Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences

Precision Pathway Engineering in Plants: Enhancing Crop Resilience and Productivity for Sustainable Agriculture

Katie Fan

Published: 2024-07-18
Subjects: Life Sciences

Recent advancements in metabolic engineering have opened new avenues for addressing critical challenges in agriculture, nutrition, and sustainability. This study explores innovative strategies for manipulating plant metabolic pathways to enhance crop yield, nutritional value, stress tolerance, and the production of high-value compounds. We present novel findings on improving photosynthetic [...]

Assisted colonisation for ecosystem function: a thought experiment for the British Isles

Charlie J. Gardner, James M. Bullock

Published: 2024-07-18
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Climate change is driving the rapid reorganisation of the world’s biota as species shift their ranges to track suitable conditions, however habitat fragmentation and other barriers hinder this adaptive response for species with limited dispersal ability. The translocation of species into newly suitable areas to which they are unable to disperse naturally has been suggested to conserve species [...]

Experimental evolution of a mammalian holobiont: the genetic and maternal effects in bank voles selected for herbivorous capability

Małgorzata M. Lipowska, Edyta T. Sadowska, Kevin D. Kohl, et al.

Published: 2024-07-17
Subjects: Life Sciences

Mammalian herbivory represents a complex adaptation requiring evolutionary changes across all levels of biological organization, from molecules to morphology to behavior. Explaining the evolution of such complex traits represents a major challenge in biology, simultaneously muddled and enlightened by a growing awareness of the crucial role of symbiotic associations in shaping organismal [...]

Lack of parental mate-switching effects on offspring fitness components in a long-lived socially monogamous species

Frigg Janne Daan Speelman, Terry Burke, Jan Komdeur, et al.

Published: 2024-07-16
Subjects: Life Sciences

In many species, individuals form socially monogamous pair-bonds lasting multiple breeding seasons, or even whole lifetimes. Studies often suggest social monogamy to be adaptive, but this is usually quantified through the survival and annual reproductive success of the partners. However, beyond the number of offspring produced, parental partnerships may also affect their offspring’s phenotype, [...]

gibbonNetR: an R Package for the Use of Convolutional Neural Networks and Transfer Learning on Acoustic Data

Dena Jane Clink, Abdul Hamid Ahmad

Published: 2024-07-14
Subjects: Life Sciences

Automated detection of acoustic signals is crucial for effective monitoring of vocal animals and their habitats across large spatial and temporal scales. Recent advances in deep learning have made high performance automated detection approaches more accessible to more practitioners. However, there are few deep learning approaches that can be implemented natively in R. The 'torch for R' ecosystem [...]

Competition for pollen deposition space on pollinators generates last-male advantage

Pamela Cristina Santana, Jake Mulvaney, Erika Santana, et al.

Published: 2024-07-13
Subjects: Life Sciences

Many plants have precise pollen placement strategies so that large amounts of pollen can be found over very small and discrete areas located on pollinators. This may lead to male-male competition if pre-existing pollen (1) is smothered or displaced by pollen from subsequent male flowers or (2) prevents subsequent pollen from attaching to pollinators. We investigated these alternative hypotheses [...]

Marine resources alter tundra food web dynamics by subsidizing a terrestrial predator on the sea ice

Sean M Johnson-Bice, Frank B. Baldwin, Evan Richardson, et al.

Published: 2024-07-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology

Predator use of resource subsidies can strengthen top-down effects on prey when predators respond numerically to subsidies. Although allochthonous subsidies are generally transported along natural gradients, consumers can cross ecosystem boundaries to acquire subsidies, thereby linking disparate ecosystems. In coastal Arctic ecosystems, terrestrial predators can easily cross into the marine [...]

Blindingly Transparent – Anonymity in an Era of Openness: A Reply to Cardini

Shinichi Nakagawa, Malgorzata Lagisz

Published: 2024-07-11
Subjects: Life Sciences

We welcome and appreciate the comment from Cardini [1] on our “ABC of academic writing” [2]. Cardini rightly points out that some of our advice could lead to revealing one’s identity inadvertently, jeopardising the double-blind peer review process. Importantly, there is a wealth of evidence that the effectiveness of double-blind review can prevent biases resulting from traditional single-blind [...]

Detection of energetic equivalence depends on food web architecture and estimators of energy use

Poppy Joaquina Romera, Benoit Gauzens, Ana Carolina Antunes, et al.

Published: 2024-07-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Ecologists have long debated the universality of the energetic equivalence rule (EER), which posits that population energy use should be invariant with average body size due to negative size–density scaling. We explored size–density and size–energy use scaling across 183 geographically–distributed soil invertebrate food webs to investigate the universality of these fundamental EER assumptions. [...]

Physical Trait Variation in Hass Avocados Across Different Fruit Sizes

Juan Opazo, Gonzalo Riadi

Published: 2024-07-05
Subjects: Agriculture, Life Sciences

Hass avocados are globally consumed, nutrient-rich fruits. While current analyses mainly benefit the industry, there is a need for research focused on consumer advantages. Understanding the statistical relationships between the physical characteristics of avocados, particularly pulp content, can help consumers make better purchasing decisions. This study examines the physical attributes of Hass [...]

Strong small-scale differentiation but no cryptic species within the two isopod species Asellus aquaticus and Proasellus coxalis in a restored urban river system (Emscher, Germany)

Martina Weiss, Armin W. Lorenz, Christian K. Feld, et al.

Published: 2024-07-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Zoology

Worldwide, humans have strongly altered river networks. Key changes resulted in modified hydromorphology, poor habitat quality and availability, migration barriers, and pollution. Restoration measures aim at mitigating anthropogenic stressors and to restore connectivity, but the biological success of the measures is not guaranteed. Analyzing genetic diversity and population structure of target [...]

Topoclimate buffers floristic diversity from macroclimate in temperate mountain forests.

Jeremy Borderieux, Emiel De Lombaerde, Karen De Pauw, et al.

Published: 2024-07-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Microclimates strongly influence the composition and diversity of forest plant communities. Recent studies have highlighted the role of tree canopies in shaping understory thermal conditions at small spatial scales, especially in lowland forests. In mountain forests, however, the influence of topography in environmental conditions (e.g. topoclimate) is ought to also influence plants’ perceived [...]

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. Additionally, elevated temperatures could affect developing animals through indirect effects such as increased exposure to maternal glucocorticoid hormones. Exposure to elevated levels of glucocorticoids during development can have immediate and sustained effects [...]

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 [...]

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