Biological Reviews

Limb loss in vertebrate animals is surprisingly common despite imposing strong functional constraints. These pressures funnel species towards regions of limited ecological and phenotypic space. To date, snakes have been considered unique in having escaped this pattern. Using a new species-level phylogeny and comparative morphological and dietary datasets, we show that pygopods, a group of limbless Australo-Papuan geckos, have undergone a similar evolutionary trajectory to snakes. Our analyses provide evidence of exceptional morphological and diet evolution. This is exemplified by strong niche partitioning among genera through dietary specialization and greater than expected dietary disparity. Diversification in pygopods has also been driven by extreme phenotypic evolution, with pygopods encompassing much of the morphological space covered by all other limb-reduced lizards. Interestingly, the diversification of pygopods has resulted in only a modest number of species, emphasizing the decoupling of diversity and richness possible in adaptive radiations.

Land-bridge islands are former mainland areas isolated by post-glacial sea-level rise (<15,000 years) and the most common island type. Because of their recurrent connectivity with continents, it is unclear whether species on land-bridge islands can undergo evolutionary changes associated with the more isolated oceanic islands ( island syndrome). Here, we test the hypothesis that the selective environment on land-bridge islands exerts predictable and consistent evolutionary shifts in morphological traits of songbirds. We apply Bayesian hierarchical models to a morphological dataset of 6,917 individuals comprising 185 species of songbirds from four land-bridge islands (Bioko, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Trinidad) and adjacent continents. Across all 185 species, we find that occurrence on a land-bridge island has clear directional effects on five morphological traits related to beak, wing, and tarsus, as well as a general increase in body size. At the species level, 57 out of 90 tested species exhibit significant morphological divergence between land-bridge island and mainland, yet for only 20 of these are the land-bridge island populations recognised as distinct endemic subspecies. Our results show that occurrence on land-bridge islands has a detectable effect on passerine morphology consistent with the island syndrome, and suggest these islands harbour previously unrecognized unique biodiversity.

Observed group sizes rarely match the size that would maximize what each member gets from belonging. We propose a two-part theory in which group size is regulated by two related conflicts: insider-outsider conflict over admission, and within-group conflict as crowding, competition, and social tensions intensify with size. Three strategies are available: admission, exclusion, and fission. The first part shows that even when exclusion is unavailable, fission dynamics alone drive group size away from the optimum in both directions, with the pattern set by how prospective joiners encounter groups and by the geometry of fission. When joiners compare groups across a shared landscape and fission is asymmetric, the standing distribution is bimodal: supra-optimal large groups coexisting with a sub-optimal mode of small groups, the pattern characteristic of fission-fusion societies. The second part promotes exclusion and fission to active decisions: incumbents weigh the per-capita cost of accommodating entry ({beta}) against the costs of coordinated exclusion (c +{gamma} N*) and fissioning (F). A single inequality, {beta} > c +{gamma} N*, partitions populations into two regimes: where it holds, exclusion is viable and groups lock at the optimum size; where it fails, groups grow past the optimum and cycle through recurrent fission. Modal group size, fission frequency, and exclusion behavior together identify which regime governs a population -- a set of predictions applicable across fishes, social insects, birds, and mammals including primates and human foragers.

AimBiodiversity-rich regions often lack the scientific infrastructure needed to document and curate their own biodiversity, creating inequalities in access to taxonomic reference material. We investigated how biological, institutional, and geopolitical factors shape the retention, extraction, and appropriation of reptile holotypes, the name-bearing specimens upon which species descriptions are based. LocationGlobal. TaxonReptiles. MethodsWe compiled a historical dataset of reptile holotype origins and destinations spanning 1758-2024 to reconstruct long-term patterns of retention and international specimen flows. We then quantified species-level holotype retention, holotype flows between country pairs, and country-level patterns of retention, appropriation, and network centrality for the period 1990-2024, and used generalised linear mixed models to assess the biological, institutional, and geopolitical determinants of these contemporary circulation processes. ResultsAlthough nearly 90% of reptile species described originated in the Global South, less than a quarter of their holotypes remain housed there. Historically, exported holotypes consistently outnumbered retained holotypes on a decadal basis until the early twenty-first century. Retention was promoted by local scientific capacity, institutional infrastructure, collector involvement in species descriptions, and environmental governance. In contrast, extraction was concentrated in highly endemic regions with limited scientific infrastructure and was associated with taxonomic revisions, socioeconomic interest, and disparities in political stability and colonial history. Appropriation of foreign holotypes was greatest in countries with high research investment, strong environmental governance, and historical geopolitical influence. Main conclusionsGlobal patterns of holotype circulation reflect a persistent geography of scientific inequality. The distribution of taxonomic reference material emerges from the interaction of retention, extraction, and appropriation processes, linking local biodiversity discovery to uneven global scientific capacity. Reducing these inequalities will require investments in taxonomic expertise, institutional infrastructure, and governance frameworks that promote more equitable stewardship of biodiversity knowledge and its material foundations.

