Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences

The advertisement call of Mannophryne lamarcai Mijares-Urrutia et Arends 1999 (Anura: Dendrobatidae)

Arlene Cardozo-Urdaneta, Ada Sánchez-Mercado

Published: 2023-01-31
Subjects: Life Sciences

The genus Mannophryne includes 19 described species from Venezuela and two species from Trinidad and Tobago. We described for the first time the advertisement call of Mannophryne lamarcai, an endemic and Critically Endangered species from the Cerro Socopó at western Venezuela. M. lamarcai was spatially restricted in appropriate habitats. Males were calling actively on top of rocks and fallen [...]

Using repeatability of performance within and across contexts to validate measures of behavioral flexibility

Kelsey McCune

Published: 2023-01-31
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Research into animal cognitive abilities is increasing quickly and often uses methods where behavioral performance on a task is assumed to represent variation in the underlying cognitive trait. However, because these methods rely on behavioral responses as a proxy for cognitive ability, it is important to validate that the task structure does, in fact, target the cognitive trait of interest [...]

Virtual Reef Diver: enabling people to help protect the Great Barrier Reef

Julie Vercelloni, Edgar Santos Fernandez, Kerrie Mengersen

Published: 2023-01-27
Subjects: Life Sciences

Two Sustainable Development Goals are focused directly on combating the impacts of climate change on coral reef communities. These are: Goal 13 “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts” and Goal 14 “Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development”. Citizen science (CS) features prominently in a range of programs that have been [...]

Determinants of synergistic cell-cell interactions in bacteria

Benedikt Pauli, Shiksha Ajmera, Christian Kost

Published: 2023-01-27
Subjects: Life Sciences

Bacteria are ubiquitous and colonize virtually every conceivable habitat on earth. To achieve this, bacteria require different metabolites and biochemical capabilities. Rather than trying to produce all of the needed materials by themselves, bacteria have evolved a range of synergistic interactions, in which they exchange different commodities with other members of their local community. While it [...]

Fine-scale interplay between decline and growth determines the spatial recovery of coral communities within a reef

Julie Vercelloni, Chris Roelfsema, Eva Kovacs, et al.

Published: 2023-01-25
Subjects: Life Sciences

As coral reefs endure increasing levels of disturbance, understanding patterns of recovery following disturbance(s) is paramount to assessing the sustainability of these ecosystems. Given the slow dynamics of coral reefs and the increasing frequency of environmental pressures, management strategies focus on understanding recovery patterns to drive efforts and actively promote the recovery of key [...]

More Than Half of Statistically Significant Research Findings in the Environmental Sciences are Actually Not

Teshome Deressa, David Stern, Jaco Vangronsveld, et al.

Published: 2023-01-25
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Researchers have incentives to search for and selectively report findings that appear to be statistically significant and/or conform to prior beliefs. Such selective reporting practices, including p-hacking and publication bias, can lead to a distorted set of results being published, potentially undermining the process of knowledge accumulation and evidence-based decision making. We take stock of [...]

Meta-community processes supersede leaf subsidy effects on lake aquatic communities

Georges Etienne Charette, Éric Harvey

Published: 2023-01-24
Subjects: Life Sciences

There is a growing consensus that cross-ecosystem fluxes significantly influence the structure and stability of aquatic communities. What remains unclear, however, is the relative importance and potential interactions of those fluxes to/with other well-studied factors affecting aquatic community structure such as local environmental parameters or regional-scale influences related to connectivity [...]

The impact of rising temperatures on the prevalence of coral diseases and its predictability: a global meta-analysis

Samantha Burke, Patrice Pottier, Malgorzata Lagisz, et al.

Published: 2023-01-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistical Models

Coral reefs are under threat from disease as climate change alters environmental conditions. Rising temperatures exacerbate coral disease, but this relationship is likely complex as other factors also influence coral disease prevalence. To better understand this relationship, we meta-analytically examined 108 studies for changes in global coral disease over time alongside temperature, expressed [...]

Marine cleaning mutualisms provide new insights in biological market dynamics

Redouan Bshary, Ronald Noe

Published: 2023-01-23
Subjects: Life Sciences

Most mutually beneficial social interactions (cooperation within species, mutualism between species) involve some degree of partner choice. In an analogy to economic theory as applied to human trading practices, biological market theory (BMT) focusses on how partner choice affects payoff distributions among non-human traders. BMT has inspired a great diversity of research, including research on [...]

Sex-specific covariation between exploratory behavior and natal dispersal strategies in a natural cooperative breeding passerine population

Tara Cox, Alexandra M Sparks, Terry Burke, et al.

Published: 2023-01-20
Subjects: Life Sciences

Natal dispersal is a major life-history strategy that has pervasive consequences on the spatial and genetic structure of populations. Between-individual variation in personality traits is increasingly recognized as an important determinant of natal dispersal via ‘personality-dependent dispersal’. However, few studies have investigated the importance of personalities in the context of delayed [...]

Psychological and Cultural Factors Influencing Antibiotic Prescription

Francisco Dionisio, Fernando Baquero, Marina Fuertes

Published: 2023-01-20
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Psychiatry and Psychology

Humans have been giving a selective advantage to antibiotic-resistant bacteria worldwide by inundating the environment with antimicrobials for about one century. As a result, the efficacy of antibiotics has been impaired. Antibiotic resistance is a public health problem, responsible for increases in mortality and extended stays at hospitals. Hospitals and other clinical settings have implemented [...]

The Ecological Relevance of Critical Thermal Maxima Methodology (CTM) for Fishes

Jessica Emilie Desforges, Kim Birnie-Gauvin, Fredrik Jutfelt, et al.

Published: 2023-01-14
Subjects: Life Sciences

Critical thermal maxima methodology (CTM) has been used to infer acute upper thermal tolerance in fishes since the 1950s, yet its ecological relevance remains debated. Here, we synthesize evidence to identify methodological concerns and common misconceptions that have limited the interpretation of CTmax (value for an individual fish during one trial) in ecological and evolutionary studies of [...]

Metabolic division of labor in social insects

Matteo A Negroni, Adria C LeBoeuf

Published: 2023-01-14
Subjects: Life Sciences

Social insects are known for reproductive and behavioral division of labor, but little attention has been paid to metabolic forms of division of labor. Metabolic division of labor is the partitioning of complementary metabolic tasks between individuals, and it is widespread in social insects. We define two forms of metabolic division of labor, homosynergetic and heterosynergetic, we pinpoint [...]

Social regulation of reproduction: control or signal?

Chiara Benvenuto, Maria Cristina Lorenzi

Published: 2023-01-13
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Traditionally, dominant breeders have been considered to be able to control the reproduction of other individuals in multimember groups that have high variance in reproductive success/reproductive skew (e.g., forced sterility/coercion of conspecifics in eusocial animals; sex-change suppression in sequential hermaphrodites). These actions are typically presented as active impositions by [...]

Quantitative evidence synthesis: a practical guide on meta-analysis, meta-regression, and publication bias tests for environmental sciences

Shinichi Nakagawa, Yefeng Yang, Erin L Macartney, et al.

Published: 2023-01-07
Subjects: Life Sciences

Meta-analysis is a quantitative way of synthesizing results from multiple studies to obtain reliable evidence of an intervention or phenomenon. Indeed, an increasing number of meta-analyses are conducted in environmental sciences, and resulting meta-analytic evidence is often used in environmental policies and decision-making. We conducted a survey of recent meta-analyses in environmental [...]

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