Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Towards a modern and efficient European biodiversity observation network fit for multiple policies
Published: 2024-11-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
To address the biodiversity crisis, global and regional policy frameworks like the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the European Green Deal demand to monitor biodiversity. Despite these efforts, existing approaches for monitoring biodiversity remain fragmented and lack data integration. Here, we review and synthesize crucial information for developing an integrated European-wide [...]
Exploring bird biodiversity: a survey of avian richness in the dams of oke-ogun, nigeria
Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Wetland degradation, both natural and anthropogenic, impacts biodiversity and ecosystem services. Artificial wetlands, such as dams, may help mitigate the loss of natural wetlands, but their conservation potential is understudied. This research explores avian diversity, anthropogenic impacts, and community perceptions of bird species across three dams -Igboho, Okeho, and Kishi located in [...]
Priced out of belonging? Insufficient concessions on membership fees across international societies in ecology and evolution
Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Learned societies, as professional bodies for scientists, are an integral part of the scientific system. However, their membership fees have the potential to be prohibitive to the most vulnerable members of the scientific community. To shed light on how membership fees are structured, we conducted a survey of 182 international learned societies relevant to researchers in ecology and evolution. We [...]
Overcoming Key Challenges of Satellite-based Monitoring of Ecosystem Condition: A Continental-scale Example From Australia
Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Effective satellite-based monitoring of ecosystem integrity or condition needs to address four key challenges: (a) context dependency; (b) alternative ecological states; (c) short-term temporal ecosystem dynamics; and (d) scarcity of reference data where ecosystems retain high levels of integrity. Here we present a typology, and outline strengths and weaknesses, of different approaches to mapping [...]
Sodium sulfite can reliably induce chemical hypoxia without toxic effects in the model sea anemone species, Exaiptasia diaphana
Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate change is accelerating the deoxygenation of aquatic ecosystems, making understanding its effects on biological processes critical. An emerging method for inducing hypoxia during experimentation utilizes sodium sulfite to scavenge oxygen, however it remains unclear if hypoxia-inducing concentrations of sodium sulfite are toxic to aquatic species. We decoupled sodium sulfite’s potential [...]
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
The Convention on Biological Diversity’s Kunming-Montreal Global BiodiversityFramework (GBF) sets ambitious goals to protect and restore biodiversity. It includes a Monitoring Framework that mandates countries to track progress toward these goals using indicators that summarize biodiversity trends. Calculating indicators is challenging for countries due to technical barriers, lack of available [...]
Species changes are being misperceived - especially when populations increase
Published: 2024-10-25
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Environmental sciences seek to provide an unbiased quantitative basis for decision making, but conservation and management, as well as personal environmentally-related decisions are often driven by personal perception of the environment. Perception, in turn, is made up of personal experiences, information exchange and media exposure, personal values and beliefs. When documented changes in the [...]
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 a key step in forest recruitment, this gap is critical to understanding tropical forest resilience. Tropical fruits are important in diets of numerous frugivores [...]
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 [...]