Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Remote extracellular attacks on bacteriophage
Published: 2023-10-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Bacteriophages and their hosts co-evolve while exploiting and defending against the other, respectively. Known anti-phage defences prevent attachment to the cell or target phage nucleic acids within the cell; variation in such defences shapes phage host range. While investigating the host range of the virulent myxophage Mx1 among natural isolates of the social bacterium Myxococcus xanthus, we [...]
Dispersal and eco-evolutionary dynamics in antagonistic species interactions
Published: 2023-10-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Dispersal fuels the interplay between ecology, evolution and adaptation across spatial and temporal scales. Dispersal also determines the encounter between natural enemies and can produce eco-evolutionary feedbacks with potentially profound consequences for the geographic distribution and genetic diversity of antagonistically interacting species. Although both dispersal and interaction traits, [...]
Avian zoochory is a probable pathway of European perch colonization in artificial lakes: a reply to Vasemägi et al (2023)
Published: 2023-10-14
Subjects: Life Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Applications of Machine Learning in Phylogenetics
Published: 2023-10-14
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences
Machine learning has increasingly been applied to a wide range of questions in phylogenetic inference. Supervised machine learning approaches that rely on simulated training data have been used to infer tree topologies and branch lengths, to select substitution models, and to perform downstream inferences of introgression and diversification. Here, we review how researchers have used several [...]
Amount of carbon fixed, transit time and fate of harvested wood products define the climate change mitigation potential of boreal forest management - A model analysis
Published: 2023-10-14
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Boreal forests are often managed to maximize wood production, but other goals, among which climate change mitigation, are increasingly important. Examining synergies and trade-offs between forest production and its potential for carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation in forest stands requires explicitly accounting for how long forest ecosystems and wood products retain carbon from [...]
Sex-specific effects of social environment on behaviour and their correlations in Drosophila melanogaster
Published: 2023-10-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Environmental and individual experiences can result in immediate and persistent changes in behaviour. Often, such effects are also sex-dependent. Interspecific interactions can be one of the most important environments an individual faces. Such social interactions are expected to affect a suite of behavioural traits and their correlations. Here, we used Drosophila melanogaster and high-throughput [...]
Withdrawn: Datathons: fostering equitability in data reuse in ecology
Published: 2023-10-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences, Microbiology
Duplicate of https://doi.org/10.32942/X2389Q
Should we indulge prawns more on organismal and environmental research?
Published: 2023-10-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
The importance of prawns in organismal research is an issue of concern due to their multifaceted and unique biological characteristics. This majorly includes their tolerance to critical environmental situations, sensitivity, exceptional body morphometrics, ecogeographic occurrence and diversity. All of these make prawns a highly adaptable and evolutionary successful organism. While studying the [...]
With a little help from my friends: the roles of microbial symbionts in insect populations and communities.
Published: 2023-10-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
To understand insect abundance, distribution, and dynamics, we need to understand the relevant drivers of their populations and communities. While microbial symbionts are known to affect many aspects of insect biology, research on their ecological and evolutionary importance for wild non-model insects is scarce. We are still far from understanding the spatio-temporal dynamics of symbioses in [...]
Same data, different analysts: variation in effect sizes due to analytical decisions in ecology and evolutionary biology
Published: 2023-10-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Although variation in effect sizes and predicted values among studies of similar phenomena is inevitable, such variation far exceeds what might be produced by sampling error alone. One possible explanation for variation among results is differences among researchers in the decisions they make regarding statistical analyses. A growing array of studies has explored this analytical variability in [...]
Comparing the effects of internal stem damage on aboveground biomass estimates from terrestrial laser scanning and allometric scaling models
Published: 2023-10-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
Forests and woodlands are critical carbon stores, and methods for quantifying forest aboveground biomass (AGB) are increasingly relied upon for determining sequestered CO2 traded in carbon markets. AGB is traditionally measured using allometric models, yet terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) is emerging as a highly accurate remote sensing alternative. However, internal tree stem damage from biotic [...]
Bacteriostatic cells instead of bacteriostatic antibiotics?
Published: 2023-10-03
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
This year we commemorate the centennial of the birth of the mature concept of bacteriostasis by John W. Churchman at Cornell University Medical School. The term bacteriostasis has primarily been applied to antibiotics (bacteriostatic antibiotics). In this Opinion paper, we are revisiting this concept by suggesting that bacteriostatic antibiotics are drugs that induce bacteria to become [...]
Hypotheses on Evolutionary Processes for Autonomous and Cooperative Mechanisms of Living Systems to Work and Evolve
Published: 2023-10-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
The internal systems of an organism are composed of many different systems of matter, phase flows, and networks that coordinate and function together to regulate the organism's autonomy and responsiveness to the external world. These systems have evolved through interactions between organisms and their environment. This study proposes several hypotheses that explain and generalize the mechanisms [...]
Robust point and variance estimation for ecological and evolutionary meta-analyses with selective reporting and dependent effect sizes
Published: 2023-10-03
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Statistics and Probability
Meta-analysis produces a quantitative synthesis of evidence-based knowledge, shaping not only research trends but also policy and practices in ecology and evolution. However, two statistical issues, selective reporting and statistical dependence, can severally distort meta-analytic evidence. Here, we propose a two-step procedure to tackle these challenges concurrently and re-analyse 448 [...]
Decoding Populations in the Ocean Microbiome
Published: 2023-09-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Understanding the characteristics and structure of populations is fundamental to comprehending ecosystem processes and evolutionary adaptations. While the study of animal and plant populations has spanned a few centuries, microbial populations have been under scientific scrutiny for a considerably shorter period. In the ocean, analyzing the genetic composition of microbial populations and their [...]