New research from the Colombian Andes shows that conserving forest cover across coffee‑growing landscapes is essential for sustaining diverse bird communities, even more than farm‑level shade tree management alone. The study, conducted by ecologists with SELVA and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, examined how both landscape composition and local vegetation structure influence bird habitat use in one of the world’s most important coffee‑producing regions.

•    Published in Nature, the team led by Dr. Toni Gabaldón used the MareNostrum supercomputer to reconstruct the genetic origin of the last common ancestor of all eukaryotes—the cellular lineage to which animals, plants, fungi, and protists belong. •    The study challenges the idea that cellular complexity emerged from a single evolutionary encounter, pointing instead to a gradual process of interactions among different microorganisms that lasted for millions of years. •    The findings identify contributions from several bacteria, in addition to the one that gave rise to the mitochondria, and suggest that giant viruses may have acted as vehicles for genetic transfer.