Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Molecular Paleobiology of the Echinoderm Skeleton
Published: 2022-01-10
Subjects: Cell and Developmental Biology, Developmental Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Molecular paleobiology provides a promising avenue to merge data from deep time, molecular biology and genomics, gaining insights into the evolutionary process at multiple levels. The echinoderm skeleton is a model for molecular paleobioloogical studies. I begin with an overview of the skeletogenic process in echinoderms, as well as a discussion of what gene regulatory networks are, and why they [...]
Form, Function, Agency: Sources of Natural Purpose in Animal Evolution
Published: 2022-01-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The origination and evolution of multicellular form and function is generally thought to be based on gene-based variation, with natural selection changing the populational composition in the respective variants over time. The criterion for evolutionary success is differential fitness, the relative capacity to leave progeny in the next generation. Theoretical considerations show that this model [...]
Mussels repair shell damage despite limitations imposed by ocean acidification
Published: 2022-01-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Bivalves frequently withstand shell boring attempts by predatory gastropods that result in shell damage that must be quickly repaired to ensure survival. While the processes that underlie larval shell development have been extensively studied within the context of ocean acidification (OA), it remains unclear whether shell repair is impaired by elevated pCO2. To better understand the stereotypical [...]
Processes and predictions in ecological models: logic and causality
Published: 2022-01-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
To make credible ecological predictions for terrestrial ecosystems in a changing environment and increase our understanding of ecological processes, we need plant ecological models that can be fitted to spatial and temporal ecological data. Such models need to be based on sufficient understanding of ecological processes to make credible predictions and account for the different sources of [...]
For the few, not the many: local economic conditions constrain the large-scale management of invasive mosquitoes
Published: 2022-01-06
Subjects: Economics, Entomology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Public Economics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Systems Biology
Invasive mosquitoes are an emerging ecological and sanitary issue. Many factors have been suggested as drivers or barriers to their control, still no study quantified their influence over mosquito management by local authorities, nor their interplay with local economic conditions. We assessed how multiple environmental, sanitary, and socio-economic factors affected the engagement of [...]
Vulnerable, but still poorly known, marine ecosystems: how to make distribution models more relevant and impactful for conservation and management of VMEs?
Published: 2022-01-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Human activity puts our oceans under multiple stresses, whose impacts are already significantly affecting biodiversity and physicochemical properties. Consequently, there is an increased international focus on the conservation and sustainable use of oceans, including the protection of fragile benthic biodiversity hotspots in the deep sea, identified as vulnerable marine ecosystems (VMEs). [...]
Idea paper: Monitoring and databasing non-native species to manage establishment debt in aquatic ecosystems
Published: 2022-01-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
In the era of globalization, biological invasions are one of the most serious social issues. Thus, managing its impact is an urgent task. It is essential to control non-native species before they become established. However, it is insufficient to address establishment debt, which occurs when a non-native species has been introduced into an area but has not yet been established in the wild. In [...]
Behavioral flexibility is manipulable and it improves flexibility and innovativeness in a new context
Published: 2022-01-05
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Behavioral flexibility, the ability to adapt behavior to new circumstances, is thought to play an important role in a species' ability to successfully adapt to new environments and expand its geographic range. However, flexibility is rarely directly tested in a way that would allow us to determine how flexibility works to predict a species' ability to adapt their behavior to new environments. We [...]
Ecogeography of group size suggests differences in drivers of sociality among cooperatively breeding fairywrens
Published: 2022-01-05
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
Cooperatively breeding species exhibit a range of social behaviors associated with different costs and benefits to group-living, often in association with different environmental conditions. For example, species in which collective-care of offspring reduces the cost of reproduction are more common in harsh environments (true cooperative breeding), while species that collectively defend resources [...]
Evaluating critiques of evidence of historically heterogeneous structure and mixed-severity fires across dry-forest landscapes of the western USA
Published: 2021-12-30
Subjects: Forest Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
The structure and role of fire in historical dry forests, ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and dry mixed-conifer forests, of the western USA, have been debated for 25 years, leaving two theories. The first, that these forests were relatively uniform, low in tree density and dominated by low- to moderate-severity fires was recently reviewed, including a critique of opposing evidence. The second, [...]
Detecting Signatures Of Selection In Regulatory Variation
Published: 2021-12-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences
A substantial amount of phenotypic diversity results from changes in gene regulation. Understanding how regulatory diversity evolves is therefore a key priority in identifying mechanisms of adaptive change. However, in contrast to powerful models of sequence evolution, we lack a consensus model of regulatory evolution. Furthermore, recent work has shown that many of the comparative approaches [...]
Estuarine zooplankton responses to flood pulses and a hypoxic blackwater event
Published: 2021-12-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Flood pulses in estuaries following storms and rainfall events, are short-lived but important moments for a range of ecosystem processes including the delivery of resources and promoting productivity. Conversely some flood pulses can lead to adverse outcomes such as poor water quality conditions. The aim of this study was to determine how zooplankton abundance and community composition responded [...]
Statistical inference for seed mortality and germination with seed bank experiments
Published: 2021-12-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Plant population ecologists regularly study soil seed banks with seed bag burial and seed addition experiments. These experiments contribute crucial data to demographic models, but we lack standard methods to analyze them. Here, we propose statistical models to estimate seed mortality and germination with observations from these experiments. We develop these models following principles of event [...]
Preserving avian blood and DNA sampled in the wild: a survey of personal experiences
Published: 2021-12-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Collecting and storing biological material from wild animals in a way that does not deteriorate data quality for analyses using DNA is instrumental for research in ecology and evolution. Our aims were to collect methods commonly used by researchers for the field collection and long-term storage of blood samples and DNA extracts from wild birds and gather reports on their effectiveness. Personal [...]
Identify, quantify, act: tackling the unused potential of ecological research
Published: 2021-12-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
‘Ignorance is expensive’. The statement also applies to ignorance of research inefficiencies that can generate huge waste: 85% of health research, amounting to $170 billion annually, is avoidably wasted. This alarming finding elicited a number of responses that have since reduced the waste in health research. Commonality of research and dissemination practices implies that other scientific fields [...]