Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
The sugar kelp Saccharina latissima I: Recent advances in a changing climate
Published: 2023-07-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Shifts in internal stem damage along a tropical precipitation gradient and implications for forest biomass estimation
Published: 2023-07-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Woody biomass is a large carbon store in terrestrial ecosystems. In calculating biomass, tree stems are assumed to be solid structures. However, decomposer agents such as microbes and insects target stem heartwood, causing internal wood decay which is poorly quantified. We investigated internal stem damage across five sites in tropical Australia along a precipitation gradient. We estimated the [...]
Reviewing the role of urbanisation in facilitating the introduction and establishment of Invasive Animal Species
Published: 2023-07-09
Subjects: Life Sciences
While urbanisation is often associated to a loss of biodiversity, non-native invasive animal species are strikingly successful in urban landscapes. As biological invasions are recognised to have detrimental environmental, social and economic impacts, extensive understanding of the interactions between invasive species and the abiotic and biotic environment is necessary for effective prevention [...]
Precipitation predictability drives evolution of drought tolerance in Papaver rhoeas
Published: 2023-07-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Current climate change leads to an increase in the frequency and intensity of droughts and to a decreased precipitation predictability. The few studies investigating plant evolutionary responses to contrasting predictability regimes showed that intrinsic precipitation predictability shapes plant phenotypic variation, drives evolution of phenotypic plasticity, and can vary in strength and [...]
Extinction drives recent thermophilization but does not trigger homogenization in forest understory
Published: 2023-07-04
Subjects: Botany, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The ongoing climate change is triggering plant community thermophilization. This selection process is ought to shift community composition toward species adapted to warmer climates but may also lead to biotic homogenization. The link between thermophilization and homogenization, and the community dynamics that drive them (colonization and extinction) remain unknow, but is critical for [...]
Prevalence and Potential Evolutionary Significance of Color Mutations in Freshwater Crayfish (Decapoda: Astacidea)
Published: 2023-07-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
Color mutations may lead to the evolution and diversification of color phenotypes in animals. However, much of the research on this topic has been conducted on vertebrates. Here, I compile records of color mutations in freshwater crayfish (Decapoda: Astacidea). I found color mutations to be surprisingly common, with 103 documented occurrences. The overwhelming majority of these mutations resulted [...]
Lipid Metabolism in Parasitoids and Parasitized Hosts
Published: 2023-06-30
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Physiology
Parasitoids have an exceptional lifestyle where juvenile development is spent on or in a single host insect, but the adults are free-living. Unlike parasites, parasitoids kill the host. How parasitoids use such a limiting resource, particularly lipids, can affect chances to survive and reproduce. In part 1, we describe the parasitoid lifestyle, including typical developmental strategies. Lipid [...]
Shall we all adopt, with no worries, the ‘within a configuration’ approach in geometric morphometrics? A comment on claims that the effect of the superimposition and sliding on shape data is “not an obstacle to analyses of integration and modularity”
Published: 2023-06-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
The study of modularity and integration using Procrustes geometric morphometrics has become a prominent approach in evolutionary developmental biology. A most popular method is the ‘within a configuration’ approach, often used in combination with ‘high density’ morphometric data (i.e., large numbers of landmarks and semilandmarks). In 2019, I realized that this approach violates a basic [...]
Seascape genomics: assisting marine biodiversity management by combining genetic knowledge with environmental and ecological information
Published: 2023-06-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
Biodiversity, including genetic diversity, is the foundation of ecosystems and the well-being of all organisms, including humans. Determining how the marine environment shapes genetic diversity and developing best practices to conserve it requires a multi-disciplinary approach incorporating genomic and environmental information. Seascape genetics and genomics combine spatially resolved [...]
Too simple, too complex, or just right? Advantages, challenges and resolutions for indicators of genetic diversity
Published: 2023-06-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Policy, Genetics, Life Sciences
Measuring genetic diversity of wild species using DNA-based data remains resource intensive and time-consuming for nearly all species. Yet, genetic assessments are needed for global conservation commitments including the Convention on Biological Diversity and for governments and managers to evaluate conservation progress and to prioritize species and populations to preserve and recover genetic [...]
Heterogeneous dispersal networks to improve biodiversity science
Published: 2023-06-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Dispersal plays a key role in shaping spatial patterns of biodiversity, yet its spatial heterogeneity is often overlooked in biodiversity analyses and management strategies. Properly parametrized heterogeneous dispersal networks capture the complex interplay between landscape structure and species-specific dispersal capacities. This heterogeneity, however, is recurrently neglected when studying [...]
Salinity controls rocky intertidal community structure via suppression of herbivory
Published: 2023-06-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate change impacts ecosystems directly through differences in species specific responses as well as indirectly through changes to the strength of species interactions. To predict how species will be impacted by ongoing environmental change, we need to better understand the relative roles of these direct and indirect effects. Salinity is a strong driver of ecological patterns and processes, [...]
Links between an insectivorous bird and moths disentangled through national scale monitoring data
Published: 2023-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Insects play important roles in food chains, but quantifying how insect abundance affects population dynamics in natural communities is challenging. National scale monitoring data provides opportunities to identify trophic relationships at broad spatial and temporal scales but requires careful approaches to link data from different schemes. Here, using two monitoring datasets from Great Britain, [...]
Essential Biodiversity Variables and Essential Ecosystem Services Variables for the Implementation of Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Development Goals
Published: 2023-06-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
As nations design a framework and a process for implementing the new goals and targets set by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the question on how to report on the successes and failures of policy implementation is becoming more salient. In this paper, we demonstrate the potential role of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs), Essential Ecosystem Services Variables (EESV) and their [...]
Advances in biologging can identify nuanced energetic costs and gains in predators
Published: 2023-06-09
Subjects: Life Sciences
Foraging is a key driver of animal movement patterns, with specific challenges for predators which must search for mobile prey. These patterns are increasingly impacted by global changes, principally in land use and climate. Understanding the degree of flexibility in predator foraging and social strategies is pertinent to wildlife conservation under global change, including potential top-down [...]