Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Persistent effects of landscape connectivity on recruitment dynamics in secondary forests
Published: 2024-05-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
Large scale reforestation is promoted as an important strategy to mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss. A persistent challenge for efforts to restore ecosystems at scale is how to accelerate ecological processes, particularly natural regeneration. Yet, despite being recognized as an important barrier to the recovery of diverse plant communities in agricultural landscapes, the impacts of [...]
Temperature dependence of pollen germination and tube growth in conifers relates to their distribution along an elevational gradient in Washington State, USA
Published: 2024-05-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
•Background and Aims: Pollen germination and tube growth are essential processes for successful fertilization. They are among the most temperature-vulnerable stages and subsequently affect seed production and determine population persistence and species distribution under climate change. Our study aims to investigate intra- and inter-specific variations in the temperature dependence of pollen [...]
How is the effectiveness of terrestrial protected areas to conserve biodiversity measured? A systematic map
Published: 2024-05-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Protected areas (PAs) are fundamental in preserving ecological diversity, supporting ecosystem services, and mitigating human impacts in today’s world. However, the mere designation of PAs is insufficient for achieving conservation goals. It needs to be ensured through employment of robust management practices and the deployment of scientifically sound monitoring methodologies. This systematic [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Tropical Northwestern Atlantic
Published: 2024-05-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Tropical Northwestern Atlantic is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Bahamian, Carolinian, Eastern Caribbean, Floridian, Greater Antilles, Northern Gulf of Mexico, Southern Caribbean, Southern Gulf of Mexico, Southwestern Caribbean and Western Caribbean. The mapped extent of mangroves in 2020 [...]
Monitoring the land and sea: Enhancing efficiency through CRISPR-Cas driven depletion and enrichment of environmental DNA
Published: 2024-05-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Characterising biodiversity using environmental DNA (eDNA) represents a paradigm shift in our capacity for biomonitoring complex environments, both aquatic and terrestrial. However, eDNA biomonitoring is limited by biases towards certain species and the low taxonomic resolution of current metabarcoding approaches. Shotgun metagenomics of eDNA enables the collection of whole ecosystem data by [...]
Proactive management outperforms reactive strategies for wildlife disease control
Published: 2024-05-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Finding effective pathogen mitigation strategies is one of the biggest challenges humans face today. In the context of wildlife, emerging infectious diseases have repeatedly caused widespread host morbidity and population declines of numerous taxa. In areas yet unaffected by a pathogen, a proactive management approach has the potential to minimize or prevent host mortality. However, we typically [...]
Evidence for avian core-Merge is indisputable: A reply to Beckers et al. (2024)
Published: 2024-05-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
It has been hypothesized that the generative power of language stems from a cognitive capacity called “Merge,” which enables senders to combine two linguistic items (e.g., two words or two phrases) into a sequence and receivers to recognize it as a single unit (Chomsky, 1995, 2001). In an experimental study published in Nature Communications (Suzuki and Matsumoto, 2022), we demonstrated that a [...]
Microevolutionary change in wild stickleback: using integrative time-series data to infer responses to selection
Published: 2024-05-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Identifying microevolutionary change in the wild requires linking trait change to shifts in allele fre-quencies, but existing approaches poorly account for different modes of selection that act simulta-neously on correlated traits. Using an integrative phenome-genome time-series dataset collected on wild threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), we identified how different modes of [...]
Brownification shapes the food web of aquatic invertebrates: a review
Published: 2024-05-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Brownification, a global phenomenon of increasing surface water colour to yellow-brown hues, has an array of effects on drinking water supply and aquatic biodiversity. Aquatic invertebrates, as indicators of aquatic ecosystem health and providers of ecosystem services, have received limited attention in the context of water browning. In this review, we explored the effects of brownification on [...]
Uncovering multiple influences on space use by deer mice using NEON data
Published: 2024-05-10
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences
Space use by animals is affected by multiple factors; previous researchers have examined the effects of influences such as sex, body condition, and population density on home range area. However, evaluating the simultaneous influences of multiple factors on animal space use has been relatively intractable due to sample size limitations. We capitalize on National Ecological Observatory Network [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of New Zealand
Published: 2024-05-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mangroves of New Zealand is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Central New Zealand, Northeastern New Zealand and Three Kings-North Cape. Their mapped extent in 2018 was 281.7 to 296.2 km2, representing 0.2% of the global mangrove area. The biota is characterized by a single species: Avicennia marina subsp. [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of South India and Sri Lanka, and Maldives
Published: 2024-05-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mangroves of South India and Sri Lanka, and Maldives is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Western India, South India and Sri Lanka, and Maldives. The mapped extent in 2020 was 249.2 km2, representing 0.2% of the global mangrove area. The environmental settings of this ecoregion differ widely ranging from open [...]
A wrap-around movement path randomization method to distinguish social and spatial drivers of animal interactions
Published: 2024-05-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Studying the spatial-social interface requires tools that distinguish between social and spatial drivers of interactions. Testing hypotheses regarding the factors determining animal interactions often involves comparing observed interactions with reference or ’null’ models. One approach to accounting for spatial drivers of social interactions in reference models is randomizing animal [...]
Global review of shorebird tracking publications: Gaps and priorities for research and conservation
Published: 2024-05-07
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Electronic tracking has enabled rapid advances in knowledge of the movement behaviour and habitat use of shorebirds (Charadriiformes), and is thus making a growing contribution to their conservation. However, developing a useful coherent global strategy for tracking these taxa requires an overview of the current availability of data and how it varies along regional and ecological lines. To this [...]
Integrating animal tracking and trait data to facilitate global ecological discoveries
Published: 2024-05-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Understanding animal movement is at the core of ecology, evolution, and conservation science. Big data approaches for animal tracking have facilitated impactful synthesis research on spatial biology and behavior in ecologically important and human-impacted regions. Similarly, databases of animal traits (e.g., body size, limb length, locomotion method, lifespan) have been used for a wide range of [...]