Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Climate change is associated with a higher extinction risk of a subshrub in anthropogenic landscapes
Published: 2024-09-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
In most ecosystems, the increasingly strong effects of climate change on biodiversity co-occur with other anthropogenic pressures, most importantly land-use change. However, many long-term demographic studies focus on populations monitored in protected areas, and our understanding of how climate change will affect population persistence under anthropogenic land use is still limited. To fill this [...]
Molecular plasticity contributes to thermal resilience in two coastal fish species
Published: 2024-09-03
Subjects: Life Sciences, Zoology
Understanding species capacities to adjust to shifting thermal environments is crucial amidst current climate-mediated ocean warming. Fish populations displaying high thermal plasticity can undergo molecular, metabolic, and mitochondrial modifications in response to heat stress. Under the context of heat stress, such acclimation provides a means to maintain normal biological functions through [...]
Evidence of the Impacts of Pharmaceuticals on Aquatic Animal Behaviour (EIPAAB): a systematic map and open access database
Published: 2024-09-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
BackgroundOver the last decade, pharmaceutical pollution in aquatic ecosystems has emerged as a pressing environmental issue. Recent years have also seen a surge in scientific interest in the use of behavioural endpoints in chemical risk assessment and regulatory activities, underscoring their importance for fitness and survival. In this respect, data on how pharmaceuticals alter the behaviour of [...]
Genetic adaptation to climate change in wild populations: a systematic literature review identifies opportunities to strengthen our evidence base
Published: 2024-09-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
To understand to what extent evolution can contribute to bending the curve of ongoing biodiversity losses, we urgently need to characterize the adaptive potential of populations. This systematic literature review comprehensively gathers existing examples of genetic adaptation to climate change to (1) guide efforts to assess genetic adaptation to climate change in a wider variety of species and [...]
The role of forests in global climate adaptation
Published: 2024-09-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Forests play a crucial role in regulating the global climate. Yet, forests also influence the local climate conditions through biophysical processes that directly impact human wellbeing. With growing policy emphasis on these climate adaptation effects, we review the scale dependent impacts of forests on climate conditions and their implications for human wellbeing. Generally, existing forests [...]
Fear of supernatural punishment can harmonize human societies with nature: an evolutionary game-theoretic approach
Published: 2024-09-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Human activities largely impact the natural environment negatively and radical changes in human societies would be required to achieve their sustainable relationship with nature. Although frequently overlooked, previous studies have suggested that supernatural beliefs can protect nature from human overexploitation via beliefs that supernatural entities punish people who harm nature. Studies of [...]
Quantifying Carbon Sequestration and Ecosystem Enhancement Through Novel Phytoplankton Farming Techniques
Published: 2024-08-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Phytoplankton farming emerges as a critical nature-based solution to address the intertwined crises of climate change and marine ecosystem degradation. As foundational drivers of oceanic carbon cycling, phytoplankton generate ~50% of Earth’s oxygen and sequester 10–20 billion metric tons of CO₂ annually through the biological carbon pump . This study develops scalable cultivation techniques to [...]
Rethinking Environmental Impact Assessment for nature positive development
Published: 2024-08-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Achieving nature positive development within existing regulatory frameworks will be challenging. Halting and reversing biodiversity loss requires restoration and enhancement of ecosystems alongside a fundamental shift in how we value biodiversity and assess quantifiable improvements. Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) focussed on mitigating negative impacts do not promote positive outcomes – [...]
Let’s DAG in – How DAGs can help Behavioural Ecology be more transparent
Published: 2024-08-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) are powerful tools for visualizing assumptions/hypothesis and causal inference. Although their use is becoming more widespread across various disciplines, they remain underutilized in behavioural ecology and evolution. Here, we point out why DAGs can serve as highly valuable tools in this field, particularly in the context of observational and field studies, which [...]
Quantifying disturbance effects on ecosystem services in a changing climate
Published: 2024-08-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Disturbances, such as hurricanes, fires, droughts, and pest outbreaks, can cause major changes in ecosystem conditions that threaten nature’s contributions to people (ecosystem services). However, approaches to assess these impacts on diverse services under climate change are rare. To advance such efforts, we build on the accelerating research on disturbance ecology and ecosystem services to [...]
Navigating the complexities of “One Health”
Published: 2024-08-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
For two decades, a One Health approach to managing the emergence of novel zoonotic pathogens has been increasingly called for by the animal and public health sectors. One health systems require the integration of data from wildlife indicator species, domesticated animals, and humans into a framework of monitoring and analysis that provides for early warning of impending pathogen spillover and [...]
Bridging the gap between lab and field sleep studies: a proof of concept for studying wild rats in semi-captive environments.
Published: 2024-08-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Sleep is a vital and universal behavior distinct from mere inactivity, yet its ecological role remains poorly understood due to methodological limitations in recording sleep in the wild. Using a small, low-power biologger, collecting brain activity, body movements, and physiology, we recorded key sleep parameters in wild black rats (Rattus rattus) under semi-captive conditions. We developed a [...]
Current knowledge on the novel semiarid photovoltaic ecosystems and their impacts on biodiversity
Published: 2024-08-26
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is fundamental to mitigate the effects of global climate change. Renewable power capacity is increasing globally, and solar photovoltaic will be the dominant renewable energy source by 2050. Photovoltaic parks require great extensions of land, usually in drylands. But both ecosystems created by solar parks and the effect of solar parks [...]
Dormancy in the origin, evolution, and persistence of life on Earth
Published: 2024-08-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Life has existed on Earth for most of the planet's history, yet major gaps and unresolved questions remain about how it first arose and persisted. Early Earth posed numerous challenges, including harsh, noisy, and fluctuating environments. Today, many organisms cope with such conditions by entering a reversible state of reduced metabolic activity, a phenomenon known as dormancy. This process [...]
Multilevel societies: different tasks at different social levels
Published: 2024-08-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Multilevel vertebrate societies, characterised by nested social units, allow individuals to perform a wide range of tasks in cooperation with others beyond their core social unit. In these societies, individuals can selectively interact with specific partners from higher social levels to cooperatively perform distinct tasks. Alternatively, social units of the same level can merge to form [...]