Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
A tale of two genomes: What drives mitonuclear discordance in asexual lineages of a freshwater snail?
Published: 2022-11-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
We use genomic information to tell us stories of evolutionary origins. But what does it mean when different genomes report wildly different accounts of lineage history? This “discordance” can be a consequence of a fascinating suite of natural history and evolutionary phenomena, from the different inheritance mechanisms of nuclear vs. cytoplasmic genomes to hybridization and introgression to [...]
Understanding the systematics and evolution of Vaccinium sect. Cyanococcus (Ericaceae): progress and prospects
Published: 2022-11-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
The true blueberries (Vaccinium sect. Cyanococcus; Ericaceae) comprise a clade of about nine to 24 species distributed mainly in eastern temperate North America, with one species reaching farther west. Despite extensive study, the systematics and evolution of the group are still poorly understood. Limited morphological variation, multiple ploidy levels of uncertain origin, and natural [...]
Few studies of wild animal performance account for parasite infections: a systematic review
Published: 2022-11-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Wild animals have parasites. This inconvenient truth has far-reaching implications for biologists measuring animal performance traits: infection with parasites can alter host behaviour and physiology in profound and sometimes counterintuitive ways. Yet, to what extent do studies on wild animals take individual infection status into account? 2. We performed a systematic review across eight [...]
Morphological plasticity in a caddisfly that co-occurs in lakes and streams
Published: 2022-11-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Lake and stream fauna are frequently studied, yet surprisingly little is known about ecological and evolutionary dynamics of species that inhabit both lentic and lotic habitats. There are few examples of species co-occurring in the different habitat flow types, which raises questions on how this may impact their ability to adapt to changing climatic conditions. The aquatic insect Limnephilus [...]
A synthetic review: natural history of amniote reproductive modes in light of comparative evolutionary genomics
Published: 2022-11-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
There is a current lack of consensus on whether the ancestral parity mode was oviparity (egg-laying) or viviparity (live-birth) in amniotes and particularly in squamates (snakes, lizards, and amphisbaenids). How transitions between parity modes occur at the genomic level has primary importance for how science conceptualizes the origin of amniotes, and highly variable parity modes in Squamata. [...]
Misrepresenting biases in arrival: a comment on Svensson (2022)
Published: 2022-11-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The idea that adaptive change is subject to biases in variation by a "first come, first served" dynamic is not part of classic evolutionary reasoning. Yet, predictable effects of biases in the introduction of variation have been reported in models of population genetics, in laboratory evolution, and in retrospective analyses of natural adaptation. This effect of "arrival bias" has potentially [...]
Rethinking convergence in plant parasitism integrating molecular and population genetic processes
Published: 2022-11-17
Subjects: Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Photosynthesis has shaped the body plan, physiology, as well as gene repertoire of all plants. Shifts to a parasitic lifestyle evolved at least twelve times, leading to more than four thousand extant parasitic plant species. This transition has consistently left a major evolutionary footprint among these parasites. Otherwise rare features have evolved repetitively at the molecular level and [...]
Rock climbing affects cliff-plant communities by reducing species diversity and altering species coexistence patterns
Published: 2022-11-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Cliffs are unique ecosystems with an outstanding but relatively unknown plant diversity, harboring rare, endemic and threatened species, but also common and dominant species. The rising popularity of climbing represents an increasing threat to cliff biota, potentially diminishing diversity and species associations, and affecting the community composition. We used a novel closely paired sampling [...]
Colombia reached 30 % of land and ocean conservation area. Megadiverse countries are hitting targets but missing the point
Published: 2022-11-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
The global target to protect 30% of Earth’s land and ocean by 2030 has prompted governments to report their progress in biodiversity conservation. Announcements of countries reaching 30 % of conservation area are widely commended by the international community, despite signs of increasing pressures within protected areas, poor representativity of key threatened ecosystems, and a lack of [...]
Evolutionary origins of the Mesoamerican-eastern United States floristic disjunction: current status and future prospects
Published: 2022-11-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Biogeographic disjunction patterns, where multiple taxonomic groups are shared between isolated geographic areas, represent excellent systems for investigating the historical assembly of modern biotas as well as fundamental biological processes such as speciation, diversification, niche evolution, and evolutionary responses to climate change. Studies on plant genera disjunct across the Northern [...]
CONFOUND IT! The taxonomy of plants mistaken for Cistanthe arenaria (Cham.) Carolin ex Hershk. [MONTIACEAE, Cistanthe sect. Rosulatae (Reiche) Hershk.]
Published: 2022-11-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Cistanthe arenaria (Cham.) Carolin ex Hershk. is a species of Montiaceae distributed from Chile’s Maule to Araucanía Regions. But the name historically and currently has been applied also to readily distinct species distributed from the Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins to Coquimbo Regions: C. chamissoi (Barnéoud) Carolin ex Hershk., C. trigona (Bertero ex Colla) Carolin ex Hershk, C. [...]
The consequences of synthetic auxin herbicide on plant-herbivore interactions
Published: 2022-11-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
Although herbicide drift is a common side effect of herbicide application in agroecosystems, its effects on the ecology and evolution of natural communities are rarely studied. A recent shift to dicamba, a synthetic auxin herbicide known for ‘drifting’ to nontarget areas necessitates the examination of drift effects on the plant-insect interactions that drive eco-evo dynamics in weed communities. [...]
Assessing the aesthetic attractivity of European butterflies: a web-based survey protocol
Published: 2022-11-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Entomology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Aesthetic attractivity stands as an underestimated yet fundamental feature of species in conservation biology, significantly driving disproportionate protection efforts towards charismatic species. Despite the evidence, few attempts sought to precisely quantify the impact of aesthetic attractivity in defining priority of species for conservation actions (e.g. inclusion in International Union for [...]
Iterative species distribution modeling results in the discovery of novel populations of a rare cold desert perennial
Published: 2022-11-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Niche modeling for rare and range-restricted species can generate inaccurate predictions leading to an overestimation of a species geographic distribution. We used an iterative ensemble modeling approach and model-stratified field surveys to improve niche model formulation and better understand the ecological drivers of Ivesia webberi distribution. I. webberi is a U.S. federally threatened [...]
Incompatibility and interchangeability in molecular evolution
Published: 2022-11-02
Subjects: Evolution, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics
There is remarkable variation in the rate at which genetic incompatibilities in molecular interactions accumulate. In some cases, minor changes – even single nucleotide substitutions – create major epistatic incompatibilities when hybridization forces new variants to function in a novel genetic background from an isolated population. In other cases, genes or even entire functional pathways can be [...]