Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences

The effect of single versus successive warm summers on an intertidal community

Amelia Virginia Hesketh, Cassandra Konecny, Sandra Emry, et al.

Published: 2024-05-21
Subjects: Life Sciences

To accurately predict how organisms and ecological communities will respond to future conditions caused by climate change, we must consider the temporal dimension of environmental stressors, including the effects of repeated exposures to stress. We performed a two-year passive warming experiment in coastal British Columbia to explore the response of intertidal communities to single and successive [...]

Why wild herbivores raid crops: alternative hypotheses and their differential implications for mitigation of human wildlife conflict

Milind watve, Sonal Prabhulkar

Published: 2024-05-21
Subjects: Life Sciences

Wild herbivores eating up crops is a major issue in human wildlife conflict. Although there is substantial literature that identifies the conflict, tries to estimate the extent of economic loss, its consequences and also suggests some mitigation measures, many fundamental issues remain unaddressed. A number of speculations about the root causes behind the problem have been made but they haven’t [...]

A minimum data standard for wildlife disease studies

Tess Stevens, Ryan Zimmerman, Greg Albery, et al.

Published: 2024-05-20
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Diseases, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Parasitic Diseases, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Virology, Virus Diseases

Thousands of scientists and practitioners conduct research on infectious diseases of wildlife. Rapid and comprehensive data sharing is vital to the transparency and actionability of their work, but unfortunately, most efforts designed to publically share these data are focused on pathogen determination and genetic sequence data. Other facets of existing surveillance data – particularly [...]

Persistent effects of landscape connectivity on recruitment dynamics in secondary forests

Michiel van Breugel, Jefferson S. Hall, Mario Bailon, et al.

Published: 2024-05-20
Subjects: Life Sciences

Large scale reforestation is promoted as an important strategy to mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss. A persistent challenge for efforts to restore ecosystems at scale is how to accelerate ecological processes, particularly natural regeneration. Yet, despite being recognized as an important barrier to the recovery of diverse plant communities in agricultural landscapes, the impacts of [...]

Temperature dependence of pollen germination and tube growth in conifers relates to their distribution along an elevational gradient in Washington State, USA

Hsin-Wu Hsu, Soo-Hyung Kim

Published: 2024-05-20
Subjects: Life Sciences

•Background and Aims: Pollen germination and tube growth are essential processes for successful fertilization. They are among the most temperature-vulnerable stages and subsequently affect seed production and determine population persistence and species distribution under climate change. Our study aims to investigate intra- and inter-specific variations in the temperature dependence of pollen [...]

How is the effectiveness of terrestrial protected areas to conserve biodiversity measured? A systematic map

Neal R Haddaway, Natasha Stoudmann, Sini Savilaakso

Published: 2024-05-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences

Protected areas (PAs) are fundamental in preserving ecological diversity, supporting ecosystem services, and mitigating human impacts in today’s world. However, the mere designation of PAs is insufficient for achieving conservation goals. It needs to be ensured through employment of robust management practices and the deployment of scientifically sound monitoring methodologies. This systematic [...]

IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Tropical Northwestern Atlantic

Carlos Troche-Souza, Ariel E. Lugo, Tamara Heartsill-Scalley, et al.

Published: 2024-05-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Mangroves of the Tropical Northwestern Atlantic is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Bahamian, Carolinian, Eastern Caribbean, Floridian, Greater Antilles, Northern Gulf of Mexico, Southern Caribbean, Southern Gulf of Mexico, Southwestern Caribbean and Western Caribbean. The mapped extent of mangroves in 2020 [...]

Enhancing biodiversity monitoring efficiency through CRISPR-driven depletion and enrichment of aquatic environmental DNA

Anya Kardailsky, Benjamín Durán-Vinet, Georgia Nester, et al.

Published: 2024-05-14
Subjects: Life Sciences

Characterising biodiversity using environmental DNA (eDNA) represents a paradigm shift in our capacity for biomonitoring complex aquatic environments. However, eDNA biomonitoring is limited by biases towards certain species and low taxonomic resolution of current metabarcoding-based approaches. Shotgun metagenomics of eDNA enables the collection of whole ecosystem data by sequencing all molecules [...]

Proactive management outperforms reactive strategies for wildlife disease control

Molly Bletz, Evan Grant, Graziella DiRenzo

Published: 2024-05-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Finding effective pathogen mitigation strategies is one of the biggest challenges humans face today. In the context of wildlife, emerging infectious diseases have repeatedly caused widespread host morbidity and population declines of numerous taxa. In areas yet unaffected by a pathogen, a proactive management approach has the potential to minimize or prevent host mortality. However, we typically [...]

Evidence for avian core-Merge is indisputable: A reply to Beckers et al. (2024)

Toshitaka N. Suzuki, Yui K. Matsumoto

Published: 2024-05-13
Subjects: Life Sciences

It has been hypothesized that the generative power of language stems from a cognitive capacity called “Merge,” which enables senders to combine two linguistic items (e.g., two words or two phrases) into a sequence and receivers to recognize it as a single unit (Chomsky, 1995, 2001). In an experimental study published in Nature Communications (Suzuki and Matsumoto, 2022), we demonstrated that a [...]

Microevolutionary change in wild stickleback: using integrative time-series data to infer responses to selection

Kasha Strickland, Blake Matthews, Zophonias Jonsson, et al.

Published: 2024-05-13
Subjects: Life Sciences

Identifying microevolutionary change in the wild requires linking trait change to shifts in allele fre-quencies, but existing approaches poorly account for different modes of selection that act simulta-neously on correlated traits. Using an integrative phenome-genome time-series dataset collected on wild threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), we identified how different modes of [...]

Brownification shapes the food web of aquatic invertebrates: a review

Wenfei Liao, Petri Nummi

Published: 2024-05-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Brownification, a global phenomenon of increasing surface water colour to yellow-brown hues, has an array of effects on drinking water supply and aquatic biodiversity. Aquatic invertebrates, as indicators of aquatic ecosystem health and providers of ecosystem services, have received limited attention in the context of water browning. In this review, we explored the effects of brownification on [...]

Uncovering multiple influences on space use by deer mice using NEON data

Sean O'Fallon, Noa Pinter-Wollman, Karen Mabry

Published: 2024-05-10
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences

Space use by animals is affected by multiple factors; previous researchers have examined the effects of influences such as sex, body condition, and population density on home range area. However, evaluating the simultaneous influences of multiple factors on animal space use has been relatively intractable due to sample size limitations. We capitalize on National Ecological Observatory Network [...]

IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of New Zealand

Jeffrey McNeill, Karin Bryan, Joanne Ellis, et al.

Published: 2024-05-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Mangroves of New Zealand is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Central New Zealand, Northeastern New Zealand and Three Kings-North Cape. Their mapped extent in 2018 was 281.7 to 296.2 km2, representing 0.2% of the global mangrove area. The biota is characterized by a single species: Avicennia marina subsp. [...]

IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of South India and Sri Lanka, and Maldives

Vaithilingam Selvam, R. Ramasubramanian, Kandasamy Kathiresan, et al.

Published: 2024-05-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Mangroves of South India and Sri Lanka, and Maldives is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Western India, South India and Sri Lanka, and Maldives. The mapped extent in 2020 was 249.2 km2, representing 0.2% of the global mangrove area. The environmental settings of this ecoregion differ widely ranging from open [...]

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