Vultures were long thought to make few and fairly simple sounds. Yet no one had investigated in detail how the birds use sound to communicate. For his master’s thesis in Jorg Massen’s Vulture Cognition Lab, Connor Proudfoot studied the critically endangered Rüppell’s vulture. He and his colleagues found that the birds produce a wide range of complex sounds, which they use in a range of social situations. The findings, published today in PLOS One, could potentially help improve the success of captive breeding programmes and shed light on the evolution of communication.

Bacteria and the viruses that infect them—known as phages—coexist in soils, oceans and living organisms. Scientists have long thought this coexistence reflects a microscopic version of an evolutionary arms race: As parasites and hosts continually adapt to one another, both evolve ways to survive. But a joint study by researchers at the University of Maryland and the University of Exeter shows different pathways to coexistence.

The researchers found that when bacteria move together to find nutrients, their collective motion helps them stay ahead of phages. Yet collective bacterial migration has an unexpected vulnerability: it enables phages to infect a fraction of cells near the migrating front edge, while the remainder remain out of reach. The result is continual co-migration of parasites and hosts, even without coevolutionary adaptations. The findings were published in the journal Science Advances on October 21, 2026.

An international study led by the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE, CSIC-UPF) in Barcelona, the Natural Sciences Museum of Barcelona, Harvard University and the University of the Basque Country (EHU) has reconstructed the genetic history of the Iberian Peninsula between the 1st and 8th centuries CE using 243 ancient genomes from 31 archaeological sites. By combining genetic and archaeological evidence, the new study published in Cell has concluded that the Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula produced a large-scale demographic change. In contrast, the Suebi, Vandal, Alan and Visigoth migrations in Late Antiquity had a more limited impact on the genetic makeup of Hispania.

Decomposed wheat straw is a promising seedling substrate, but it is vulnerable to contamination by filamentous fungi, notably Aspergillus flavus, which produces the carcinogenic mycotoxin aflatoxin B1. Multifunctional microbes that combine strong cellulolytic capacity with antifungal activity are needed, yet reports of such natural strains are scarce. Researchers have now screened 2,102 Bacillus isolates collected between 2018 and 2023 and selected Bacillus amyloliquefaciens SQ1, which shows both cellulolytic activity and antifungal efficacy against A. flavus. During straw decomposition, SQ1 accelerated cellulose and hemicellulose loss, lowered C/N and lignin/N ratios and shifted pH toward neutrality, while cryo-SEM revealed fractured and collapsed A. flavus hyphae with markedly reduced spore adhesion. Straw amended with SQ1 contained less aflatoxin B1 and supported better peanut seedling survival, height and leaf chlorophyll.

RNA synthesis generally requires a pre-existing nucleic-acid template and sometimes, an oligonucleotide primer. Researchers at Westlake University have found that three related plant proteins can synthesize RNA from free nucleoside triphosphates in vitro, without an added nucleic-acid template or primer. The team first identified the rice protein OsNTP4 through a structure-guided search, then observed similar activity in rice OsNTP10 and Arabidopsis AtURT1. Biochemical experiments and nuclear magnetic resonance analysis established that characterized products contain the canonical 3′–5′ phosphodiester linkages of RNA. The study, published in Vita, expands the known catalytic repertoire of plant nucleotidyltransferases and reveals a direct protein-to-RNA reaction, while leaving open how the reaction begins and whether it occurs in plant cells.

Biological clocks coordinate the spatiotemporal organization of metabolism with diurnal time cues, and bulk-tissue RNA sequencing studies in mammals have revealed widespread circadian (about 24 h) gene expression in mice and non-human primates. Yet whether and how cell-type-specific organization of circadian gene expression is achieved in metabolic tissues has remained unclear, largely because bulk-tissue profiling averages away the cellular heterogeneity of organs such as liver and skeletal muscle.