Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Open access research infrastructures are critical for sustained citizen science growth: a case study of Australia’s national biodiversity platform, the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA)
Published: 2022-09-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Citizen science continues to make a substantial contribution to a wide variety of scientific disciplines by allowing the public to be involved in activities like idea generation, study design, data collection and analysis. Although the pace of citizen science has exploded in recent decades, there remains untapped potential for scientific output through investment in research infrastructure that [...]
Individual identity information persists in learned calls of introduced parrot populations
Published: 2022-09-23
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Animals can actively encode different types of identity information in learned communication signals, such as group membership or individual identity. The social environments in which animals interact may favor different types of information, but whether identity information conveyed in learned signals is resilient or responsive to social disruption over short evolutionary timescales is not well [...]
Experimental mosaic brain evolution improves main executive function abilities in the guppy
Published: 2022-09-21
Subjects: Behavioral Neurobiology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Life Sciences, Neuroscience and Neurobiology
Executive functions are a set of cognitive control processes required for optimizing goal- directed behaviour. Despite more than two centuries of research on executive functions, both in humans and nonhuman animal species, there is still a knowledge gap of what constitutes the mechanistic basis of evolutionary variation in executive function abilities. Here we show experimentally that changes in [...]
Causal inference and large-scale expert validation shed light on the drivers of SDM accuracy and variance
Published: 2022-09-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
1. The literature is awash with studies purporting to show how various species and data characteristics affect the performances of Species Distribution Models (SDMs). Many of these studies follow a similar template: they fit SDMs for several species, or the same species using different datasets; assess the accuracy of those SDMs using skill statistics; and then identify correlates thereof. [...]
Linking Predator Responses to Alkaloid Variability in Poison Frogs
Published: 2022-09-21
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Zoology
Many chemically-defended/aposematic species rely on diet for sequestering the toxins with which they defend themselves. This dietary acquisition can lead to variable chemical defenses across space, as the community composition of chemical sources is likely to vary across the range of (an aposematic) species. We characterized the alkaloid content of two populations of the Dyeing Poison Frog [...]
Inferring the identifying features underlying association preferences in wild mixed species parrot groups
Published: 2022-09-16
Subjects: Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
Many animals participate in mixed-species aggregations for a variety of reasons, leading to species specific differences in benefits and costs, resulting in a variety of community assemblage patterns and dynamics based on what information individuals use to make joining decisions. Current research tends to focus specifically on "species" as a defining factor affecting joining decisions. However, [...]
Little transparency and equity in scientific awards for early and mid-career researchers in ecology and evolution
Published: 2022-09-16
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences
Scientific awards can shape scientific careers, helping secure jobs and grants. Awards also have a potential to reinforce the “Matthew Effect” and the quest for “novelty” in science when eligibility and assessment criteria give preference to nominees with traditional careers and to “excellent” research. As such, recognition awards for early and mid-career researchers can contribute to the lack of [...]
New Global Species Biodiversity: Soil soars, Ocean flounders
Published: 2022-09-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Based on topographic field data, an argument is advanced that Soil houses ~2.1 x 10^24 taxa and supports >99.9% of global species biodiversity, mostly Bacteria or other microbes. Contradictory claims that Soil is home to only a quarter of biota while Ocean harbours 80-99% of Life on Earth are both dismissed. Earlier guesstimates of ~8.8 million taxa (~2.2 million or 25% marine), of 1-6 [...]
Socio-ecological factors shape the distribution of a cultural keystone species in Malaysian Borneo
Published: 2022-09-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Biophysical and socio-cultural factors have jointly shaped the distribution of global biodiversity, yet relatively few studies have quantitatively assessed the influence of social and ecological landscapes on wildlife distributions. We sought to determine whether social and ecological covariates shape the distribution of a cultural keystone species, the bearded pig (Sus barbatus). Drawing on a [...]
When and how does photoinhibition matter for plant fitness?
Published: 2022-09-13
Subjects: Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physiology, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The many biophysical factors that shape how plant species sort across environmental gradients may include photoinhibition, which I define broadly as oxidative damage that plants and other phototrophs risk incurring when they absorb excess light energy they cannot safely dissipate. Photoinhibition is seldom explicitly discussed as a potential driver of plant fitness and distributions. Here, I aim [...]
Effects of distinct data processing in the phylogenetic signature of foliar spectra of regenerating plants in Neotropical Forest gaps
Published: 2022-09-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Important biochemical traits may be robustly mapped by optical spectroscopy, allowing inferences about phylogenetic conservation in plant species. However, distinct types of data processing might lead to distinct patterns of phylogenetic signal in the foliar spectra. Thus, investigate the standard analytical approaches in order to understand their influence over the phylogenetic signal is [...]
Foraging Efficiency and the Importance of Knowledge in Pemba, Tanzania: Implications for Childhood Evolution.
Published: 2022-09-12
Subjects: Anthropology, Behavior and Ethology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Childhood is a period of life unique to humans. Childhood may have evolved through the need to acquire knowledge and subsistence skills. In an attempt to evaluate the importance of learning for the evolution of childhood, previous research examined the increase with age of returns to foraging across various resources. Any increase could be due to increases in knowledge or other factors such as [...]
The evolution of eusociality: Kin selection theory, division of labour models, and evo-devo explanations
Published: 2022-09-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The evolution of eusociality has long been recognized as an evolutionary paradox. We identify three different but complementary approaches to the study of the evolution of eusociality. Kin selection models explain why individuals can evolve to have distinct reproductive or non-reproductive roles. Division of labour models elucidate how specialisation can emerge and evolve. Conceptual models from [...]
Spillover of human antivirals may promote resistant pathogens in animal reservoirs
Published: 2022-09-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Health Life Sciences, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Other Immunology and Infectious Disease, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Novel viral pathogens are causing diseases to emerge in humans, a challenge to which society has responded with technological innovations such as antiviral therapies. Antivirals can be rapidly deployed to mitigate severe disease, and with vaccines, save human lives and provide a long-term safety net against new viral diseases. Yet with these advances come unforeseen consequences when antivirals [...]
How much biodiversity is concealed in the word “biodiversity”?
Published: 2022-09-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Amidst a global biodiversity crisis, the word “biodiversity” has become indispensable for conservation and management. Yet, biodiversity is often used as a buzzword in scientific literature. Resonant titles of papers claiming to have studied “global biodiversity” may be used to promote research focused on a few taxonomic groups, regions, habitats, or facets of biodiversity [taxonomic, [...]