Cooperatively breeding species are disproportionately found in extreme and unpredictable climates globally, suggesting that cooperation is beneficial to persistence in climatically challenging conditions. Notably, other dimensions of sociality, like group living and tendency to engage in affiliative social behaviors, offer fitness-related benefits that could make them similarly advantageous in such climates. Here, I present a phylogenetic analysis of Primates aimed at testing whether these two dimensions of sociality--average group size and average percent time spent social grooming--are predicted by climatic challenges in species environments. Results show that time spent grooming is highest in extreme and unpredictable climates, with how dry conditions are explaining the greatest amount of variation. Thus, climate may influence the evolution and/or persistence of social grooming. While multiple mechanisms could mediate this association, subsequent analyses point to the benefits of social affiliation in environments where groupmates have highly competitive dynamics as one potential explanation.

True crabs (Brachyura) are among the most iconic marine arthropods, representing noteworthy examples of morphological and ecological disparity. A striking feature of brachyurans are their anterior pincer-like appendages: chelipeds. These structures showcase a large diversity of morphologies that reflect ecology and overall multifunctionality. Yet, a comprehensive assessment of appendage functional morphology within phylogenetic and ecological trait contexts has never been attempted. By combining 3D geometric morphometrics, finite element analyses, multilocus molecular phylogeny, and ecological trait data for 80 crab species, including three fossil forms, we unveil a complex evolutionary history for crab chelipeds. Despite extreme shape diversity amongst chelipeds, stress distributions are very similar across taxa and hint a many-to-one pattern. High concentrations of chelipeds within constrained morphospace regions associated with peak pinch forces illustrates that brachyuran morphologies optimised for shell crushing may have arisen in the Cretaceous. Deviations from this morphospace highlight the diversification of non-shell-crushing life modes and the influence of sexual selection on appendages. Neither cheliped shape nor pinch force show phylogenetic signal. Together these results indicate that the evolution of cheliped shape is closely associated with, and inferred to have been strongly influenced by, crab ecology, biomechanical needs and sexual selection. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTChelipeds, the pincer-like claws of crabs, are among the most morphologically diverse appendages within Arthropoda, yet the evolutionary forces driving this diversity remain poorly understood. By integrating 3D geometric morphometrics, biomechanical modelling, molecular phylogeny, and ecological data across 80 crab species including fossil forms, we demonstrate that cheliped morphology is driven by ecology, biomechanical demands, and sexual selection rather than phylogenetic relatedness. The multifunctionality of these structures produces strong evidence for many-to-one mapping of form to function. Morphologies optimised for durophagy appear to have originated in the Cretaceous, with subsequent diversification into manipulative and sexually selected forms from a morphologically flexible foundation. These findings demonstrate that cheliped diversity reflects a complex interplay between ecological specialisation, biomechanical optimisation, and sexual selection across Brachyura.

