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Understanding the genetic basis of the timing of bud set, an important trait in conifers, is relevant for adaptation and forestry practice. In common garden experiments, both Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) and Norway spruce (Picea abies) show a latitudinal cline in the trait. We compared the regulation of their bud set biology by examining the expression of PsFTL2, a Pinus sylvestris homolog to PaFTL2, a FLOWERING LOCUS T/TERMINAL FLOWER 1 (FT/TFL1)‐like gene, the expression levels of which have been found previously to be associated with the timing of bud set in Norway spruce. In a common garden study, we analyzed the relationship of bud phenology under natural and artificial photoperiods and the expression of PsFTL2 in a set of Scots pine populations from different latitudes. The expression of PsFTL2 increased in the needles preceding bud set and decreased during bud burst. In the northernmost population, even short night periods were efficient to trigger this expression, which also increased earlier under all photoperiodic regimes compared with the southern populations. Despite the different biology, with few limitations, the two conifers that diverged 140 million yr ago probably share an association of FTL2 with bud set, pointing to a common mechanism for the timing of growth cessation in conifers.

Significance Agricultural methane emissions must be decreased by 11 to 30% of the 2010 level by 2030 and by 24 to 47% by 2050 to meet the 1.5 °C target. We identified three strategies to decrease product-based methane emissions while increasing animal productivity and five strategies to decrease absolute methane emissions without reducing animal productivity. Globally, 100% adoption of the most effective product-based and absolute methane emission mitigation strategy can meet the 1.5 °C target by 2030 but not 2050, because mitigation effects are offset by projected increases in methane. On a regional level, Europe but not Africa may be able to meet their contribution to the 1.5 °C target, highlighting the different challenges faced by high- and middle- and low-income countries.

Resource allocation to different plant tissues is likely to be affected by high investment into fruit production during mast years. However, there is a large knowledge gap concerning species-specific differences in resource dynamics. We investigated the influence of mast years on stem growth, leaf production, and leaf carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) concentrations and contents in Fagus sylvatica , Quercus petraea , and Q. robur at continental and climate region scales using long-term data from the International Co-operative Programme on Assessment and Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects on Forests (ICP Forests) and similar datasets. We discussed the results in the light of opposing resource dynamics hypotheses: (i) resource accumulation before mast years and exhaustion after mast years ( resource storage hypothesis ), (ii) shifting resources from vegetative to generative compartments ( resource switching hypothesis ), and (iii) investing resources concurrently in both vegetative and generative compartments ( resource matching hypothesis ). Linear mixed-effects modelling (LMM) showed that both stem growth and leaf production were negatively influenced by weather conditions which simultaneously lead to high fruit production. Thus, the impact of generative on vegetative growth is intermixed with effects of environmental factors. Superposed epoch analyses and LMM showed that for mast behaviour in F. sylvatica , there are indicators supporting the resource storage and the resource switching hypotheses . Before mast years, resources were accumulated, while during mast years resources switched from vegetative to generative tissues with reduced stem and leaf growth. For the Quercus species, stem growth was reduced after mast years, which supports the resource storage hypothesis . LMM showed that leaf C concentrations did not change with increasing fruit production in neither species. Leaf N and P concentrations increased in F. sylvatica , but not in Quercus species. Leaf N and P contents decreased with increasing fruit production in all species, as did leaf C content in F. sylvatica . Overall, our findings suggest different resource dynamics strategies in F. sylvatica and Quercus species, which might lead to differences in their adaptive capacity to a changing climate.

Severe droughts have the potential to reduce forest productivity and trigger tree mortality. Most trees face several drought events during their life and therefore resilience to dry conditions may be crucial to long-term survival. We assessed how growth resilience to severe droughts, including its components resistance and recovery, is related to the ability to survive future droughts by using a tree-ring database of surviving and now-dead trees from 118 sites (22 species, >3,500 trees). We found that, across the variety of regions and species sampled, trees that died during water shortages were less resilient to previous non-lethal droughts, relative to coexisting surviving trees of the same species. In angiosperms, drought-related mortality risk is associated with lower resistance (low capacity to reduce impact of the initial drought), while it is related to reduced recovery (low capacity to attain pre-drought growth rates) in gymnosperms. The different resilience strategies in these two taxonomic groups open new avenues to improve our understanding and prediction of drought-induced mortality.

Soil organisms, including earthworms, are a key component of terrestrial ecosystems. However, little is known about their diversity, distribution, and the threats affecting them. Here, we compiled a global dataset of sampled earthworm communities from 6928 sites in 57 countries to predict patterns in earthworm diversity, abundance, and biomass. We identified that local species richness and abundance typically peaked at higher latitudes, patterns opposite to those observed in aboveground organisms. However, diversity across the entirety of the tropics may be higher than elsewhere, due to high species dissimilarity across locations. Climate variables were more important in shaping earthworm communities than soil properties or habitat cover. These findings suggest that climate change may have serious implications for earthworm communities and therefore the functions they provide.

