Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Earlier and increased growth of tundra willows after a decade of growth in a warmer common garden environment
Published: 2024-11-08
Subjects: Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. The expansion of woody shrubs, known as shrubification, is one of the most widely observed patterns of vegetation change in the tundra. Yet, we do not know the relative importance of plant plasticity and genetic change in determining shrub responses to warming. Plastic responses to the environment can be rapid, while genetic differentiation is much slower. 2. We established a common garden [...]
A picky predator and its prey: how climate change may impact a ptarmigan specialist
Published: 2024-11-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Species interactions can be altered by climate change but can also mediate its effects. A predator-prey couple reflecting the dynamics of boreal and alpine ecosystems is the gyrfalcon (Falco rusticolus) and the ptarmigan (Lagopus spp.). To determine how climate change may impact the alpine food web, we investigated how ptarmigan abundance and local weather impacts gyrfalcon diet and feeding [...]
Altered phenotypic responses of asexual Arctic Daphnia after 10 years of rapid climate change
Published: 2024-11-05
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Understanding the fates of organisms and ecosystems under global change requires consideration of the organisms’ rapid adaptation potential. In the Arctic, the recent temperature increase strongly impacts freshwater ecosystems which are important sentinels for climate change. However, a mechanistic understanding on the adaptive capacity of their key zooplankton grazers, among them polyploid, [...]
Conservation translocations lead to reduced gut microbiome diversity, and compositional changes, in the Seychelles warbler
Published: 2024-11-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
Conservation translocations are an increasingly common tool used to help combat species extinction and global biodiversity loss. However, their success is dependent on a wide range of abiotic and biotic factors. To date, the potential role of host-associated microbiomes in translocation success has been overlooked despite their fundamental contribution to host health and fitness. Here, we use [...]
FAIRification of DMRichR Pipeline: Advancing Epigenetic Research on Environmental and Evolutionary Model Organisms
Published: 2024-11-05
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Environmental Public Health, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Bioinformatics tools often prioritize humans or human-related model organisms, overlooking the requirements of environmentally relevant species, which limits their use in ecological research. This gap is particularly challenging when implementing existing software, as inadequate documentation can delay the innovative use of environmental models for modern risk assessment of chemicals that can [...]
The Deadly Trio: Do warming, acidification & deoxygenation destabilize the anemone-algae symbiosis?
Published: 2024-11-04
Subjects: Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Physiology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences
Anthropogenic climate change is primarily driven by carbon dioxide release, which causes a domino effect of warming, acidification, and hypoxia in aquatic habitats. Using a fully-crossed experimental design, we investigated how exposure to this “deadly trio” of environmental stressors affects the sea anemone, Exaiptasia diaphana and its endosymbiotic dinoflagellates. To mimic conditions found on [...]
Niche dynamics of alien plant species in Mediterranean Europe
Published: 2024-11-03
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Aim Humans have spread plants globally for millennia, inadvertently causing ecological disruptions. However, biological invasions also provide a unique opportunity to study the process of niche dynamics, through which species adapt their niche when confronted with novel environments. Focusing on the Mediterranean Basin, we assessed 1) which traits favour niche dynamics, and 2) whether niche [...]
Meromixis in the Anthropocene: pathways of change
Published: 2024-11-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Spider colour polymorphism is shaped by precipitation, not ambient temperature
Published: 2024-11-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
Colour polymorphism, the presence of multiple colour variants within a population, is a common example of intraspecific phenotypic variation and has served as a model for studying drivers of diversity. Climatic factors can influence the distribution and abundance of colour variants, yet research often focuses on lineages where sexual selection covaries with the climate-colouration associations. [...]
Continental-scale empirical evidence for relationships between fire response strategies and fire frequency
Published: 2024-11-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
• Theory suggests that the dominance of resprouting and seeding, two key mechanisms through which plants persist with recurrent fire, both depend on other traits and vary with fire regime. However, these patterns remain largely untested over broad scales. • We analysed the relationships between average fire frequency, derived from MODIS satellite data, and resprouting and seeding strategies [...]
Towards a modern and efficient European biodiversity observation network fit for multiple policies
Published: 2024-11-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
To address the biodiversity crisis, global and regional policy frameworks like the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the European Green Deal demand to monitor biodiversity. Despite these efforts, existing approaches for monitoring biodiversity remain fragmented and lack data integration. Here, we review and synthesize crucial information for developing an integrated European-wide [...]
Exploring bird biodiversity: a survey of avian richness in the dams of oke-ogun, nigeria
Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Wetland degradation, both natural and anthropogenic, impacts biodiversity and ecosystem services. Artificial wetlands, such as dams, may help mitigate the loss of natural wetlands, but their conservation potential is understudied. This research explores avian diversity, anthropogenic impacts, and community perceptions of bird species across three dams -Igboho, Okeho, and Kishi located in [...]
Priced out of belonging? Insufficient concessions on membership fees across international societies in ecology and evolution
Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Learned societies, as professional bodies for scientists, are an integral part of the scientific system. However, their membership fees have the potential to be prohibitive to the most vulnerable members of the scientific community. To shed light on how membership fees are structured, we conducted a survey of 182 international learned societies relevant to researchers in ecology and evolution. We [...]
Overcoming Key Challenges of Satellite-based Monitoring of Ecosystem Condition: A Continental-scale Example From Australia
Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Effective satellite-based monitoring of ecosystem integrity or condition needs to address four key challenges: (a) context dependency; (b) alternative ecological states; (c) short-term temporal ecosystem dynamics; and (d) scarcity of reference data where ecosystems retain high levels of integrity. Here we present a typology, and outline strengths and weaknesses, of different approaches to mapping [...]
Sodium sulfite can reliably induce chemical hypoxia without toxic effects in the model sea anemone species, Exaiptasia diaphana
Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate change is accelerating deoxygenation in aquatic ecosystems worldwide, causing consequences for aerobic organisms. Empirically studying the effects of deoxygenation on biological processes is therefore critical. Multiple methods for inducing hypoxia in physiological studies have been developed, each with pros and cons. Using oxygen scavenger chemicals, such as sodium sulfite, to reliably [...]