Reproduction in species with parental care involves sustaining a brood of offspring through an energetically demanding period, when shifts in resource availability, weather, predation risk, and parental condition can strongly alter offspring survival. The most extreme outcome is complete brood failure (death of all offspring), which is relatively frequent in many bird species and may occur when conditions cross a viability threshold. Although complete brood failure is important for shaping fitness variation and population dynamics, we have limited understanding of how intra- and interspecific density dependence governs these events, or of how factors such as habitat quality and disease burden contribute to them, because deriving this requires fine-scale, individual-level data collected across generations for multiple overlapping species. Using a dataset totalling 38,509 nesting attempts from great tits (Parus major) and blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) in Wytham Woods, Oxford, UK, we examined how brood failure is shaped by local conspecific and heterospecific density, habitat structure, and avian malaria infection for a subset. Complete brood failure was frequent (14.75%), mostly involving chick mortality in the nest consistent with starvation, rather than brood removal by predators. Relationships between density and brood failure were strong but species-specific. Specifically, great tit failure risk was higher in neighbourhoods that remained densely populated across years, whereas blue tit failure risk was lower where annual great tit or combined density was high, but not where annual blue tit density itself was high. This suggests that local overall density reflects continuing constraint for great tits, while local annual density may partly track favourable within-year conditions and settlement patterns for blue tits. In great tits, failure was also more common where oak density was low and farther from the closest river (Thames), while habitat associations were weak in blue tits. Malaria infection was spatially heterogeneous and covaried with density and habitat, but infection status did not significantly explain complete brood failure. Together, these results show that complete brood failure is shaped by spatially structured local ecological context, and how density dependence in these events can differ in direction and timescale between sympatric species.

In most vertebrates, social play among peers is considered essential for behavioral development. Yet in solitary species bearing single offspring, opportunities for social play are inherently scarce. Whether mothers of such species actively facilitate play opportunities for their offspring, and at what cost, remains unknown. We used 15 years of behavioral and movement data ([~]30,000 observation hours) from 31 wild Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii) mother-offspring pairs to test whether mothers adjust ranging behavior to increase their offsprings access to play with neighboring peers. Neighboring mothers with similarly aged offspring showed disproportionately high annual overlap in space use, independent of their relatedness or fruit availability. They intensified use of shared areas within existing range boundaries rather than shifting or expanding their ranges, indicating a fine-scaled ranging strategy. Mothers also incurred energetic costs; on days their offspring played with peers, mothers traveled farther and spent less time feeding. Travel distances were also elevated on the days before and after play, with mothers orienting movement toward play partners core areas before play and back toward their own core areas after play. This suggests these encounters are planned and actively pursued over multiple days rather than arising by chance. These findings reveal that orangutan mothers incorporate their infants social needs into daily ranging decisions, at a cost to their own energy budgets. This points toward an underappreciated form of maternal investment and illustrates how the social requirements of development can be met even near the solitary extreme of animal social organization.

Cooperation is foundational to complex sociality, yet presents profound evolutionary dilemmas - costs and benefits are rarely distributed evenly and the decision to collaborate or defect can involve a complex contextual calculus. These challenges are compounded when cooperation scales from pairs to groups. Group-level cooperation is fundamental to many species success, but how is it sustained and regulated in nature? One promising route to addressing this question is to examine how individuals reorganise their affiliative interactions in anticipation of group-level cooperation. We examine such pre-cooperative reorganisation using long-term data (2013-2018) from three neighbouring groups of wild chimpanzees at the Tai National Park, Cote dIvoire, who routinely cooperate as a collective to defend their territory against other groups. We found that chimpanzees adjusted the distribution of their social contacts in anticipation of risky and proactive territorial defence by forming more broadly connected, yet more diffuse, affiliative networks. Specifically, adult chimpanzees groomed and played with more group members on days of proactive territorial defence, and this pattern was temporally-sensitive, with increased affiliation occurring before, rather than after, the cooperative act. Chimpanzees accessed a broader range of partners through increased interaction efficiency by switching between more partners with shorter interactions per partner. This pattern suggests a shared evolutionary basis of dynamic social readjustment in preparation for group-level social dilemmas in hominids, potentially providing the foundation for the formalized systems of affiliation found in human societies.

High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b has spread beyond birds to affect seals across the Southern Ocean and sub-Antarctic region, with southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) particularly devastated. The virus, likely introduced via spillover from infected migratory birds, has killed tens of thousands of adult seals and pups throughout most of their range, though Macquarie Island remains unaffected so far. We used twenty years of elephant seal movement data from the southern Indian and Pacific oceans to assess whether seal-to-seal transmission could spread HPAI H5N1 between breeding colonies, despite the vast distances separating them (Marion Island, Iles Crozet, Iles Kerguelen, and Macquarie Island). There was substantial overlap in seals' at-sea distributions during their winter post-moult trips, when seals travel for weeks at average speeds of 3.5 km/h. Two transmission pathways were examined: (1) terrestrial "stepping stone" routes, where infected seals could pass the virus between colonies during short intervals to remain infectious were feasible from Marion Island to Kerguelen but not from Kerguelen to Macquarie Island; and (2) at-sea encounters between seals, which occurred frequently enough to enable transmission. The findings suggest that once established at Macquarie Island, the virus could potentially spread further to New Zealand's sub-Antarctic islands and mainland New Zealand. While seal-to-seal transmission appears possible, we conclude this is unlikely. Nonetheless, understanding at-sea contact rates enhances knowledge of H5N1 epidemiology and demonstrates the value of combining long-term population monitoring with movement data to understand wildlife disease dynamics.

