Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
The promise of community-driven preprints in ecology and evolution
Published: 2024-06-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Publishing preprints is quickly becoming commonplace in ecology and evolutionary biology. Preprints can facilitate the rapid sharing of scientific knowledge establishing precedence and enabling feedback from the research community before peer review. Yet, significant barriers to preprint use exist including language barriers, a lack of understanding about the benefits of preprints and a lack of [...]
Sedimentary ancient DNA reveals Neolithic pastoralism and plant community interactions at Southern European high altitudes
Published: 2024-06-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
The Neolithization process introduced significant ecological impacts, especially in Mediterranean mountain areas. We generated a comprehensive sedimentary ancient DNA record from the central Pyrenees, spanning 12.2 to 1.3 ka BP, revealing the earliest continuous presence of sheep (6.5 ka BP) and cattle (5.9 ka BP) in alpine southern Europe. This evidence suggests pastoralism nearly concurred with [...]
Influence of intermittent stream dynamics on predator-prey interactions
Published: 2024-06-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams are dynamic ecosystems characterized by periodic interruptions in flow, leading to temporary or complete absence of water. These dynamics create a mosaic of isolated pools, reducing habitat volume and connectivity, and impacting resource availability and predation levels. This study addresses three key questions: (i) Do species composition and [...]
Trophic generalism in the winter moth: a model system for phenological mismatch
Published: 2024-06-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate change has the potential to disrupt phenological synchrony among interacting species that vary in their phenological sensitivity to temperature. The phenological synchrony observed between winter moth Operophtera brumata caterpillars and oak leafing in spring has become an emblematic test case of this phenomenon, with caterpillars seemingly advancing their phenology more than their [...]
Behavioral flexibility is similar in two closely related species where only one is rapidly expanding its geographic range
Published: 2024-06-06
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Comparative Psychology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Human modified environments are rapidly increasing, which puts other species in the precarious position of either adapting to a new area or, if they are not able to adapt, shifting their range to a more suitable environment. It is generally thought that behavioral flexibility, the ability to change behavior when circumstances change, plays an important role in the ability of a species to rapidly [...]
Global metrics for terrestrial biodiversity
Published: 2024-06-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation
Biodiversity metrics are increasingly in demand for informing government, businesses, and civil society decisions. However, while there are many metrics available, it is not always clear to end-users how they differ or for what purpose they are best suited. This confusion undermines uptake. Here, we seek to clarify these questions by reviewing and presenting a database of 573 biodiversity-related [...]
Tail-dependence of masting synchrony results in continent-wide seed scarcity
Published: 2024-06-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Spatial synchrony may be tail-dependent, meaning it is stronger for peaks rather than troughs, or vice versa. High interannual variation in seed production in perennial plants, called masting, can be synchronized at subcontinental scales, triggering extensive resource pulses or famines. We used data from 99 populations of European beech (\emph{Fagus sylvatica}) to examine whether masting [...]
Testing for efficacy in four measures of demographic buffering
Published: 2024-06-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Understanding population responses to variable environments is central to much of current research in population ecology and conservation biology. Environmental variability, a key component of global climate change, increases the extinction risk of species across the tree of life. Therefore, quantifying the sensitivity of populations to environmental variability is timely in the face of global [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Western Indian Ocean
Published: 2024-06-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
‘Mangroves of the Western Indian Ocean’ is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). This province spans 10 countries and includes the following marine ecoregions: Cargados Carajos/Tromelin Island, Delagoa, Mascarene Islands, Seychelles, Southeast Madagascar, East African Coral Coast, Northern Monsoon Current Coast, Bight of Sofala/Swamp [...]
Climate-mediated hybridization and the future of Andean forests
Published: 2024-06-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
The tropical Andes face unprecedented warming and shifting precipitation patterns due to climate change and land-use alteration, challenging the futures of Andean forests. During the Quaternary, many Andean trees responded to climate change through upslope migrations, but while there is evidence of ongoing upslope migrations in many species, they are at rates far below what is need to remain in [...]
Supporting study registration to reduce research waste
Published: 2024-06-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Research suffers from many inefficiencies. These lead to much research being avoidably wasted, with no or limited value to the end user (e.g. an estimated 82-89% of ecological research, and 85% of medical research). Here, we argue that the quality and impact of ecological research could be drastically improved by registration: pre-registration, and registered reports. However, without a [...]
Eco-evolutionary dynamics in grasslands during land use change: consequences for plant-microbe interactions and ecosystem function
Published: 2024-06-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Land use change can cause the loss of plant species and functional diversity, but whether it drives eco-evolutionary changes within plant species is unclear. 2. Semi-natural grasslands are particularly threatened by land use change, including management intensification on productive soils and abandonment on marginal land. As such, they serve as an excellent system for exploring if and how [...]
Cladistic species definitions can lead to under-representation of biodiversity from adaptive radiations
Published: 2024-05-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Many species are paraphyletic, but current taxonomic practices often do not recognise this, and attempts are made to apply a monophyletic species concept. While allowing the recognition of ecomorphologically equivalent, or even phenotypically indistinguishable allopatric taxa as species, this often leads to combining distinctive local forms (such as cave-adapted populations) or even whole [...]
Poor hypotheses and research waste in biology: learning from a theory crisis in psychology
Published: 2024-05-28
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
While psychologists have extensively discussed a ‘theory crisis’, there has been no debate about such a crisis in biology. However, biologists, especially those working in the fields of ecology and evolution, have long discussed communication failures between theoreticians and empiricists. We argue such failure is one aspect of a theory crisis because misapplied and misunderstood [...]
Navigating phylogenetic conflict and evolutionary inference in plants with target capture data
Published: 2024-05-28
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Target capture has quickly become a preferred approach for plant systematic and evolutionary research, marking a step-change in the generation of data for phylogenetic inference. While this advancement has facilitated the resolution of many phylogenetic relationships, phylogenetic conflict continues to be reported, and often attributed to genome duplication, reticulation, deep coalescence or [...]