A reconstruction of temperatures along the Wilkes Land coast of Antarctica during the early Eocene epoch shows that the climate supported the growth of near-tropical forests and that winters were very mild and essentially frost-free.

The fossil of a complete insect from the Late Devonian period (approximately 365 million years ago) is presented; it was terrestrial, but its features suggest that modern winged insects had already started to diversify at that early date.

Roots of land plants are populated by a specific microbiota capable of modulating plant growth and development; here large-scale sequencing analysis shows that the bacterial community inhabiting Arabidopsis roots is influenced by soil type and plant genotype, and that plant cell-wall features serve as colonization cue for a subcommunity of the root microbiota.