Modern biodiversity is built on a series of disparate body plans whose origins are obscured by deep time. Our most direct source of clarifying data is the fossilized skeleton, where morphology reflects an evolving functionality realized through the development of associated tissues. We apply this dualistic perspective to the shelled body plan of turtles whose Paleozoic initiation is marked by a derived relationship between ribs and dermis (Lyson & Bever, 2020). Current developmental models remain in conflict with an increasingly informative fossil record, suggesting critical steps remain unrecognized. Here we explore the hypothesis that the breakdown of rib-spanning muscles--an evolutionary transformation mirrored in embryogenesis--is one such step. Multi-modal imaging of turtle embryos, including a novel application of histology-based deep learning (Kiemen et al., 2022; Matos-Romero et al., 2025; Forjaz et al., 2026), establishes intercostal muscle degradation as preceding turtle-specific rib development and highlights the heuristic power of 3D, whole-embryo analysis (Forjaz et al., 2026). Quantified divergence from mouse pinpoints the timing and tempo of this organized, apoptotic breakdown. Initial evidence suggests an associated non-pathological inflammatory response, which has been shown capable of driving evolutionarily stable hyperossification (Rashid et al., 2023). These patterns support trunk muscles as a critical signalling centre whose ontogenetic loss set the phylogenetic stage for a morphogenetic transformation remarkable in a non-metamorphic species.

Understanding the extent to which marine connectivity can be predicted from shared oceanographic and biogeographic conditions remains a central challenge in marine ecology and evolution. Comparative analyses of sympatric species provide a powerful framework for testing whether common environmental contexts generate repeatable patterns of population structure and connectivity and if this also unfolds on a genomic level. Here, we investigated this question in the endemic Mediterranean clingfish genus Gouania, a group of cryptobenthic gravel-beach specialists with limited adult mobility and a short pelagic larval phase. We combined whole-genome resequencing of two sympatric eastern Mediterranean species (G. orientalis and G. hofrichteri) around Crete and Kythira with Lagrangian particle drift simulations, mitochondrial phylogeography across all five Gouania species and demographic reconstructions using MSMC2. Passive drift simulations predicted strong isolation of Kythira and restricted exchange between northern and southern Crete. These predictions closely matched genome-wide population structure in both species, revealing highly concordant patterns of connectivity despite independent evolutionary histories. Shared population contrasts were furthermore associated with a significant excess of parallel genomic divergence, with both genomic windows and candidate genes overlapping more frequently than expected by chance. Nevertheless, most differentiated genomic regions remained species-specific and functional enrichment analyses identified no dominant shared pathways, suggesting a largely polygenic basis of divergence. In contrast to the strong concordance observed for contemporary connectivity and genomic divergence, mitochondrial phylogeographic patterns and species-level demographic histories were considerably more heterogeneous across the genus. Together, our results demonstrate that the predictability of marine population structure is scale-dependent: shared seascapes can generate repeatable patterns of connectivity and partially parallel genomic divergence, whereas deeper phylogeographic and demographic histories remain strongly influenced by species-specific historical processes.

Reproductive biology is a key determinant of fitness. State-dependent speciation-extinction methods (SSEs) are often used to associate traits with patterns of diversification. Previously, SSEs have been used within families to investigate the hypothesis that selfing is an evolutionary "dead end." To the best of the authors knowledge, no study has looked across families, which would increase power to more generally test this hypothesis. Here, we examine the impact of 1) mating system and 2) sexual system on diversification across 18 phylogenetically diverse families. We also discuss how more recent advances in SSE models (i.e., "hidden state" and tree-only models) influence our interpretation of these patterns and evaluate how the relationship between mating and sexual systems can be leveraged to gain insight into the impact of reproductive biology on evolutionary outcomes. In this study, we find that the mating system as a trait does not better explain patterns of diversification when compared to null models, but the sexual system often does. We also find family-level heterogeneity in our results, which suggests conclusions drawn from studies on individual families may not be consistent with any broader trend.

