Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Making sense of the virome in light of evolution and ecology
Published: 2024-09-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Understanding the patterns and drivers of viral prevalence and abundance is of key importance for understanding pathogen emergence. Over the last decade, metagenomic sequencing has exponentially expanded our knowledge of the diversity and evolution of viruses associated with all domains of life. However, as most of these ‘virome’ studies are primarily descriptive, our understanding of the [...]
Spatial connectivity through mountains and deserts drove South American scorpion's dispersal
Published: 2024-09-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
We inferred the geographic dispersal routes and the environmental conditions that shaped the ~30-million-years historical biogeography of Brachistosternus scorpions in South America. We evaluated the role that altitude and aridity had on the geographic distance that each species dispersed from the location of the genus common ancestor. Based on previous studies, we evaluated the hypothesis [...]
Does heat tolerance vary with rates of oxygen production in photosymbiotic cnidarians?
Published: 2024-09-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
Oxygen acquisition and delivery to tissues is believed to be a key factor in heat tolerance, but testing this link has been challenging due to methodological limitations in separating processes related to oxygen acquisition and oxygen delivery. In this study, we altered tissue oxygenation by manipulating light intensity using cnidarians that host endosymbiotic algae as a model. We first verified [...]
Growth decline in European beech associated with temperature-driven increase in reproductive allocation
Published: 2024-09-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate change is impacting forests in complex ways, with indirect effects arising from interactions between tree growth and reproduction often overlooked. Our 43-year study of European beech (Fagus sylvatica), showed that rising summer temperatures since 2005 have led to more frequent seed production events. This shift increases reproductive effort but depletes the trees' stored resources due to [...]
Intraspecific competition along different life stages can stabilize coexistence among dragonflies and damselflies
Published: 2024-09-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
Biodiversity is sustained by stabilizing mechanisms of coexistence that inhibit species of competitive exclusion. Yet, in organisms with complex life cycles competitive dynamics may vary according to the life stage. Dragonflies are optimal organisms to test these ideas, as aquatic larvae are generalists in their feeding behavior, but adults have a wide variety of sexual behaviors. In this way, we [...]
Widespread decline of ground beetles in Germany
Published: 2024-09-18
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Many insect species are facing existential crises, primarily due to diverse human-induced activities. Most insect assessments, however, are based on short-term data or some iconic species. Here, in close collaboration with taxonomic experts from natural history societies, we compiled the best available occurrence data for ground beetles in Germany, estimated the changes in species occupancy over [...]
How might turbulence affect animal flight in a changing world?
Published: 2024-09-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
Scaling in Nervous Systems
Published: 2024-09-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
On the Origin of Nightjars (Caprimulgidae): Perspectives from the Fossil Record
Published: 2024-09-12
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Paleobiology, Paleontology
Fossils represent the only direct evidence for the ancestral morphologies, antiquity, and historical geographic distributions of life on Earth. The fossil record of the avian clade Strisores (which includes nightjars, oilbirds, potoos, frogmouths, owlet-nightjars, treeswifts, swifts, and hummingbirds) has been richly documented by avian standards, with well-corroborated stem-group representatives [...]
The radiation and geographic expansion of primates through diverse climates
Published: 2024-09-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
One of the most influential hypotheses about primate evolution postulates that their origin, radiation, and major dispersals were associated with exceptionally warm conditions in tropical forests at northern latitudes (henceforth the warm tropical forest hypothesis). However, this notion has proven difficult to test given the overall uncertainty about both geographic locations and paleoclimates [...]
A Practical Guide to Quantifying Ecological Coexistence
Published: 2024-09-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Coexistence is simultaneously one of the most fundamental concepts of ecology, and one of the most difficult to define and quantify. A particular challenge is that, despite a well-developed body of research on the subject, several different schools of thought have developed over the past century, leading to multiple independent, and largely isolated, branches of literature with distinct [...]
Urban refugia enhance persistence of an endangered endemic keystone lizard threatened by the rapid spread of an invasive predator
Published: 2024-09-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Urbanization shapes global patterns of biodiversity. While often driving biodiversity loss and biotic homogenization, urban areas could paradoxically act as refugia for species threatened by other global change drivers, such as biological invasions. Despite growing interest in their conservation potential, a lack of robust empirical studies unveiling how urban refugia emerge and contribute to [...]
Masting ontogeny: the largest masting benefits accrue to the largest trees
Published: 2024-09-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Background and Aims. Both plants and animals display considerable variation in their phenotypic traits as they grow. This variation helps organisms to adapt to specific challenges at different stages of development. Masting, the variable and synchronized seed production across years by a population of plants, is a common reproductive strategy in perennial plants that can enhance reproductive [...]
The greatest extinction event in 66 million years?
Published: 2024-09-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Biological communities are changing rapidly in response to human activities, with the high rate of vertebrate species extinction leading many to propose that we are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction event. Five past mass extinction events have most commonly been emphasised across the Phanerozoic, with the last occurring at the end of the Cretaceous, 66 million years ago. Life on Earth has, [...]
Life history shapes variation in egg composition in the blue tit Cyanistes caeruleus
Published: 2024-09-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Maternal investment directly shapes early developmental conditions and therefore has long-term fitness consequences for the offspring. In oviparous species prenatal maternal investment is fixed at the time of laying. To ensure the best survival chances for most of their offspring, females must equip their eggs with the resources required to perform well under various circumstances, yet the actual [...]