Preprints

There are 1858 Preprints listed.

Niche dynamics of alien plant species in Mediterranean Europe

Luigi Cao Pinna, Laure Gallien, Tommaso Jucker, et al.

Published: 2024-11-03
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences

Aim Humans have spread plants globally for millennia, inadvertently causing ecological disruptions. However, biological invasions also provide a unique opportunity to study the process of niche dynamics, through which species adapt their niche when confronted with novel environments. Focusing on the Mediterranean Basin, we assessed 1) which traits favour niche dynamics, and 2) whether niche [...]

Meromixis in the Anthropocene: pathways of change

Dagmar Frisch, Christopher Barry, Francesco Di Nezio, et al.

Published: 2024-11-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Spider colour polymorphism is shaped by precipitation, not ambient temperature

Fabian C. Salgado-Roa, Devi Stuart-Fox, Iliana Medina

Published: 2024-11-03
Subjects: Life Sciences

Colour polymorphism, the presence of multiple colour variants within a population, is a common example of intraspecific phenotypic variation and has served as a model for studying drivers of diversity. Climatic factors can influence the distribution and abundance of colour variants, yet research often focuses on lineages where sexual selection covaries with the climate-colouration associations. [...]

Continental-scale empirical evidence for relationships between fire response strategies and fire frequency

Sophie Yang, Mark KJ Ooi, Daniel S. Falster, et al.

Published: 2024-11-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

• Theory suggests that the dominance of resprouting and seeding, two key mechanisms through which plants persist with recurrent fire, both depend on other traits and vary with fire regime. However, these patterns remain largely untested over broad scales. • We analysed the relationships between average fire frequency, derived from MODIS satellite data, and resprouting and seeding strategies [...]

Language, economic, and gender disparities widen the scientific productivity gap

Tatsuya Amano, Valeria Ramírez-Castañeda, Violeta Berdejo-Espinola, et al.

Published: 2024-11-01
Subjects: Environmental Studies

Scientific communities need to understand and eliminate barriers that prevent scientists from reaching their full potential. However, the combined impact of individuals’ linguistic, economic, and gender backgrounds on their scientific productivity is poorly understood. Using a survey of 908 environmental scientists, we show that being a woman is associated with up to a 45% reduction in the number [...]

Towards a modern and efficient European biodiversity observation network fit for multiple policies

W. Daniel Kissling, Tom D. Breeze, Camino Liquete, et al.

Published: 2024-11-01
Subjects: Life Sciences

To address the biodiversity crisis, global and regional policy frameworks like the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the European Green Deal demand to monitor biodiversity. Despite these efforts, existing approaches for monitoring biodiversity remain fragmented and lack data integration. Here, we review and synthesize crucial information for developing an integrated European-wide [...]

Time will tell: the temporal and demographic contexts of plant-soil microbe interactions

Po-Ju Ke, Gaurav Kandlikar, Suzanne Xianran Ou, et al.

Published: 2024-10-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Soil microorganisms can have profound impacts on plant community dynamics and have received increasing attention in the context of plant-soil feedback. The effects of soil microbes on plant community dynamics are classically evaluated with a two-phase experimental design that consists of a conditioning phase, during which plants modify the soil microbial community, and a response phase, during [...]

Exploring bird biodiversity: a survey of avian richness in the dams of oke-ogun, nigeria

Yinka Julianah Adeniji, Oluyinka Sunday Odewumi, Bibitayo Ayobami Owolabi

Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences

Wetland degradation, both natural and anthropogenic, impacts biodiversity and ecosystem services. Artificial wetlands, such as dams, may help mitigate the loss of natural wetlands, but their conservation potential is understudied. This research explores avian diversity, anthropogenic impacts, and community perceptions of bird species across three dams -Igboho, Okeho, and Kishi located in [...]

Priced out of belonging? Insufficient concessions on membership fees across international societies in ecology and evolution

Malgorzata Lagisz, Kevin R Bairos-Novak, April Robin Martinig, et al.

Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Learned societies, as professional bodies for scientists, are an integral part of the scientific system. However, their membership fees have the potential to be prohibitive to the most vulnerable members of the scientific community. To shed light on how membership fees are structured, we conducted a survey of 182 international learned societies relevant to researchers in ecology and evolution. We [...]

Overcoming Key Challenges of Satellite-based Monitoring of Ecosystem Condition: A Continental-scale Example From Australia

Kristen Jennifer Williams, Simon Ferrier, Eric A Lehmann, et al.

Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences

Effective satellite-based monitoring of ecosystem integrity or condition needs to address four key challenges: (a) context dependency; (b) alternative ecological states; (c) short-term temporal ecosystem dynamics; and (d) scarcity of reference data where ecosystems retain high levels of integrity. Here we present a typology, and outline strengths and weaknesses, of different approaches to mapping [...]

Sodium sulfite can reliably induce chemical hypoxia without toxic effects in the model sea anemone species, Exaiptasia diaphana

Zhen Qin, Lorenzo Vassura, Bianca Allegra Parodi, et al.

Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences

Climate change is accelerating deoxygenation in aquatic ecosystems worldwide, causing consequences for aerobic organisms. Empirically studying the effects of deoxygenation on biological processes is therefore critical. Multiple methods for inducing hypoxia in physiological studies have been developed, each with pros and cons. Using oxygen scavenger chemicals, such as sodium sulfite, to reliably [...]

Decadal recovery of fungal but not termite deadwood decay in tropical rainforest

Baptiste Joseph Wijas, Habacuc Flores-Moreno, Steven D Allison, et al.

Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

1. Deadwood represents ~11% of carbon stocks in tropical rainforest ecosystems and its decay is driven largely by fungi and termites which contribute to the cycling of carbon and nutrients. Due to land use change, such as forest clearing, secondary growth tropical rainforests are increasingly prevalent around the globe. In secondary growth rainforest, studies found lower decay rates of leaf [...]

Reimagining species on the move across space and time

Alexa Fredston, Morgan Tingley, Montague Neate-Clegg, et al.

Published: 2024-10-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Climate change is already leaving a broad footprint of impacts on biodiversity, from an individual caterpillar emerging earlier in spring to an entire plant community migrating poleward. Despite the various modes of how species are on the move, we primarily document shifting species along only one gradient (e.g., latitude or phenology) and along one dimension (space or time). Here we present a [...]

BON in a Box: An Open and Collaborative Platform for Biodiversity Monitoring, Indicator Calculation, and Reporting

Jory Griffith, Jean-Michel Lord, Michael D. Catchen, et al.

Published: 2024-10-28
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Plant Sciences

Biodiversity loss is a critical global challenge. The Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) sets ambitious goals to protect ecosystems, halt species loss, and enhance biodiversity. The GBF’s Monitoring Framework requires countries to track progress toward biodiversity targets using a standardized set of indicators that summarize complex trends in biodiversity. However, the [...]

Cichlid fishes are promising underutilised models to investigate helminth-microbiome interactions

Maarten P.M. Vanhove, Stephan Koblmüller, Jorge M.O. Fernandes, et al.

Published: 2024-10-27
Subjects: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Microbiology, Parasitology

The “Old Friends Hypothesis” suggests that insufficient early exposure to symbionts may hinder immune development, contributing to increased immune-related diseases in the Global North. While the microbiome is often the focus, helminths, which may also offer health benefits, receive little attention. The infection and effect of helminths, in turn, are influenced and may be even determined by [...]

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