It is expected that closely related organisms are more likely to show similar ecological interactions than less related ones. But this has been tested only for certain types of interaction, and in a restricted set of taxa. Now interaction networks have been constructed for 116 different clades of related organisms, across the entire tree of life, and including all types of interaction. The results reveal significant conservatism across the board, including both specialist and generalist species.

To build a representation of the auditory world, neuronal circuits in neonatal rodents exhibit plasticity, allowing sensitivity to the pattern of sensory inputs. At this time, neurons construct a receptive field, which relies on a balance of excitatory and inhibitory inputs. Here, excitation and inhibition were not found to be co-tuned upon hearing onset, but later an adjustment in the excitatory input strength occurred. Thus a fine adjustment in synaptic inputs, rather than more radical changes such as input pruning, may refine mature receptive fields.

Glucocorticoids are widely used to treat patients with autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), but many treatment regimens cannot maintain disease control in SLE patients. Here it is shown that the stimulation of plasmacytoid dendritic cells through toll-like receptors TLR7 and TLR9 can account for the reduced activity of glucocorticoids to inhibit the type I interferon pathway in SLE patients. Thus inhibitors of TLR7 and TLR9 signalling might prove to be effective corticosteroid-sparing drugs.