Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
The response of trophic interaction networks to multiple stressors along a large-scale latitudinal range in the Southern Hemisphere
Published: 2024-02-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Ecological networks offer valuable insights into community structure, key species identification, and ecosystem management. Understanding how these networks respond to global change stressors is of increasing interest, especially along geographical gradients. This review summarizes potential stressor responses in marine food webs from the Southwest Atlantic to the Antarctic (45 - 78°S), [...]
Mind the lag: understanding delayed genetic erosion
Published: 2024-02-23
Subjects: Life Sciences
The delay between environmental changes and the corresponding genetic responses within populations is a common but surprisingly overlooked phenomenon in ecology, evolutionary and conservation genetics. This time lag problem can lead to erroneous conservation assessments when solely relying on genetic data. We identify population size, life-history traits, reproductive strategies and the severity [...]
Sex-specific discrimination of familiar and unfamiliar mates in the Tokay gecko
Published: 2024-02-23
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Social animals need to keep track of other individuals in their group to be able to adjust their behaviour accordingly and facilitate group cohesion. This recognition ability varies across species and is influenced by cognitive capacities such as learning and memory. In reptiles, particularly Squamates (lizards, snakes, and worm lizards), pheromonal communication is pivotal for territoriality, [...]
Layers of latency in social networks and their implications for comparative analyses
Published: 2024-02-22
Subjects: Life Sciences
Animal social structures are remarkably diverse, encompassing relationships that range from strong, lifelong bonds to weaker, more transient connections. Understanding the drivers of this variation is a key question in behavioural ecology and has been the focus of numerous studies linking social structure to ecological, demographic, and life history patterns within groups, populations, and [...]
Survival of the luckiest
Published: 2024-02-22
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Opposite dynamics are behind natural selection and sexual selection. When considering natural and sexual selection separately, the fittest individuals survive. However, when these processes interact, luck often determines the survivor. As a result, chance has a greater impact on evolution. Published. Cite as: Da Silva, Sergio. Survival of the Luckiest, International Review of Economics 71 [...]
Call for new unified criteria for registering species data on 2000 Natura network areas
Published: 2024-02-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
We advocate for new unified and realistic criteria for monitoring and reporting data on species from 2000 Natura areas that allows cross-border comparisons and conservation diagnosis.
The changing landscape of text mining - a review of approaches for ecology and evolution
Published: 2024-02-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
In ecology and evolutionary biology, synthesis and modelling of data from published literature is a common practice for generating insight and testing theories across systems. However, the tasks of searching, screening, and extracting data from literature are often arduous. Researchers may manually process hundreds to thousands of articles for systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and compiling [...]
Environmental Stress, Bacterial Cell Differentiation, and Antimicrobial Resistance
Published: 2024-02-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Environmental stress, either natural or anthropogenic, influences both the form and function of bacterial cells. The general stress adaptive response of bacteria alters the bacterial shape, resulting in functional changes, as the bacterial cell has associated “organules” and molecular interactions that are dependent on the cell’s topology. These changes in form and function are frequently linked [...]
Reporting guidelines for terrestrial respirometry: Building openness, transparency of metabolic and evaporative water loss data
Published: 2024-02-20
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
Respirometry is an important tool for understanding whole-animal energy and water balance in relation to the environment. Consequently, the growing number of studies using respirometry over the last decade warrants reliable reporting and data sharing for effective dissemination and research synthesis. We provide a checklist guideline on five key sections to facilitate the transparency, [...]
Tempo and mode of diapause evolution in butterflies
Published: 2024-02-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Quantifying the tempo and mode via modern phylogenetic comparative methods can provide insights into how selection and constraints shape trait evolution. Here we elucidate the evolution of diapause, a complex and key trait that allows temporal escape from unfavorable conditions in many insects, including our model system, butterflies. Using a thorough literature survey, we first scored the [...]
Energetic costs of mounting an immune response in a coral reef damselfish (Pomacentrus amboinensis)
Published: 2024-02-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
While immune responses can be energetically costly, quantifying these costs is challenging. We tested the metabolic costs of immune activation in damselfish (Pomacentrus amboinensis Bleeker, 1868) following a mass-adjusted injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) endotoxin. Fish were divided into eight treatments: two controls (handling and saline injection) and six LPS groups with concentrations [...]
Theoretical research to extract, combine and generate concepts for understanding life phenomena
Published: 2024-02-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
Living systems evolve through interactions with the environment, which are nonequilibrium processes that resist the law of increasing entropy in the environment and maintain their organization by exhausting an entropy inflow from the environment. Although several principles have been proposed to explain the nonequilibrium processes of living systems and the mechanism of entropy extraction, a [...]
Loring Pond Duckweed Abundance and Diversity Assessment Via By-Catch of Surface Skimming, and Suitability of Compost for Organic Gardens
Published: 2024-02-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
Duckweed are tiny aquatic plants that are part of the Lemnaceae family including five genera: Lemna, Landoltia, Spirodela, Wolffia, and Wolfiella. Previous research has shown duckweed to have strong properties of phytoremediation of heavy metals and other pollutants (Ekperusi et al., 2019). Here we examine Loring Pond, an urban pond in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that is partially covered by [...]
Limited plasticity but increased variance in physiological rates across ectotherm populations under climate change
Published: 2024-02-17
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Climate change causes warmer and more variable temperatures globally, impacting physiological rates and function in ectothermic animals. Acclimation of physiological rates can help maintain function. However, it is unresolved how variance in physiological rates changes with temperature despite its potential ecological and evolutionary importance. 2. We developed new effect sizes that [...]
Why are trees hollow? Termites, microbes, and tree internal stem damage in a tropical savanna
Published: 2024-02-15
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Wood plays a vital role in the terrestrial carbon cycle, serving as a significant carbon store that is then released back to the atmosphere during decomposition. Decomposition has largely been studied in fallen and standing deadwood; however, decomposition can occur within living trees via hollowing by wood-feeding termites and microbial heart rot. Internal stem damage is difficult to measure, [...]