Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
The Site/Group Extended Data format and tools
Published: 2023-11-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Comparative sequence analysis permits unravelling the molecular processes underlying gene evolution. Many statistical methods generate candidate positions within genes, such as fast or slowly-evolving sites, coevolving groups or residues, sites undergoing positive selection or changes in evolutionary rates. Understanding the functional causes of these evolutionary patterns requires combining the [...]
Coevolution-induced stabilizing and destabilizing selection shapes species richness in clade co-diversification
Published: 2023-11-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Coevolution can occur as a result of species interactions. However, it remains poorly understood how coevolution shapes the accumulation of species richness over macroevolutionary timescales. Assuming speciation occurs in a metacommunity as a result of genetic differentiation across communities due to dispersal limitation, we examine the effects of coevolution-induced stabilizing and [...]
A comparison of predictive performance of joint species distribution models for presence-absence data
Published: 2023-11-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. While there has been substantial literature on the evaluation of predictions from single species distribution models, the topic of prediction has only recently begun to be addressed for joint species distribution models (JSDMs). These studies have covered only limited aspects of prediction: limited selection of models being compared, limited number of evaluation metrics, and/or not comparing [...]
Consideration for Connection between Concrete and Abstract of Living System
Published: 2023-11-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Living systems are established by the coordination of diverse systems in the environment, are responsive to change, and are stable over time. Many studies and ideas have been proposed on the mechanisms and general laws of living systems from the viewpoints of evolutionary biology, systems biology, and chaos theory. The mechanisms of evolution and coordination of living systems are also related to [...]
Vocal Dimorphism in Anna’s Hummingbirds
Published: 2023-11-28
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Zoology
Whereas vocal sexual dimorphism is widespread amongst birds, it has been historically overlooked in non-passerines such as hummingbirds. By evaluating correlations among sex, behaviors, and vocalizations, the meaning and utility of intentional sound production may be inferred. Anna's Hummingbirds (Calypte anna) exhibit pronounced sexual dimorphism, with males being larger and having more vibrant [...]
The costs of extra-pair mating
Published: 2023-11-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Extra-pair behaviours, where individuals copulate outside of an established pair bond, resulting in extra-pair paternity (EPP) of offspring, have long intrigued behavioural ecologists. Of particular interest is why females of otherwise socially monogamous species engage in extra-pair behaviours. Although researchers recognise that the drivers of variation in EPP, both within-species and [...]
Signal space overlap in sympatric drongos (Aves: Dicruridae) and spatial segregation in a South Asian tropical rainforest
Published: 2023-11-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
A diverse array of animals use a multidimensional acoustic space as a primary source of communication, especially in habitats where other signals are limited. However, in complex habitats, species must contend with other co-occurring species to send their message in a backdrop of ambient noise. This is exacerbated in closely related species that occur in sympatry, and we do not know how species [...]
Opinion: Missing half the picture, focus on stony corals during bleaching events has left critical knowledge gaps in our understanding of reef-scale bleaching and recovery
Published: 2023-11-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Honest Signalling Made Simple
Published: 2023-11-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Honest communication is a common phenomenon in animal behaviour, and is frequently explained by appeal to the so-called handicap hypothesis by which signal costs deter dishonesty. However, the handicap models commonly used to explain honest signalling have has been subject to several lines of criticism in recent literature. This trend may have led researchers outside of the field of animal [...]
DNA metabarcoding as a tool for detecting and characterising the spatio-temporal distribution of planktonic larvae in the phylum Echinodermata
Published: 2023-11-22
Subjects: Life Sciences
Metabarcoding is revolutionising the analysis of biodiversity in marine ecosystems, especially as it provides a means of detecting and identifying cryptic life-stages in field samples. The planktonic larval stage of many species underpins the abundance and distribution of adult populations but is challenging to characterise given the small size of larvae and diffuse distributions in pelagic [...]
Local and regional processes drive distance decay in structure in a spatial multilayer plant-pollinator network
Published: 2023-11-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Understanding spatial variation in species distribution and community structure is at the core of biogeography and community ecology. Nevertheless, the effect of distance on metacommunity structure remains little studied. We use plant-pollinator network data from the Canary Islands to examine how plant-pollinator community structure changes across geographical distances at a regional scale and [...]
Covariance reaction norms: A flexible method for estimating complex environmental effects on trait (co)variances
Published: 2023-11-21
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Zoology
Estimating quantitative genetic and phenotypic (co)variances is crucial for investigating evolutionary ecological phenomena such as developmental integration, life history tradeoffs, and niche specialization, as well as for describing selection and predicting multivariate evolution in the wild. While most studies assume (co)variances are fixed over short timescales, environmental heterogeneity [...]
Global Distribution of Vascular Epiphyte Diversity
Published: 2023-11-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Epiphytes are a large and understudied part of global diversity. Classic work by Gentry and Dodson argued that Neotropical, mid-elevation forests are centers of diversity for this growth form. We assessed this hypothesis with modern global geospatial and climatic datasets. By connecting growth form and occurrence data with climatic records at the same locations, we quantified spatial and climatic [...]
The sugar kelp Saccharina latissima II: Recent Advances in farming and applications
Published: 2023-11-20
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences
The sugar kelp Saccharina latissima has received intense scientific attention over the last decades. In recent years, interest in cultivation of the species has strongly increased in the North Atlantic Ocean and the Eastern Pacific Ocean, driven by the great potential of S. latissima to be utilised for various industrial applications, including food, feed, and biomaterials. Accordingly, current [...]
Octocoral Symbiodiniaceae, but not bacterial communities, are resistant to compositional changes from heat stress on a subtropical reef
Published: 2023-11-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Microbes are essential to the holobiome of all organisms, so when organisms are impacted by environmental stressors the changes to microbial communities can inform on the health state of the host and even cause host disease. In early 2019 marine heatwaves occurred across eastern Australia, resulting in differential bleaching across Lord Howe Island reefs. Here we examined the Symbiodiniaceae and [...]