Postglacial History of a Widespread Wood-Decaying Fungus in Europe Suggests Migration out of Multiple Refugia Followed by Admixture.

While postglacial migration patterns have been well-studied in plants and animals in Europe, the same is not true for microorganisms such as fungi, and it remains unclear whether fungi have followed the same postglacial migration trajectories. In this study, we infer the postglacial history of the widespread wood-decay fungus Trichaptum abietinum in Europe. We investigate whether this fungus resided in multiple glacial refugia, as observed in many plants and animals, and how it migrated following the retreat of the ice.

In the Shadow of Godlessness: Soviet Atheists, Proletarian Freethinkers, and the Fate of Secularism in Interwar Europe.

This essay examines how the transnational interactions of two secularist organizations, the International of Proletarian Freethinkers (IPF) and the Soviet League of Militant Godless (League), and their social contexts, shaped the meaning, direction, and fate, of secularism in interwar Europe. It shows that while Soviet atheism played a central role in European secularism, its actual reach and influence abroad was indirect and, ultimately, limited. It also argues that Soviet atheism's most significant impact was the consolidation of an anti-secularist alliance against "Godless Communism" that cast a shadow long after the decline of atheism in the Soviet Union itself.

Diverse Mesozoic thrips carrying pollen during the gymnosperm-to-angiosperm plant-host ecological shift.

Insects are important pollinators, and entomophilous pollination of gymnosperms occurred long before the Cretaceous radiation of angiosperms, but most extant pollination systems involve angiosperms. We studied four thrips of the extinct genus present in Albian (Early Cretaceous) Spanish amber, one of which carried a patch of gymnosperm pollen grains, some of them attached around the mouthparts, providing direct fossil evidence of pollinivory and pollination. We describe the new species , which belongs to the extant family Thripidae (suborder Terebrantia).

Evolutionary implications of a deep-time perspective on insect pollination.

Plant pollination by insects represents one of the most transformative and iconic ecological relationships in the natural world. Despite tens of thousands of papers, as well as numerous books, on pollination biology published over the past 200 years, most studies focused on the fossil record of pollinating insects have only been published in the last few decades, and this field is still undergoing major developments. Current palaeontological evidence indicates that pollinating insects were diverse and participated in the reproduction of different gymnosperm lineages long before their association with flowering plants (angiosperms).