Unconscious selection drove seed enlargement in vegetable crops.

Domesticated grain crops evolved from wild plants under human cultivation, losing natural dispersal mechanisms to become dependent upon humans, and showing changes in a suite of other traits, including increasing seed size. There is tendency for seed enlargement during domestication to be viewed as the result of deliberate selection for large seeds by early farmers. However, like some other domestication traits, large seeds may have evolved through natural selection from the activities of people as they gathered plants from the wild, or brought them into cultivation in anthropogenic settings.

C4 photosynthesis boosts growth by altering physiology, allocation and size.

C4 photosynthesis is a complex set of leaf anatomical and biochemical adaptations that have evolved more than 60 times to boost carbon uptake compared with the ancestral C3 photosynthetic type(1-3). Although C4 photosynthesis has the potential to drive faster growth rates(4,5), experiments directly comparing C3 and C4 plants have not shown consistent effects(1,6,7). This is problematic because differential growth is a crucial element of ecological theory(8,9) explaining C4 savannah responses to global change(10,11), and research to increase C3 crop productivity by introducing C4 photosynthesis(12).

Degradation of rural and urban great tit song: testing transmission efficiency.

Acoustic signals play a fundamental role in avian territory defence and mate attraction. Several studies have now shown that spectral properties of bird song differ between urban and rural environments. Previously this has been attributed to competition for acoustic space as a result of low-frequency noise present in cities.

Effects of urban noise on song and response behaviour in great tits.

Acoustic communication is fundamental in avian territory defence and mate attraction. In urban environments where sound transmissions are more likely to be masked by low-frequency anthropogenic noise, acoustic adaptations may be advantageous. However, minor modifications to a signal could affect its efficacy.