Aim: Climate variability threatens to destabilize production in many ecosystems. Asynchronous species dynamics may buffer against such variability when decreased performance by some species is offset by increased performance of others. However, high climatic variability can eliminate species through stochastic extinctions or cause similar stress responses among species, reducing buffering. Local conditions, such as soil nutrients, can further alter production stability directly or by influencing asynchrony. We test these hypotheses using a globally distributed sampling...

Antibiotics and dietary habits can affect the gut microbial community, influencing disease susceptibility. Although the influence of microbiota on the postnatal environment has been well documented, much less is known regarding the impact of gut microbiota at the embryonic stage. Here, we show that maternal microbiota shapes the metabolic system of offspring. During pregnancy, short-chain fatty acids produced by the maternal microbiota dictate the differentiation of neural, intestinal, and pancreatic cells through embryonic GPR41 and...