Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Are microbes colimited by multiple resources?
Published: 2024-03-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Systems Biology
Resource colimitation --- the dependence of growth on multiple resources simultaneously --- has become an important topic in microbiology due both to the development of systems approaches to cell physiology and ecology, and to the relevance of colimitation to environmental science, biotechnology, and human health. Empirical tests of colimitation in microbes suggest that it may be common in [...]
Agency in the Evolutionary Transition to Multicellularity
Published: 2024-03-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
This review explores the concept of agency. Behavior intrinsic to an organism and initiated by it may be taken as evidence of agency, though, as we will discuss, the word has wider ramifications. An organism’s agential behavior has aspects that are both characteristic of its species and idiosyncratic. We ask how agential features exhibited by cells might change concomitantly with the evolutionary [...]
Behavioural plasticity shapes population ageing patterns
Published: 2024-03-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Studying the mechanisms shaping age-related changes in behaviour (“behavioural ageing”) is important for understanding population dynamics in our changing world. Yet, studies that capture within-individual behavioural changes in wild populations of long-lived animals are still scarce. Here, we used a 15-year GPS-tracking dataset of a social obligate scavenger, the griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus), [...]
Evaluating Compatibility between the Key Biodiversity Area Proposal Process and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Environmental Priorities with evidence from Canada and Mi'kma'ki (Nova Scotia)
Published: 2024-03-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Social and Behavioral Sciences
This report will demonstrate that no meaningful (non-random) compatibility exists between the Key Biodiversity Area proposal process – as it now exists and is being implemented globally and in Canada – and the biocultural priorities of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IP&LC’s)*. It is precisely because it is a global standard that no claim that KBA proposal meaningfully (non-randomly) [...]
Harnessing Large Language Models for Coding, Teaching, and Inclusion to Empower Research in Ecology and Evolution
Published: 2024-02-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Large language models (LLMs) are a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that can perform various natural language processing tasks. The adoption of LLMs has become increasingly prominent in scientific writing and analyses because of the availability of free applications such as ChatGPT. This increased use of LLMs raises concerns about academic integrity, but also presents opportunities for the [...]
Biologging for the future: how biologgers can help solve fundamental questions, from individuals to ecosystems
Published: 2024-02-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Archival instruments attached to animals (biologgers) have enabled exciting discoveries and have promoted effective conservation and management for decades. Recent research indicates that the field of biologging is poised to shift from pattern description to process explanation. Here we describe how biologgers have been - and can be - used to test hypotheses and challenge theory in behavior and [...]
Satellite derived trait data slightly improves tropical forest biomass, NPP and GPP predictions
Published: 2024-02-25
Subjects: Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Improving tropical forest biomass predictions can accurately value tropical forests for their ecosystem services and establish confidence in carbon trading schemes such as REDD+. Optical remote sensing estimates of tropical forest biomass have produced spatially contradictory results that differ from ground plot biomass data. Recently, the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar was [...]
The response of trophic interaction networks to multiple stressors in a marine latitudinal gradient of 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 for biodiversity conservation. Understanding how these networks react to environmental and anthropogenic stressors, especially along geographical gradients, is of increasing interest. This review presents a pioneering analysis of stressor responses in marine food webs from [...]
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 systems are remarkably diverse. Linking this diversity to its ecological and evolutionary drivers and consequences has been a major focus of biological research. Initial efforts have been done within groups, populations, and species. Equipped with this information, researchers are now turning to investigations of social structure that are comparative in nature. However, comparing [...]
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: 2024-02-21
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 [...]