Growing evidence of animals combining discrete, meaningful calls into sequences--a feature once thought unique to linguistic syntax--has presented the opportunity to investigate the evolutionary origins of syntactic communication. The arbitrary assignment of meaning to words marks an important step in human language evolution, and a necessary precursor to generating further meaning through sentences. Studying how other animals that produce call sequences learn the meaning of these signals could help shed light on how referentiality and semantic combinatoriality evolved. Given the presence of meaningful call sequences has only recently been revealed in several non-human animals, ontogenetic studies of the comprehension of these vocalisations are, to date, non-existent. Western Australian magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen dorsalis) combine discrete calls into a diverse array of call sequences. Recent evidence shows these sequences are socially learned, but the developmental stage at which fledglings respond correctly to them remains unstudied. We performed playbacks of a discrete alarm call and call sequence to fledglings over the course of their first 18 weeks out of the nest, identifying when they differentiate between the low-level disturbance associated with the discrete call and the high-grade aerial threat associated with the sequence. Fledglings showed immediate vigilance to both vocalisations but exhibited significantly greater vigilance and upward scanning following the sequence. Critically, fledglings showed this response to the sequence from the first week of testing, with no effect of age on the response to either vocalisation. These findings suggest that comprehension precedes production of sequences in magpies and that sequence meanings are either learned rapidly or have an innate basis. While further investigation is essential, this study offers the first empirical insight into the ontogenetic emergence of combinatorial comprehension in a non-human animal.

Biodiversity loss threatens the multifunctionality of ecosystems on which human well-being ultimately depends. Changes in multitrophic species interactions may be key to explaining the ecological consequences of biodiversity loss, but research explicitly linking species interactions and ecosystem multifunctionality remains rare. To assess interaction-mediated biodiversity effects and underlying mechanisms, characterizing the structure of species interaction networks is invaluable. Using comprehensive species interaction and ecosystem functioning data from a large-scale tree biodiversity experiment, we find consistent effects of the structure of species interaction networks on ecosystem multifunctionality across multiple types of antagonistic and mutualistic interactions. While positive effects of network size align with expected positive effects of multitrophic species diversity, positive effects of niche overlap among interacting species and negative effects of highly connected species (i.e. high linkage density) reveal additional, interaction-mediated drivers of multifunctionality. Specifically, the effects of niche overlap suggest benefits of functionally similar species, and the effects of linkage density underscore the importance of specialized interactions in promoting ecosystem multifunctionality. These findings emphasize that to effectively safeguard ecosystem service provisioning, ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation not only need to account for biodiversity changes at multiple trophic levels, but also explicitly for how species interact among each other.

Remote island systems with small landmasses and reliable estimates of human occupancy are ideal model systems to disentangle the roles of global climatic changes and local human occupation on biota. Here, we used mitochondrial and nuclear genomic data from five endemic Fijian Lasioglossum (Homalictus) bee species to infer changes in effective population size (Ne). These ground-nesting bees are native, with non-specialised floral visitation habits, and distributed across the elevational gradient. All lowland species and populations showed strong signals of increasing Ne that correspond to the timing of human occupation of Fiji, but not Holocene climatic change. Highland populations, with greater isolation and present in regions less affected by anthropogenic impacts, did not show evidence of recent rapid increases in Ne. Population expansion rates across the elevational gradient differed between taxa, with significantly earlier and larger increases in predominantly lowland species than those with more restricted ranges in the highlands. This is consistent with the movement of people inland from coastal regions and into montane elevations of the island, and corresponding landscape changes that benefit the ecology of these bees. Specific life history traits of these bees, combined with substantive clearing of forest cover and floristic changes at lower elevations, has likely increased nesting opportunities and abundance of invasive floral resources. Our findings contrast with recent evidence that human occupation of Fiji has resulted in decreased ant biodiversity and raise the paradoxical possibility that human-mediated environmental changes may benefit some native montane tropical insect faunas.

