Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Decadal recovery of fungal but not termite deadwood decay in tropical rainforest
Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Deadwood represents ~11% of carbon stocks in tropical rainforest ecosystems and its decay is driven largely by fungi and termites which contribute to the cycling of carbon and nutrients. Due to land use change, such as forest clearing, secondary growth tropical rainforests are increasingly prevalent around the globe. In secondary growth rainforest, studies found lower decay rates of leaf [...]
BON in a Box: An Open and Collaborative Platform for Biodiversity Monitoring, Indicator Calculation, and Reporting
Published: 2024-10-28
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Plant Sciences
Biodiversity loss is a critical global challenge. The Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) sets ambitious goals to protect ecosystems, halt species loss, and enhance biodiversity. The GBF’s Monitoring Framework requires countries to track progress toward biodiversity targets using a standardized set of indicators that summarize complex trends in biodiversity. However, the [...]
Why do people misperceive long-term environmental change?
Published: 2024-10-25
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Environmental sciences seek to provide an unbiased quantitative and mechanistic basis for decision making, but conservation and management are often driven by personal perception of the environment. This, in turn, is made up of personal experiences, information exposure, personal values and beliefs. When documented changes in the natural world are in dissonance with people’s perceptions, [...]
Patterns of fruit production in tropical forests are shifting with negative outnumbering positive trends
Published: 2024-10-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
The impacts of climate change and anthropogenic disturbance are increasingly evident in the structure and demographics of tropical forests, yet the response of tree reproduction remains poorly understood. As fruit and seed production is the first step in forest recruitment, this gap is critical to understanding tropical forest resilience. Tropical fruits are important in diets of numerous [...]
infinitylists: A Shiny application and R package for rapid generation of place-based species checklists
Published: 2024-10-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
Premise: Online biodiversity databases like GBIF hold billions of occurrence records, including vouchered specimens and citizen science records. Integrating these two data streams facilitates more robust species checklists. However, processing huge biodiversity datasets can be time-consuming, and most databases are species-focused, rather than place-based, visualisation tools. Methods and [...]
Model shows abrupt loss of soil organic carbon following disturbance in seagrass ecosystems
Published: 2024-10-23
Subjects: Life Sciences
Seagrasses are key carbon sinks in the biosphere and, hence, promising nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation. Unfortunately, they are also experiencing major anthropogenic and climatic pressures that can lead to seagrass degradation or even result in difficult-to-reverse abrupt shifts (i.e., tipping point responses) to complete loss. Although the possibility of tipping point [...]
Social justice and inclusive conservation must guide GBF implementation
Published: 2024-10-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework marked a renewed commitment to address the biodiversity crisis. This framework, consisting of four goals and 23 targets which are intended to guide conservation efforts for the next thirty years, displays an enhanced level of ambition compared to its predecessor. However, the pursuit of multilateral agreements is dependent upon national pledges, [...]
Habitat alteration impacts predation risk in an aposematic amphibian
Published: 2024-10-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Predator-prey interactions can be viewed as an evolutionary arms race influenced by environmental factors. Forest management, for example, can influence such interactions and alter community structure. A common anti-predator strategy, known as aposematism, lies on the coupling of warning signals with secondary (e.g., chemical) defences to deter predators. The European fire salamander (Salamandra [...]
Protecting forests and trees is essential for global agricultural productivity
Published: 2024-10-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Balancing forest conservation and agricultural production is essential for a sustainable future. Here we review the scientific evidence for the relationships between forests and agricultural productivity across different scales, summarizing the contexts under which trees limit, maintain, or enhance agricultural productivity. While synergies and trade-offs occur at local scales, a regional-scale [...]
Turning Brewery Waste into Paper: Brewer’s Spent Grain as an Alternative Fiber in Sustainable Paper Innovation
Published: 2024-10-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Brewer's spent grain is a significant byproduct of the brewing industry, composed mainly of cellulose, hemicelluloses, lignin, and polysaccharides (arabinoxylans). It is primarily used for agricultural purposes, such as animal feed. However, it also presents an alternative option as a substitute for wood cellulose in certain paper grades. This study investigates the strength contribution of [...]
Survival analysis of wildlife cameras exposed to theft
Published: 2024-10-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Setting camera traps along roads is often necessary for ecological research, yet these locations expose cameras to theft leading to substantial data losses. Measures to minimise this risk include placing cameras away from human settlements. However, the effects of this and other measures on camera-trap theft risk are yet to be quantified. Here, we assessed the impact of gates on roads, the [...]
Should I stay or should I go: Transmission trade-offs in mobile genetic elements
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
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
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
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 [...]