Preprints
There are 1992 Preprints listed.
Assessing migration and moulting strategy in closely related taxa based on stable isotope analysis: a population study of Balearic and Yelkouan shearwaters across their breeding range
Published: 2025-01-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Animal migrations are unique phenomena involving mass movements of individuals, which pose significant challenges to develop conservation strategies. Migratory seabirds, particularly, face many anthropogenic threats across their distributions, and populations are declining worldwide. We provided a thorough isotopic method to characterise individual migratory patterns and identify main moulting [...]
Bottom-up interactions in age-structured stock assessment and state-space mass-balance modelling
Published: 2025-01-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Population Biology
Age-structured stock assessment models are used worldwide to predict the likely impact of changing harvest on future fisheries yield. However, age-structured models ignore the impacts of predator consumption on prey survival (top-down impacts) and prey availability on predator growth (bottom-up impacts), whereas multispecies statistical catch-at-age models often incorporate top-down but not [...]
Can transcriptome size and off-target effects explain the contrasting evolution of mitochondrial vs nuclear RNA editing?
Published: 2025-01-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mitochondrial RNA editing has evolved independently in numerous eukaryotic lineages, where it generally restores conserved sequences and functional reading frames in mRNA transcripts derived from altered or disrupted mitochondrial protein-coding genes. In contrast to this “restorative” RNA editing in mitochondria, most editing of nuclear mRNAs introduces novel sequence variants and diversifies [...]
The BeeBiome Data Portal provides easy access to bee microbiome information
Published: 2025-01-20
Subjects: Apiculture, Bioinformatics, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences
Bees can be colonized by a large diversity of microbes, including beneficial gut symbionts and detrimental pathogens, with implications for bee health. Over the last few years, researchers around the world have collected a huge amount of genomic and transcriptomic data about the composition, genomic content, and gene expression of bee-associated microbial communities. While each of these datasets [...]
From Policy to Practice: Progress towards Data- and Code-Sharing in Ecology and Evolution
Published: 2025-01-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
High quality research data and analytical code are essential for ensuring the credibility of scientific results, are key research outputs, and are crucial elements to facilitate reproducibility. However, in ecology and evolution (E&E) in particular, it is currently unknown how many journals have policies on data- and code-sharing for peer review purposes, or upon manuscript acceptance. [...]
What’s On The Menu Today? First Report of Nectarivory for Rhynocorus cuspidatus (Hemiptera: Reduviidae)
Published: 2025-01-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
This study reports the first observation of nectarivory in the predator reduviid Rhynocoris cuspidatus (Ribaut, 1921) in Spain. One individual of R. cuspidatus was observed sucking nectar from a Jacobeae vulgaris Gaertn flower inflorescence in a grassland meadow in Berrecil de la Sierra (Spain). Our observation suggested that R. cuspidatus can use floral resources to obtain sugar or moisture [...]
Spatial environment drives land-based social associations in a central-place foraging seabird
Published: 2025-01-17
Subjects: Animal Studies
1. Social and spatial environments shape the way individuals associate and thus impact their social network structure. However, nowhere are social and spatial mechanisms more likely to be simultaneously entangled and potentially misinterpreted than in central-place foragers. 2. We interrogated the spatial-social interface for a central-place forager in their colony. To do so we tested how the [...]
Need for a Smart Autonomous Bilge Management System: A Review
Published: 2025-01-17
Subjects: Engineering
The discharge of bilge water from ships, regulated under MARPOL regulations, presents significant environmental and operational challenges. Despite stringent regulations, compliance remains inconsistent due to economic pressures and the limitations of current monitoring technologies, which rely heavily on rudimentary automation that, in turn, depends largely on human intervention and [...]
Charles Brook, Newfoundland – watershed overview and recommendations for conservation of its Atlantic salmon
Published: 2025-01-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Using seed germination as a proxy of restoration success
Published: 2025-01-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ecological restoration of post-mining landscapes is critical to mitigating the environmental impacts of extraction activities. This study compares the effectiveness of geomorphic restoration (GR) versus conventional restoration (CR) techniques in improving soil water availability and seed germination dynamics in the Fortuna quarry, a Mediterranean post-mining site in Spain. Soil water content [...]
Reproductive consequences of mate retention and divorce in a short-lived migratory passerine
Published: 2025-01-16
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
In socially monogamous birds, pair bond duration varies widely across species, from single-breeding associations to long-lasting, multi-year bonds. Studies on mate retention and divorce have predominantly focused on long-lived species, while research in short-lived and migratory species is limited. Consequently, the fitness consequences of divorce or remating in these species remain unclear. [...]
A concept highlighting the interplay between α-niche evolution and β-niche evolution in bacteria
Published: 2025-01-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
When bacteria evolve new traits, this can be either to our benefit or harm. Trying to steer and control evolution in desirable directions is a major, but daunting aspiration of recent research. In natural systems and complex communities, however, it is repeatedly observed that trait evolution regularly deviates from predicted avenues suggested by in vitro experimentation on monocultures. This [...]
Does sustainable agriculture promote biodiversity and yield? A second-order meta-analysis
Published: 2025-01-15
Subjects: Agricultural Economics
Among the biggest challenges of modern society are biodiversity conservation and food security. Food security requires the increase of agricultural yields, though land use intensification is one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss. Environmentally friendly farming practices, such as organic farming, have positive effects on biodiversity, but are accompanied by yield losses. Other practices, [...]
Integrating Morphological and Molecular Data for Resolving Lucinidae (Bivalvia) Phylogenies: Implications for Taxonomy and Fossil Inclusion
Published: 2025-01-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Lucinidae, an ancient clade of chemosymbiotic bivalves dating back to the Late Jurassic, have undergone changing taxonomic classifications. Older morphology-based classifications conflict with recent molecular phylogenies. Current taxonomies rely on molecular data, limiting phylogenetic placement to extant taxa with available molecular data. To better understand lucinid evolutionary history, a [...]
Strategies to transform natural resource extension with iNaturalist and engage the public in biodiversity conservation
Published: 2025-01-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Education, Life Sciences
Participatory citizen science is an increasingly popular tool which provides non-formal education and learning activities. iNaturalist—a free open-access—participatory citizen science platform provides a place to engage the public in natural resource programming. Here, we explore practical applications for integrating iNaturalist into extension programming. We highlight two approaches: (1) [...]