A logo to celebrate the 40th anniversary, which was designed by SMBE member Ana Carolina Martins Junqueira from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Body coloration serves as a fascinating phenotype and plays a crucial role in local adaptation. Baojun Sun and collaborators (https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msae009) integrated field ecological experiments, comparative studies, genome resequencing, transcriptome sequencing, and metabolite assays on a toad-head lizard in the Tibetan Plateau, to unveil the contributions of camouflage and thermoregulation in shaping the body coloration, as well as the genetic basis behind its variation. Their findings indicate that camouflage and thermoregulation collectively determine the lizard body coloration, with a key mutation in the Tyrp1 gene being identified as a primary factor in this variation of body coloration.

"SMBE is celebrating 40 years of SMBE journals with monthly perspectives that highlight the impact of SMBE-published research. The March 2024 perspective is focused on human diversification (https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msae029). This cover image, by Emiliano Bellini, illustrates the importance of migration in shaping patterns of human genetic diversity".

Siderophores are iron-sequestering molecules that provide a huge evolutionary advantage in iron-limited environments to microbes that can utilize them, which can lead to “cheater” microbes that uptake siderophore-bound iron but cannot produce siderophores. In this issue, Liang Sun and colleagues combine reverse genetics, comparative genomics, and phylogenetic analyses to trace the dynamic evolutionary history of a fungal siderophore transporter across a clade of yeasts that acquired the ability to produce its target siderophore by horizontal operon transfer (HOT), as well as that transporter’s evolution across the yeast subphylum Saccharomycotina. Shown here are plates spotted with yeast and overlain with a blue dye that changes color when iron is removed. Cover by Drew T. Doering. https://academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-article/doi/10.1093/molbev/msae045/7615510

Drawings of cisco (Coregonus artedi) and deepwater sculpin (Myoxocephalus thompsonii) are positioned to the left and right, respectively, of the visual pigment rhodopsin crystal structure. In the background, the visible spectrum converges on blue-green light like most deepwater environments. Van Nynatten and colleagues (https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msae024) demonstrate that this convergence is mirrored in the evolution of rhodopsin spectral sensitivity in deepwater populations of both species. Art by Alexander Van Nynatten.

Chromosomal inversions play a prominent role in adaptation and speciation. Knief and colleagues (https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msae092) identify four inversions that segregate across eleven recognized Lonchura finch species distributed across Australia, Papua and the Bismarck Archipelago. This study highlights the importance of inversions for adaptation and speciation in a single, rapid radiation. The bird illustrations are the work of Javier Lazaro.

The sacred coca tree, a keystone crop for Indigenous Andean and Amazonian communities for over 8,000 years, has recently become associated with armed conflict and deforestation due to demand for the alkaloid cocaine. Przelomska et al. (10.1093/molbev/msae114) explored the challenges in identifying cultivated varieties of coca and their wild relatives, through phylogenomics and morphometric analyses. Their study highlights the limitations of traditional morphological methods and contributes to the development of genetic techniques for accurate identification. Cover design by Oscar A. Pérez-Escobar. Image credits: (Bottom left): Donna McClelland. Moche archive, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, DC. (Center): Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen (1883-1914).

Illustration of PHACTboost, a tool leveraging a gradient-boosted decision-tree machine learning model to predict the effects of amino acid substitutions in diseases. The input features, derived from phylogenetic trees, establish the precise evolutionary history of proteins. This integration symbolizes the application of evolutionary insights in advanced computational techniques within modern bioinformatics (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msae136). Artwork by Nehircan Özdemir.