Stature is affected by many polymorphisms of small effect in humans(1). In contrast, variation in dogs, even within breeds, has been suggested to be largely due to variants in a small number of genes(2,3). Here we use data from cattle to compare the genetic architecture of stature to those in humans and dogs. We conducted a meta-analysis for stature using 58,265 cattle from 17 populations with 25.4 million imputed whole-genome sequence variants. Results showed that the genetic architecture of stature in cattle is similar to that in humans, as the lead variants in 163 significantly associated genomic regions (P < 5 x 10(-8)) explained at most 13.8% of the phenotypic variance. Most of these variants were noncoding, including variants that were also expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) and in ChIP-seq peaks. There was significant overlap in loci for stature with humans and dogs, suggesting that a set of common genes regulates body size in mammals

Food security relies on the resilience of staple food crops to climatic variability and extremes, but the climate resilience of European wheat is unknown. A diversity of responses to disturbance is considered a key determinant of resilience. The capacity of a sole crop genotype to perform well under climatic variability is limited; therefore, a set of cultivars with diverse responses to weather conditions critical to crop yield is required. Here, we show a decline in the response diversity of wheat in farmers’ fields in most European countries after 2002–2009 based on 101,000 cultivar yield observations. Similar responses to weather were identified in cultivar trials among central European countries and southern European countries. A response diversity hotspot appeared in the trials in Slovakia, while response diversity “deserts” were identified in Czechia and Germany and for durum wheat in southern Europe. Positive responses to abundant precipitation were lacking. This assessment suggests that current breeding programs and cultivar selection practices do not sufficiently prepare for climatic uncertainty and variability. Consequently, the demand for climate resilience of staple food crops such as wheat must be better articulated. Assessments and communication of response diversity enable collective learning across supply chains. Increased awareness could foster governance of resilience through research and breeding programs, incentives, and regulation.

Silver birch (Betula pendula) is a pioneer boreal tree that can be induced to flower within 1 year. Its rapid life cycle, small (440-Mb) genome, and advanced germplasm resources make birch an attractive model for forest biotechnology. We assembled and chromosomally anchored the nuclear genome of an inbred B. pendula individual. Gene duplicates from the paleohexaploid event were enriched for transcriptional regulation, whereas tandem duplicates were overrepresented by environmental responses. Population resequencing of 80 individuals showed effective population size crashes at major points of climatic upheaval. Selective sweeps were enriched among polyploid duplicates encoding key developmental and physiological triggering functions, suggesting that local adaptation has tuned the timing of and cross-talk between fundamental plant processes. Variation around the tightly-linked light response genes PHYC and FRS10 correlated with latitude and longitude and temperature, and with precipitation for PHYC. Similar associations characterized the growth-promoting cytokinin response regulator ARR1, and the wood development genes KAK and MED5A.

Ceccherini et al.1 quantify change using map pixel counts, rather than using a statistically rigorous sampling approach that is more appropriate for the estimation of area change7. [...]although Ceccherini et al.1 considered false positives (incorrect detection of forest loss) in their sample analyses, they did not consider false negatives (undetected forest loss). [...]analyses, which address both omission and commission errors, offer accurate and unbiased results of forest change. [...]sample reference data tailored to the specific purpose of a given study can be used to discriminate proportions of loss due to natural disturbances within the overall forest loss rates12. [...]we are confident that natural disturbances were not correctly excluded. [...]information and knowledge are crucial to develop science-based, climate-smart forestry strategies18 to ensure that European forests continue to be an important carbon sink and a key ecosystem service provider in relation to the protection of biodiversity and the development of the bioeconomy. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03292-x Received: 3 July 2020 Accepted: 26 January 2021 Published online: 28 April 2021 Check for updates Acknowledgements We thank G. Ceccherini and co-authors for immediately making available all original material, processing codes and results of their study upon request.

Various studies report substantial increases in intrinsic water-use efficiency (Wi), estimated using carbon isotopes in tree rings, suggesting trees are gaining increasingly more carbon per unit water lost due to increases in atmospheric CO2. Usually, reconstructions do not, however, correct for the effect of intrinsic developmental changes in Wi as trees grow larger. Here we show, by comparingWi across varying tree sizes at one CO2 level, that ignoring such developmental effects can severely affect inferences of trees’ Wi. Wi doubled or even tripled over a trees’ lifespan in three broadleaf species due to changes in tree height and light availability alone, and there are also weak trends for Pine trees. Developmental trends in broadleaf species are as large as the trends previously assigned to CO2 and climate. Credible future tree ring isotope studies require explicit accounting for species-specific developmental effects before CO2 and climate effects are inferred.