Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences

From eggs to adulthood: sustained effects of early developmental temperature and corticosterone exposure on physiology and body size in an Australian lizard

Ondi Crino, Kristoffer H Wild, Christopher R. Friesen, et al.

Published: 2024-06-29
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

As global temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, developing animals may be increasingly exposed to elevated temperatures. Developing vertebrates can be affected by elevated temperatures directly, and indirectly through maternal effects such as increased exposure to prenatal glucocorticoid hormones. Although many studies have examined how elevated temperatures and glucocorticoid [...]

Phenological Patterns of Woody Plant Species in a Tropical Dry Forest, Bannerghatta National Park, Bengaluru

Balasubramanya Sharma, Akshay Kumar V G, Poorvashree P, et al.

Published: 2024-06-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences

Phenology is the study of the timing of recurring natural stages in the life cycle of an organism. These natural stages, such as the plant's reproductive cycles, are being affected by the changing climate. The current study aims to understand the effect of weather parameters on the phenology of dry forests in Bannerghatta National Park. Two transects with 504 reproductively mature individuals [...]

Spatial bias in dietary studies can limit our understanding of the feeding ecology of large carnivores

Jacopo Cerri, Rudy Brogi, Carmela Musto, et al.

Published: 2024-06-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Many large carnivores have broad geographical ranges, encompassing ecosystems with a different prey base. Our understanding of their diet could therefore be biased by the spatial concentration of dietary studies into few areas. We propose a protocol to divide the geographical range of large carnivores, into areas that are homogeneous with respect to available food sources, by using the grey wolf [...]

ExActR: A Shiny app for creating ecosystem extent accounts

Anthony Gibbons, Francesco Martini, Cian White, et al.

Published: 2024-06-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Ecosystem accounting is a structured way to integrate nature into sustainable decision-making. The System of Environmental Economic Accounting-Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA) was adopted by the United Nations as a set of international standards for the collection of habitat data and compiling ecosystem accounts. The ecosystem extent account is one of the four pillars of the SEEA-EA framework, [...]

Range size variably predicts genetic diversity in Gehyra geckos

Ching Ching Lau, Keith Allen Christian, Jessica Fenker, et al.

Published: 2024-06-26
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences

Genetic diversity is a fundamental population genetic parameter, and predicts adaptive capacity. Neutral theory predicts a positive correlation between population (or range) size and genetic diversity, but this can be confounded by other demographic processes. To investigate the role of range size, population fluctuation and introgression in determining genetic diversity, we generate and analyse [...]

Taxonomic imbalances in animal sleep studies

Alexandre Goerlinger, Kévin Tougeron

Published: 2024-06-24
Subjects: Life Sciences

Although sleep is essential for the survival of all animals, this behaviour is far from being studied in all species, especially in invertebrates. In this dissertation, we attempted to bring together current knowledge about sleep with a focus on arthropods, which have been much less studied in this regard than vertebrates. While some species appear to exhibit rest periods that combine all the [...]

Tundra vegetation community, not microclimate, controls asynchrony of above and belowground phenology

Elise Gallois, Isla H. Myers-Smith, Colleen M. Iversen, et al.

Published: 2024-06-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

The below-ground growing season often extends beyond the above-ground growing season in tundra ecosystems. However, we do not yet know where and when this occurs and whether these phenological asynchronies are driven by variation in local vegetation communities or by spatial variation in microclimate. Here, we combined above- and below-ground plant phenology metrics to compare the relative [...]

New insights to be gained from a Virtual Ecosystem

Robert M. Mark Ewers, Jacob Cook, Olivia Daniel, et al.

Published: 2024-06-24
Subjects: Life Sciences

The myriad interactions among individual plants, animals, microbes and their abiotic environment generate emergent phenomena that will determine the future of life on Earth. Here, we argue that holistic ecosystem models – incorporating key biological domains and feedbacks between biotic and abiotic processes – capable of predicting emergent phenomena are required if we are to understand the [...]

Microbial growth in soil

Megan Foley, Bram W.G. Stone, Tristan A. Caro, et al.

Published: 2024-06-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences

The growth rate of a microorganism is a simple yet profound way to quantify its impact on the world. Microbial fitness in the environment depends on the ability to reproduce quickly when conditions are favorable and adopt a survival physiology when conditions worsen, which cells coordinate by adjusting their growth rate. At the population level, per capita growth rate is a sensitive metric of [...]

L’espèce incertaine et les taxons flous

Alex Baumel, Didier Aurelle

Published: 2024-06-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

La question de la « bonne » définition de l’espèce, qui unit les biologistes, les naturalistes et les personnes impliquées dans l’usage ou la conservation de la biodiversité, est constamment réactualisée par les progrès des connaissances sur l’évolution et la spéciation. Cette question est loin [...]

Genetic variation of heat tolerance in a model ectotherm: an approach using thermal death time curves

Felix P. Leiva, Mauro Santos, Edwin J Niklitschek, et al.

Published: 2024-06-20
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physiology

 The assessment of thermal tolerance holds significant importance in predicting the physiological responses of ectotherms, particularly in elucidating their capacity for evolutionary adaptation in the context of global warming. Current approaches to assessing thermal tolerance have limitations that can lead to misleading results, especially with regard to the heritability of thermal limits. [...]

Curating reserve level species lists in an era of diverse and dynamic data sources

Elizabeth Wenk, Thomas Mesaglio, David Keith, et al.

Published: 2024-06-20
Subjects: Life Sciences

Dynamic yet accurate reserve-level species lists are essential for conservation and biodiversity research. Even when such lists exist, changing taxonomy, ongoing species migrations and invasions, and new discoveries of historically overlooked species mean static lists can become rapidly outdated. Biodiversity databases such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, and citizen science [...]

IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Tropical East Pacific

Camilo Montes-Chaura, J. Orlando Rangel-Ch, JP Caicedo-García, et al.

Published: 2024-06-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Mangroves of the Tropical East Pacific (TEP) province is a regional ecosystem subgroup (Level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology), present in the coastal ecoregions of the Mexican Tropical Pacific, Chiapas-Nicaragua, Nicoya, Panama Bight, and Guayaquil. In 2020, mangroves cover 7782 km2 in the province, representing 5.3% of the global coverage. In the province, there are eight true [...]

Identity crisis? News reports on invasive species feature misleading images of unrelated organisms

Mark Wong

Published: 2024-06-18
Subjects: Life Sciences

In mainstream media, news outlets play a vital role in raising awareness and rallying public support for managing invasive species. However, news reports on invasive species occasionally feature misleading images of unrelated organisms. In this correspondence, I illustrate the problem with recent international news reports on invasions by Red Imported Fire Ants (Solenopsis invicta) in Asia, [...]

Symbiont community changes confer fitness benefits for larvae, but not juveniles, in a vertically transmitting coral

Daniel Olivares-Cordero, Kate Quigley, Courtney Timmons, et al.

Published: 2024-06-18
Subjects: Life Sciences

Coral reefs worldwide are threatened by increasing ocean temperatures because of the sensitivity of the coral-algal symbiosis to thermal stress. Reef building corals form mutualistic symbiotic relationships with dinoflagellates (family Symbiodiniaceae), including those species which acquire their initial symbiont complement from their parents. Changes in the composition of symbiont communities, [...]

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