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2024.1919

Infection with parasites can decrease fitness and chances of survival. Cues associated with parasite infection risks can result in feelings akin to the human feeling of disgust. Animals can perceive these ‘disgusting’ cues indicating infection risk and spatially avoid them, generating a “landscape of disgust”. The authors here expand this concept by exploring how habitat selection and evolutionary theories can drive variation in an animal’s response to perceived infection risk. The Review explores factors that may drive this variation on different scales, generating a dynamic landscape of disgust. The authors propose several avenues for future work to incorporate these theories into empirical studies.

05/12/2024

We’re excited to announce the winning entries of the Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2024!

Earlier this year, we invited scientists from across the world to send in their images in the categories of Astronomy, Behaviour, Earth Science and Climatology, Ecology and Environmental Science, and Microimaging. We are delighted to now present the winners and runners-up, including our overall winner from the Behaviour category Angela Albi for her image “The hunt from above”.

Find out more about the overall winner and the rest of the category winners here: https://royalsociety.org/.../publishing-photography.../

Competition and behaviour category winner: 'The hunt from above' by Dr Angela Albi. Drone pilot, August Paula.

Astronomy winner: 'Heart and Soul' by Imran Sultan.

Earth science and climatology winner: 'Ice cap melt lake in Greenland' by David Garcia.

Ecology and environmental science winner: 'Secretary bird gullet' by Peter Hudson

Microimaging winner: 'Tired eyes' by Jose Manuel Martinez Lopez.

04/12/2024

In Earth and planetary oceans, electric currents are generated by interaction of the flow with the Earth’s magnetic field, and by external fields that propagate into the ocean. The magnetic fields associated with these electric currents can be observed remotely and contain information about the flow and electrical conductivity of the ocean.

This week's Phil. Trans. A theme issue explores the applications of magnetometric remote sensing, a method under development to provide constraints on the transport and the temperature and salinity structure of the oceans.

In Earth and planetary oceans, large scale electric currents are generated by interaction of the flow with the Earth’s magnetic field, and by external fields that propagate into the ocean. The magnetic fields associated with these electric currents can be observed remotely and contain information ...