Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Habitat alteration impacts predation risk in an aposematic amphibian
Published: 2024-10-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Predator-prey interactions can be viewed as an evolutionary arms race influenced by environmental factors. Forest management, for example, can influence such interactions and alter community structure. A common anti-predator strategy, known as aposematism, lies on the coupling of warning signals with secondary (e.g., chemical) defences to deter predators. The European fire salamander (Salamandra [...]
Protecting forests and trees is essential for global agricultural productivity
Published: 2024-10-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Balancing forest conservation and agricultural production is essential for a sustainable future. Here we review the scientific evidence for the relationships between forests and agricultural productivity across different scales, summarizing the contexts under which trees limit, maintain, or enhance agricultural productivity. While synergies and trade-offs occur at local scales, a regional-scale [...]
Turning Brewery Waste into Paper: Brewer’s Spent Grain as an Alternative Fiber in Sustainable Paper Innovation
Published: 2024-10-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Brewer's spent grain is a significant byproduct of the brewing industry, composed mainly of cellulose, hemicelluloses, lignin, and polysaccharides (arabinoxylans). It is primarily used for agricultural purposes, such as animal feed. However, it also presents an alternative option as a substitute for wood cellulose in certain paper grades. This study investigates the strength contribution of [...]
Survival analysis of wildlife cameras exposed to theft
Published: 2024-10-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Setting camera traps along roads is often necessary for ecological research, yet these locations expose cameras to theft leading to substantial data losses. Measures to minimise this risk include placing cameras away from human settlements. However, the effects of this and other measures on camera-trap theft risk are yet to be quantified. Here, we assessed the impact of gates on roads, the [...]
Should I stay or should I go: Transmission trade-offs in mobile genetic elements
Published: 2024-10-16
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Microbiology
Mobile genetic elements (MGEs), including temperate bacteriophages and conjugative plasmids, are major vectors of virulence and antibiotic resistance in bacterial populations. To maximize reproductive fitness, MGEs have to optimize horizontal and vertical transmission. Yet, the cost of horizontal transmission (e.g. phage lysis) puts these transmission modes at odds. Using virulence-transmission [...]
Urban bumblebees diversify their foraging strategy to maintain nutrient intake
Published: 2024-10-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Anthropogenic ecosystems can alter individual functions and ecological processes such as resource use and species interactions. While variability on morphological traits involved in diet and resource use has been observed between urban and non-urban populations of pollinators, the consequences on the dietary and pollen transportation patterns remain poorly understood. Here, we investigate the [...]
Filosofía Fungi
Published: 2024-10-16
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Life Sciences
Muchos conceptos en ecología y evolución se han construido en base a observaciones zoológicas y, en menor medida, botánicas, mientras que una visión fúngica en estas áreas es prácticamente inexistente. Mucho menos se han indagado aspectos de la filosofía de la biología en base a los hongos. Sin embargo, en este artículo mostramos que dadas sus características particulares, el Reino Fungi [...]
The Fish Challenge to Vertebrate Cognitive Evolution
Published: 2024-10-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
There is tremendous taxonomic variation in the size, shape, and structure of vertebrate brains. While many studies aim at identifying the ecological factors (social and environmental) that explain brain size variation within taxa, a more fundamental divide exists between endotherm and ectotherm vertebrates. Ectotherms have ten times smaller brains than endotherms. The existing hypotheses cannot [...]
Cooperation, status, and altruism in a mixed society of Amazonian parrots
Published: 2024-10-16
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Parrots are a highly intelligent taxon whose complex behaviors in wild societies require description. Here we observed 12 species of parrots, macaws, and parakeets in mixed flocks foraging on exposed cliffs in southeast Perú. For each species, we developed a single bootstrapped index of sociality from 9 derived metrics of abundance, chronology, functional roles, and agonistic interactions. This [...]
Towards repeated clear-cutting of boreal forests - a tipping point for biodiversity?
Published: 2024-10-15
Subjects: Life Sciences
Boreal forests are important carbon sinks and host a diverse array of species that provide important 14 ecosystem functions. Boreal forests have a long history of intensive forestry, in which even-aged 15 management with clear-cutting has been the dominating harvesting practice for the past 50–80 16 years. As a second cycle of clear-cutting is emerging, there is an urgent need to review the [...]
Cooperation in non-family groups as a strategy for reproducing in variable climates
Published: 2024-10-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The global climate is changing to be more extreme and less predictable, threatening many species. Cooperative breeding is more common under such conditions, indicating it may improve resilience to challenging climates. However, whether specific features of cooperative breeding systems, such as how groups form and how large they become, evolved to cope with particular climates is unclear. We test [...]
Revisiting Adaptive Introgression at the HLA Genes in Lithuanian Genomes with Machine Learning
Published: 2024-10-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
Narrow roads to Fern Land: revisiting and re-analysing the paradox of sexual reproduction
Published: 2024-10-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
Some major thought on the evolutionary maintenance of sexual reproduction is revisited. This leads to a new perspective about the role of complex life cycles for the maintenance of sex. And it leads to a new comparison of organisms with different life cycles. Organisms like strawberries propagate contrary to what would be adaptive under red-queen selection from micro-parasites. Their recombinant [...]
Inbreeding and adaptation to captivity depress the response to stress
Published: 2024-10-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
The success of reintroductions using captive-bred populations of wild species is potentially impacted by adaptations to non-natural captive environments. Little research has been done into how physiological traits change from wild to captive populations. We do not yet understand how glucocorticoid secretion patterns, a critical aspect of the stress response and other underlying life-history [...]
Handle with care! Morphology of spines and milking practices in venomous fishes
Published: 2024-10-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
Venomous fish have independently evolved venom-delivery systems multiple times throughout their evolution. Despite the remarkable convergence of such structures, a large variety in venom-delivery structures morphology does occur across species. This review is aimed at delving into species’ peculiarities, exploring the diversity of venom glands and the potential ecological roles in relation to [...]