Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Machine learning pipeline extracts biologically significant data automatically from avian monitoring videos
Published: 2022-03-08
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Measuring parental care behaviour in the wild is central to the study of animal life-history trade-offs, but is often labour and time-intensive. More efficient machine learning-based video processing tools have recently emerged that allow parental nest visit rates to be measured using video cameras and computer processing. Here, we used open-source software to detect movement events from videos [...]
Technical comment on Negative-assortative mating for color in wolves
Published: 2022-03-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Hedrick et al. (2016) reported on "negative-assortative mating for color in wolves" from Yellowstone National Park, the "first documented case of significant negative-assortative mating in mammals." Here I report a logical inconsistency in their population genetic model that effectively imposes selection against some assortatively mating genotype. After pointing out this inconsistency, I derive [...]
Summer temperature – but not growing season length – influences radial growth of Salix arctica in coastal Arctic tundra
Published: 2022-03-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Arctic climate change is leading to an advance of plant phenology (the timing of life history events) with uncertain impacts on tundra ecosystems. Although the lengthening of the growing season is thought to lead to increased plant growth, we have few studies of how plant phenology change is altering tundra plant productivity. Here, we test the correspondence between 14 years of Salix arctica [...]
Overcoming language barriers in academia: machine translation tools and a vision for a multilingual future
Published: 2022-03-07
Subjects: Communication, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Having a central scientific language remains crucial for the advancement and global sharing of science. Nevertheless, maintaining one dominant language also creates barriers to accessing scientific careers and knowledge. From an interdisciplinary perspective, we describe how, when, and why to more readily make scientific literature available in multiple languages through the practice of [...]
How to enhance data FAIRness
Published: 2022-03-05
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences
In recent years, we witnessed an increasing number of funding agencies, scientific journals and scientists agreeing that society and science benefit from open access to research data. Benefits derive mainly from increased access to knowledge for all and improved transparency in academia. However, despite the advances in open science and open data, three significant aspects still need considerable [...]
Long-term trends in seasonality and abundance of three key zooplankters in the upper San Francisco Estuary
Published: 2022-03-02
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Zooplankton provide critical food for threatened and endangered fish species in the San Francisco Estuary (estuary). Reduced food supply has been implicated in the Pelagic Organism Decline of the early 2000s and further changes in zooplankton abundance, seasonality, and distribution may continue to threaten declining fishes. While we have a wealth of monitoring data, we know little about the [...]
Dirty Transmission Hypothesis: Increased Mutations During Horizontal Transmission Can Select for Increased Levels of Mutualism in Endosymbionts
Published: 2022-02-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
A mutualistic symbiosis occurs when organisms of different species cooperate closely for a net benefit over time. Mutualistic relationships are important for human health, food production, and ecosystem maintenance. However, they can evolve to parasitism or breakdown all together and the conditions that maintain and influence them are not completely understood. Vertical and horizontal [...]
Mountain Gorillas benefit from social distancing too: Close proximity from tourists affects gorillas sociality
Published: 2022-02-26
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Gorilla tourism supports the protection of the gorilla ecosystem, benefiting humans and wildlife populations living therein. Assessing to what degree the presence and proximity of tourists affect wildlife aids long-term benefits. Because wild animals might see human activities as stressors, we hypothesised that the increased presence and proximity of tourists leads to an immediate increase in [...]
How has bird biodiversity changed over time? A review across spatio-temporal scales
Published: 2022-02-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Empirical quantification of biodiversity changes remains a challenge even in well surveyed groups such as birds. This may be because the change depends on spatio-temporal scales, specifically on spatial grain (i.e. area of a sampling unit), geographic extent (i.e. size of the area of interest), temporal grain (i.e. duration of a sampling event), and temporal extent (i.e. length of the time [...]
Survival of the luckiest
Published: 2022-02-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Opposite dynamics are behind natural selection and sexual selection. While the fittest survives in natural selection, the survivor will most likely be the luckiest when both dynamics are combined.
Achieving global biodiversity goals by 2050 requires urgent and integrated actions
Published: 2022-02-25
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Plant Sciences
Human impacts on the Earth’s biosphere are driving the global biodiversity crisis. Governments are preparing to agree on a set of actions intended to halt the loss of biodiversity and put it on a path to recovery by 2050. We provide evidence that the proposed actions can bend the curve for biodiversity, but only if these actions are implemented urgently and in an integrated manner.
Acute blood parasite infections induce moderate physiological costs in juvenile raptor hosts
Published: 2022-02-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Parasitology
Parasites trigger reactions in hosts, leading to suppressive resistance and/or tolerance, aiming to limit the parasitic costs. Both colonization by parasites and defense activation can induce varying amount of costs for the host. Understanding parasite-induced effects on host fitness crucially depends on assessing parasitic costs in specific wild host-parasite systems. To evaluate potential [...]
Soil biota impacts on plant access to different water pools in soil
Published: 2022-02-23
Subjects: Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Aims: Soil water availability depends on the capacity of soil pores to hold it via physical forces creating gradient of availability from tightly bound water to highly mobile water. Abiotic factors directly affect the size of these pools and plant access to them. Biotic factors influence plant-soil-water relations and possibly affect soil properties and plant access to different water pools. [...]
Systemic racism alters wildlife genetic diversity
Published: 2022-02-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Humans are the defining feature of urban ecosystems. In the United States, systemic racism has had lasting effects on the structure of cities, specifically due to government-mandated “redlining” policies that produced racially segregated neighborhoods that persist today. However, it is not known whether varying habitat structure and natural resource availability associated with racial segregation [...]
Drivers of community assembly change during succession in wood-decomposing insect communities
Published: 2022-02-19
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
1. The patterns of successional change of decomposer communities is unique in that resource availability predictably decreases as decomposition proceeds. Saproxylic (i.e., deadwood-dependent) beetles are a highly diverse and functionally important decomposer group, and their community composition is affected by both deadwood characteristics and other environmental factors. Understanding how [...]