The origin of novel phenotypes can influence access to new ecological resources, which may have positive, neutral, or negative effects on subsequent phenotypic diversification. In this study, we tested the macroevolutionary consequences of a pair of putative functional innovations occurring in deep-sea fishes of the order Stomiiformes. Integrating phylogenetic comparative methods, micro-CT scans, and external body measurements, we recover a mosaic of diversification trends associated with these innovations. We found some evidence for elevated evolutionary rates in tooth morphology associated with the predatory dragonfishes, which possess a gap between their vertebral column and skull that exposes the notochord and enables neck-like flexibility. However, a second novelty building upon the first, a functional neck joint enabling extreme cranial kinesis, was linked to faster rates of skull evolution. Our results suggest that innovations that help shift ecological roles and overcome functional constraints related to those roles, like gape-limitation in prey depauperate habitats, may play an important role in promoting phenotypic diversification. This work builds on a growing body of evidence highlighting how the deep sea promotes phenotypic diversity, generating the extreme forms that are celebrated by scientists and the public alike.

Accelerating global urbanization necessitates a better understanding of how to manage cities that promote biodiversity. However, we currently lack multi-year, multi-city studies, which limits a generalizable understanding of how both within and between city differences impact the spatial and temporal dynamics of urban biodiversity. Here, we tested hypotheses about the drivers of butterfly diversity within and across urban parks by applying Bayesian occupancy models to five years of iNaturalist community science data from 2,550 parks in 22 major U.S. cities. We found that cities with bigger parks supported more species per park, including more disturbance- and edge-avoidant species. This was driven by a positive effect of park size on butterfly species colonization rates. We also found that attributes of habitat quality (plant diversity within parks and tree cover surrounding parks) contributed to butterfly species occupancy. Park connectivity increased species persistence, but the overall effects on butterfly species occupancy varied across cities. Finally, we found that the total area of tree cover throughout a city, rather than the size or connectivity of individual parks, was the primary determinant of city-wide diversity: Increasing total tree canopy cover from below-average (~6%) to above-average (~22%) increased city-wide species richness by ~10%. These findings highlight the need for cities to maintain large parks while also increasing city-wide tree cover to support biodiversity across local to regional scales. By integrating high-resolution community science data across the continental U.S., this study provides mechanistic insight into how cross-scale processes shape urban biodiversity dynamics and identifies generalizable recommendations for improving urban conservation management.

Evolutionary diversity in metabolic rate underlies differences in physiology, morphology, and life history across the tree of life. Cell size has been proposed as an important determinant of metabolic rate. The mechanisms underlying this proposed connection are based on the lower surface area to volume ratios in larger cells. As relative surface area decreases, the cost of maintaining ion gradients across the cell membrane through action of the Na+/K+-ATPase pump are posited to decrease, lowering overall metabolic costs. Despite strong theoretical support for this model, and its incorporation into broader models of life history evolution, empirical measurement of Na+/K+-ATPase activity in species that differ in cell size has been lacking. Here, we study nine species of salamanders of the genus Plethodon that span a large range of cell sizes approaching the animal upper limit. We compare basal cellular respiration rates, relative cost of the Na+/K+-ATPase pump, and maximal mitochondrial respiration rates in liver and heart tissue. Contrary to predictions, we find no support for a relationship between cell size and any of these mitochondrial respiratory variables. We reconcile this surprising result with broader phylogenetic studies showing a lack of correlation between cell size and metabolic rate at the organismal level.

It is hard to predict how rapidly songbird migration will change in the Anthropocene. Indeed, since songbird migration is thought to have a strong heritable component, the continental-scale organisation of migratory movement might be seen as fairly inflexible. Perhaps one of the best models for the ecology and evolution of migration is the Eurasian blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) which, as part of a continent-wide effort to characterise blackcap migratory phenotype, we geolocator-tracked from breeding sites in eastern Poland. Rather than migrating in the expected south-easterly migratory direction, these birds migrated south and south-west - suggesting that blackcaps in the east of their range have switched migratory direction. We sought to investigate the extent of this phenomenon using almost a century of ringing data, which confirmed that blackcaps breeding across the entirety of Eastern Europe have indeed almost completely stopped using their historic eastern flyway. Instead, a shorter-distance west-migrating phenotype has emerged, which we find is consistent with warmer winter temperatures opening up wintering sites at more northerly latitudes in the west. We discuss what drives changes in migratory behaviour over short timescales; and consider what this tells us about how migratory information is inherited.