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Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences

Should I stay or should I go: Transmission trade-offs in mobile genetic elements

Jana Sanne Huisman, Andrina Bernhard, Claudia Igler

Published: 2024-10-16
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Microbiology

Mobile genetic elements (MGEs), including temperate bacteriophages and conjugative plasmids, are major vectors of virulence and antibiotic resistance in bacterial populations. To maximize reproductive fitness, MGEs have to optimize horizontal and vertical transmission. Yet, the cost of horizontal transmission (e.g. phage lysis) puts these transmission modes at odds. Using virulence-transmission [...]

Urban bumblebees diversify their foraging strategy to maintain nutrient intake

Simonetta Selva, Marco Moretti, Fabian Ruedenauer, et al.

Published: 2024-10-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences

Anthropogenic ecosystems can alter individual functions and ecological processes such as resource use and species interactions. While variability on morphological traits involved in diet and resource use has been observed between urban and non-urban populations of pollinators, the consequences on the dietary and pollen transportation patterns remain poorly understood. Here, we investigate the [...]

Filosofía Fungi

César Marín, Javier Suárez

Published: 2024-10-16
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Life Sciences

Muchos conceptos en ecología y evolución se han construido en base a observaciones zoológicas y, en menor medida, botánicas, mientras que una visión fúngica en estas áreas es prácticamente inexistente. Mucho menos se han indagado aspectos de la filosofía de la biología en base a los hongos. Sin embargo, en este artículo mostramos que dadas sus características particulares, el Reino Fungi [...]

The Fish Challenge to Vertebrate Cognitive Evolution

Zegni Triki, Carel van Schaik, Redouan Bshary

Published: 2024-10-16
Subjects: Life Sciences

There is tremendous taxonomic variation in the size, shape, and structure of vertebrate brains. While many studies aim at identifying the ecological factors (social and environmental) that explain brain size variation within taxa, a more fundamental divide exists between endotherm and ectotherm vertebrates. Ectotherms have ten times smaller brains than endotherms. The existing hypotheses cannot [...]

Cooperation, status, and altruism in a mixed society of Amazonian parrots

Kyle Schuyler Van Houtan, Jose-Ignacio Rojas-Moscoso, Hope Noelle Van Houtan, et al.

Published: 2024-10-16
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Parrots are a highly intelligent taxon whose complex behaviors in wild societies require description. Here we observed 12 species of parrots, macaws, and parakeets in mixed flocks foraging on exposed cliffs in southeast Perú. For each species, we developed a single bootstrapped index of sociality from 9 derived metrics of abundance, chronology, functional roles, and agonistic interactions. This [...]

Towards repeated clear-cutting of boreal forests - a tipping point for biodiversity?

Lisa Fagerli Lunde

Published: 2024-10-15
Subjects: Life Sciences

Boreal forests are important carbon sinks and host a diverse array of species that provide important 14 ecosystem functions. Boreal forests have a long history of intensive forestry, in which even-aged 15 management with clear-cutting has been the dominating harvesting practice for the past 50–80 16 years. As a second cycle of clear-cutting is emerging, there is an urgent need to review the [...]

Cooperation in non-family groups as a strategy for reproducing in variable climates

Christina Hansen Wheat, Emily O'Connor, Philip Ashleigh Downing, et al.

Published: 2024-10-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

The global climate is changing to be more extreme and less predictable, threatening many species. Cooperative breeding is more common under such conditions, indicating it may improve resilience to challenging climates. However, whether specific features of cooperative breeding systems, such as how groups form and how large they become, evolved to cope with particular climates is unclear. We test [...]

Revisiting Adaptive Introgression at the HLA Genes in Lithuanian Genomes with Machine Learning

Josef Hackl, Xin Huang

Published: 2024-10-12
Subjects: Life Sciences

Narrow roads to Fern Land: revisiting and re-analysing the paradox of sexual reproduction

Joachim L. Dagg

Published: 2024-10-12
Subjects: Life Sciences

Some major thought on the evolutionary maintenance of sexual reproduction is revisited. This leads to a new perspective about the role of complex life cycles for the maintenance of sex. And it leads to a new comparison of organisms with different life cycles. Organisms like strawberries propagate contrary to what would be adaptive under red-queen selection from micro-parasites. Their recombinant [...]

Inbreeding and adaptation to captivity depress the response to stress

Aurelio F Malo, Nadja Wielebnowski, Glen Alaks, et al.

Published: 2024-10-12
Subjects: Life Sciences

The success of reintroductions using captive-bred populations of wild species is potentially impacted by adaptations to non-natural captive environments. Little research has been done into how physiological traits change from wild to captive populations. We do not yet understand how glucocorticoid secretion patterns, a critical aspect of the stress response and other underlying life-history [...]

Handle with care! Morphology of spines and milking practices in venomous fishes

Giovanni Annona, Andrea Tarallo, Lisa Locatello, et al.

Published: 2024-10-12
Subjects: Life Sciences

Venomous fish have independently evolved venom-delivery systems multiple times throughout their evolution. Despite the remarkable convergence of such structures, a large variety in venom-delivery structures morphology does occur across species. This review is aimed at delving into species’ peculiarities, exploring the diversity of venom glands and the potential ecological roles in relation to [...]

Offset or not: guidance on accounting for sampling effort in generalized linear models

James A Smith

Published: 2024-10-08
Subjects: Life Sciences

1. Observed data are often dependent on a measure of sampling effort, such as counts measured per unit area. A common tool to account for differences in effort is the ‘offset term’ in a generalized linear model, which allows for a fixed proportional relationship between effort and the response variable. However, there is limited detailed guidance on the application of offsets and transformations [...]

Local knowledge enhances the sustainability of interconnected fisheries

Carine Emer, Miguel Lurgi, Sérgio Timóteo, et al.

Published: 2024-10-08
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Global demand for natural resources challenges the sustainability of small-scale fisheries. Fisheries Co-Management (FCM), where management is shared between the government and locals, is crucial for maintaining viable fish populations while mitigating market pressures and illegal fishing. Using a data-informed model applied to a fish metapopulation network, we contrasted the effects of various [...]

Wildfire exposure and health outcomes: An umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses

Muhammad Mainuddin Patwary, Mondira Bardhan, Marvina Rahman Ritu, et al.

Published: 2024-10-08
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Introduction: Wildfires are a growing concern due to their significant impact on wildlife, air quality, and health, and are increasing under climate change. Although several systematic reviews have explored the relationship between wildfire smoke and human health outcomes, a comprehensive overview of the overall epidemiological evidence remains needed. Thus, this umbrella review aimed to [...]

The Definition of Individual Biological Fitness

Gustavo Gollo

Published: 2024-10-08
Subjects: Life Sciences

Fitness is one of the central concepts in biology. Despite this, a precise definition of an individual's fitness remains elusive. Typically, 'biological fitness' is understood as the relative selective advantage of different genetic alleles. In this manuscript, we present a rigorous mathematical definition of individual fitness. This framework addresses an unjustifiable gap in evolutionary [...]

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