Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Poor hypotheses and research waste in biology: learning from a theory crisis in psychology
Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
While psychologists have extensively discussed a ‘theory crisis’, there has been no debate about such a crisis in biology. However, biologists, especially those working in the fields of ecology and evolution, have long discussed communication failures between theoreticians and empiricists. We argue such failure is one aspect of a theory crisis because misapplied and misunderstood [...]
Navigating phylogenetic conflict and evolutionary inference in plants with target capture data
Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Target capture has quickly become a preferred approach for plant systematic and evolutionary research, marking a step-change in the generation of data for phylogenetic inference. While this advancement has facilitated the resolution of many relationships, phylogenetic conflict continues to be reported, and often attributed to genome duplication, reticulation, incomplete lineage sorting or rapid [...]
Multiple Disturbances, Multiple Legacies: Fire, Canopy Gaps, and Deer Jointly Change the Forest Seed Bank
Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
The manipulation of pre-colonial disturbances in U.S. forests can play a critical role in determining ecological composition, structure, and function. However, our understanding of how concurrent disturbances influence non-tree species is extremely limited in forests. To this end, we used a long-term, multi-disturbance experiment in an oak dominated forest in West Virginia, U.S.A. that [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Central Pacific
Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The Central Pacific mangrove province is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology) including the marine ecoregions of the Gilbert/Ellis Islands, Marshall Islands, Phoenix/Tokelau/Northern Cook Islands, and Samoa Islands. The Central Pacific mangroves had a mapped extent in 2020 of 4.8 km2, representing less than 0.01% of the global mangrove area. The biota [...]
Unveiling the temporal signatures of demographic stochasticity from populations to metacommunities
Published: 2024-05-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
The temporal stability of ecological properties tends to increase with spatial scale and levels of biological organization, which is mostly associated with deterministic processes. However, random fluctuations caused by demographic stochasticity in small populations might extend to communities and metacommunities, potentially affecting stability propagation across biological levels and spatial [...]
Light Pollution at Sea: Implications and Potential Hazards of Human Activity for Offshore Bird and Bat Movements in the Greater North Sea
Published: 2024-05-24
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Ornithology, Other Animal Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management, Zoology
Human activity in the North Sea is intensifying, as emerging uses, such as offshore wind farms (OWFs) and liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals, are added to fishing, freight shipping and fossil fuel production as traditional forms of resource exploitation. The volume and scale of these additional installations are projected to increase substantially in the coming decades, which amplifies the need [...]
Behavioral flexibility is related to foraging, but not social or habitat use behaviors, in a species that is rapidly expanding its range
Published: 2024-05-24
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Psychology
The ability of other species to adapt to human modified environments is increasingly crucial because of the rapid expansion of this landscape type. Behavioral flexibility, the ability to change behavior in the face of a changing environment by packaging information and making it available to other cognitive processes, is hypothesized to be a key factor in a species’ ability to successfully adapt [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Eastern Coral Triangle
Published: 2024-05-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Eastern Coral Triangle are a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of the Bismarck Sea, Solomon Archipelago, Solomon Sea, and Southeast Papua New Guinea. The mapped extent of mangroves in this province in 2020 was 2128.9 km2, representing 1.4% of the global mangrove area. The Eastern Coral Triangle is [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the South Kuroshio
Published: 2024-05-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mangroves of the South Kuroshio is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of the Central Kuroshio Current and South Kuroshio. In 2020, the mapped extent of the South Kuroshio mangrove province was 8.0 km2, representing less than 0.01% of the global mangrove area; the biota is characterized by 19 true mangrove species. [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Warm Temperate Northeast Pacific
Published: 2024-05-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Warm Temperate Northeast Pacific is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of the South-Californian Pacific and the Gulf of California. The mapped extent of the Warm Temperate Northeast Pacific mangrove province in 2020 was 1810.36 km², which represents 1.5% of the global mangrove area. There are three [...]
The effect of single versus successive warm summers on an intertidal community
Published: 2024-05-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
To accurately predict how organisms and ecological communities will respond to future conditions caused by climate change, we must consider the temporal dynamics of environmental stressors, including the effects of repeated exposures to stress. We performed a two-year passive thermal manipulation in coastal British Columbia, Canada to determine how intertidal communities responded to single and [...]
Why wild herbivores raid crops: alternative hypotheses and their differential implications for mitigation of human wildlife conflict
Published: 2024-05-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
Wild herbivores devouring crops is a major issue in human wildlife conflict. Although there is substantial literature that identifies the conflict, tries to estimate the extent of economic loss, its consequences and also suggests some mitigation measures, many fundamental issues remain unaddressed. A number of speculations about the root causes behind the problem have been made but they haven’t [...]
A minimum data standard for wildlife disease studies
Published: 2024-05-19
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Diseases, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Parasitic Diseases, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Virology, Virus Diseases
Thousands of scientists and practitioners conduct research on infectious diseases of wildlife. Rapid and comprehensive data sharing is vital to the transparency and actionability of their work, but unfortunately, most efforts designed to publically share these data are focused on pathogen determination and genetic sequence data. Other facets of existing surveillance data – particularly [...]
Persistent effects of landscape connectivity on recruitment dynamics in secondary forests
Published: 2024-05-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
Large scale reforestation is promoted as an important strategy to mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss. A persistent challenge for efforts to restore ecosystems at scale is how to accelerate ecological processes, particularly natural regeneration. Yet, despite being recognized as an important barrier to the recovery of diverse plant communities in agricultural landscapes, the impacts of [...]
Temperature dependence of pollen germination and tube growth in conifers relates to their distribution along an elevational gradient in Washington State, USA
Published: 2024-05-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
•Background and Aims: Pollen germination and tube growth are essential processes for successful fertilization. They are among the most temperature-vulnerable stages and subsequently affect seed production and determine population persistence and species distribution under climate change. Our study aims to investigate intra- and inter-specific variations in the temperature dependence of pollen [...]