Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Knowing why Tasmanian Eucalyptus obliqua tall forests are so sensitive to heatwaves informs management and policy for climate change adaptation
Published: 2024-03-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
Tasmania’s distinctive climate environment supports highly productive and carbon-dense tall eucalypt forests, but also a vulnerability to climate change. Measurements in Eucalyptus obliqua tall forest at the Warra SuperSite in southern Tasmania showed them to be very sensitive to warmer temperatures. Gross primary productivity (GPP) declines sharply when temperatures rise above the forest’s [...]
Zebra finch song parameters are affected by the breeding status of the male and the ambient temperature conditions
Published: 2024-03-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
Bird song is a crucial feature for mate choice and reproduction. Song is known to communicate information related to the quality of the mate, through song complexity, structure or finer changes in syllable characteristics. It has been shown in zebra finches that those characteristics can be affected by various factors including motivation, hormone levels or extreme temperature. However, although [...]
Potter Cove’s Heavyweights: Estimation of species’ interaction strength of an Antarctic food web
Published: 2024-03-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
Understanding the complex interplay between structure and stability of marine food webs is crucial for assessing ecosystem resilience, particularly in the context of ongoing environmental changes. In the West Antarctic Peninsula, global warming has led to severe alterations in community composition, species distribution, and abundance over the last decades. In this study, we estimate the [...]
Lianas, to cut or not to cut to conserve forest biodiversity?
Published: 2024-03-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Although lianas play an important role in forest composition, structure, and functions, they are considered as structural parasites of the tree-host. Both contrasting ideas on the role of lianas in forest ecosystems challenge the practitioners and decision might be taken without specific information. Here we present a preliminary result, applied in a unique, small, old-growth forest in the [...]
Behavioral variation changes across an urbanization gradient in a population of great tits
Published: 2024-03-15
Subjects: Life Sciences
Urbanization is occurring globally at an unprecedented rate and, despite the eco-evolutionary importance of individual variation in adaptive traits, we still have very limited insight on how phenotypic variation is modified by anthropogenic environmental change. Urbanization can increase individual differences in some contexts, but whether this is generalizable to behavioral traits, which [...]
Variant calling in polyploids for population and quantitative genetics
Published: 2024-03-15
Subjects: Life Sciences
Advancements in genome assembly and sequencing technology have made whole genome sequence (WGS) data and reference genomes accessible to study polyploid species. The genome-wide coverage and greater marker density provided by WGS data, compared to popular reduced-representation sequencing approaches, can greatly improve our understanding of polyploid species and polyploid biology. However, [...]
Social interactions do not affect mycoplasma infection in griffon vultures
Published: 2024-03-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Uncovering the ways in which pathogens spread has important implications for population health and management. Pathogen transmission is influenced by various factors, including patterns of social interactions and shared use of space. We aim to understand how the social behavior of griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus), a species of conservation interest, influences the presence or absence of mycoplasma, [...]
Not All Mass Mortality Events are Equal
Published: 2024-03-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Population Biology
Mass Mortality Events (MMEs) are defined as novel events involving many individuals dying in a relatively short period of time. In recent years, there has been an increased interest in MMEs due to their perceived increase in frequency. Current definitions are subjective and categorize mortalities varying in magnitude and frequency together. Within this manuscript, Multiple Mortality Events is a [...]
Urban greenspaces benefit both human utility and biodiversity
Published: 2024-03-13
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Urban greenspaces are essential for both human well-being and biodiversity, with their importance continually growing in the face of increasing urbanization. The dual role of these spaces raises questions about how their planning and management can best serve the diverse needs of both people and biodiversity. Our goal was to quantify the synergies and tradeoffs between human utility and [...]
Satellite images reveal major discrepancies between mapped and operating wind turbines in a hotspot of wind energy development
Published: 2024-03-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Wind energy is an emerging challenge for biodiversity conservation, due to its impacts on habitats and species. Therefore, effective mitigation and zonation policies require accurate maps of operating wind turbines. However, the current pace of wind energy development raises doubts on how fast existing maps can become obsolete. We used freely available satellite imagery from Google to check the [...]
Community-wide masting improves predator satiation in North American oaks
Published: 2024-03-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mast seeding, a phenomenon observed in numerous perennial plant species, is highly variable reproduction across years, synchronized among individuals within a population. One major fitness advantage of masting lies in the reduction of seed predation rates, achieved through alternating phases of seed scarcity and abundance that starve and subsequently satiate seed consumers. Proximately, the [...]
The fecundity costs of building complex nests in birds
Published: 2024-03-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Animal nests provide a beneficial environment for offspring development and as such contribute to fitness. Gathering and transporting materials to construct nests is energetically costly, but the life history trade-offs associated with the complexity of nests built are largely unknown. Who contributes to building the nest could also mediate these trade-offs, as building a nest as a couple is [...]
Social cues and habitat structure influence the behavior of a non-social insect
Published: 2024-03-05
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Entomology, Life Sciences
Habitat fragmentation and loss is a known threat to biodiversity. Their combined effect leaves organisms in small isolated patches of habitat, contributing to the current biodiversity crisis. The first response of animals to environmental change is typically behavioral. Beyond the physical elements of the environment, the "social landscape" shapes the spatial distribution of the habitats [...]
Rainfall is associated with divorce in the socially monogamous Seychelles warbler
Published: 2024-03-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Divorce – the termination of a pair bond while both members are alive – is a mating strategy observed in many socially monogamous species, often linked to poor reproductive success. As environmental factors directly affect individual condition and reproductive performance, they can indirectly influence divorce. Given current climate change, understanding how partnership stability is affected [...]
Fisheries shocks provide an opportunity to reveal multiple recruitment sources of sardine in the Sea of Japan
Published: 2024-03-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Understanding the sources of recruits is essential for stock assessments of marine fish populations. In 2014 and 2019, schools of Japanese sardine in the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea (SJ-ECS), which arrive in Japanese coastal areas for spawning each spring were shockingly sparse. Abundances of eggs and juveniles also showed abrupt declines, suggesting that sardine reproduction in the [...]