Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Changing precipitation regime threatens population growth and persistence of a declining grassland songbird
Published: 2023-09-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
The interplay of biogeographic history, floral morphology, and climatic niche in Palicourea (Rubiaceae), an ecologically important group of Neotropical plants
Published: 2023-09-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
Investigating how biotic and abiotic factors interact to shape species distributions is critical to understanding current biodiversity patterns. This is particularly relevant in the Neotropics, a species-rich region home to several biodiversity hotspots, where the interplay of factors promoting diversification resulted in the assembly of the world’s richest flora. Using Palicourea, a species-rich [...]
Limits to modeling the (thermal) limits of Wolbachia
Published: 2023-09-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
Wolbachia release programs with the wMel strain are suppressing the incidence of dengue following releases in many countries. Vasquez et al use models to predict the impact of increasing temperatures and heatwaves on the replacement of wild mosquito populations with wMel carriers that are poor dengue vectors. They claim that wMel replacement is resilient to pre-2060 climate change including [...]
Comparative approaches in social network ecology
Published: 2023-09-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Social systems vary enormously across the animal kingdom, with important implications for ecological and evolutionary processes such as infectious disease dynamics, anti-predator defense, and the evolution of cooperation. Comparing social network structures between species offers a promising route to help disentangle the ecological and evolutionary processes that shape this diversity. Comparative [...]
Re-defining common mycorrhizal and fungal networks
Published: 2023-09-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
The current use of the term ‘common mycorrhizal network’ (CMN) stipulates a direct link between plants formed by the mycelium of a mycorrhizal fungus. This means that a specific case (involving hyphal continuity) is used to define a much broader phenomenon of hyphae interlinking among plant roots. We here offer a more inclusive definition of the common mycorrhizal network as a network formed by a [...]
Diversity and function of fluorescent molecules in marine animals
Published: 2023-09-05
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Fluorescence in marine animals has mainly been studied in Cnidaria but is found in many different phyla such as Annelida, Crustacea, Mollusca, and Chordata. While many fluorescent proteins and molecules have been identified, very little information is available about the biological function of fluorescence. In this review, we focus on describing the occurrence of fluorescence in marine animals [...]
Partitioning the phenotypic variance of reaction norms
Published: 2023-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Many phenotypic traits vary in a predictable way across environments, as captured by their norms of reaction. These reaction norms may be discrete or continuous, and can substantially vary in shape across organisms and traits, making it difficult to compare amounts and types of plasticity among (and sometimes even within) studies. In addition, genetic variation and evolutionary potential in [...]
Indirect genetic effects should make group size more evolvable than expected
Published: 2023-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Group size is an important trait for many ecological and evolutionary processes. However, it is not a trait possessed by individuals but by social groups, and as many genomes contribute to group size understanding its genetic underpinnings and so predicting its evolution is a conceptual challenge. Here I suggest how group size can be modelled as a joint phenotype of multiple individuals, and so [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Andaman
Published: 2023-08-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
The 'Mangroves of the Andaman' is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology) within the Andaman province. It includes intertidal forests and shrublands of the marine ecoregions of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands; the Andaman Sea Coral Coast of Myanmar and Thailand; and northwest Sumatra. The diverse biota is characterised by 43 species of true mangroves, [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Western Coral Triangle
Published: 2023-08-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
The 'Mangroves of the Western Coral Triangle' is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology. It includes intertidal forests and shrublands of the following marine ecoregions in the Western Coral Triangle province: Banda Sea, Eastern Philippines, Halmahera, Lesser Sunda, Northeast Sulawesi, Palawan/North Borneo, Papua, and Sulawesi Sea/Makassar Strait. The [...]
Harnessing open science practices to teach ecology and evolution using interactive tutorials
Published: 2023-08-30
Subjects: Education, Life Sciences
Open science skills are increasingly important for a career in ecology and evolution as efforts to make data and analyses publicly available and transparent continue to become more commonplace. However, open science skills are not typically taught in biology undergraduate programs. In learning core concepts in ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB), students must also gain skills in open [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Bay of Bengal
Published: 2023-08-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Bay of Bengal is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology) spanning parts of South and Southeast Asia. It includes coastal areas of eastern India, Bangladesh, and northern and central Myanmar, and contains one of the largest single mangrove ecosystems in the world: the Sundarbans. Mangroves dominate along the extensive coastal waterways [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the South China Sea
Published: 2023-08-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
The 'Mangroves of South China Sea' is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology in the South China Sea province. It includes intertidal forests and shrublands of the marine ecoregions of the Gulf of Tonkin, South China Sea Oceanic Islands and Southern China. The diverse biota of this ecoregion is characterised by 42 species of true mangroves, plus many [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Sunda Shelf
Published: 2023-08-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
"The 'Mangroves of the Sunda Shelf' is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology in the Sunda Shelf province. It includes intertidal forests and shrublands of the marine regions of the Malacca Straits, Gulf of Thailand, southern Viet Nam and the Sunda Shelf/Java Sea. This province has a tropical climate with protracted rainfall that provides very favourable [...]
Warming summer temperatures are rapidly restructuring North American bumble bee communities
Published: 2023-08-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
A rapidly warming climate is a primary force driving changes in biodiversity worldwide. The impact of warming temperatures on insect communities is of particular interest given their importance for ecosystem function and service provision and the uncertainty around whether insect communities can keep pace with the rate of increasing temperatures. We use a long-term dataset on bumble bee species [...]