Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Reporting guidelines for terrestrial respirometry: Building openness, transparency of metabolic and evaporative water loss data
Published: 2024-02-20
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
Respirometry is an important procedure for understanding whole-animal energy and water balance. Consequently, the growing number of studies using respirometry over the last decade warrants reliable reporting and data sharing for effective research synthesis and dissemination. We provide a checklist guideline on five key areas to facilitate the transparency and reproducibly of respirometry [...]
Tempo and mode of diapause evolution in butterflies
Published: 2024-02-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Quantifying the tempo and mode via modern phylogenetic comparative methods can provide insights into how selection and constraints shape trait evolution. Here we elucidate the evolution of diapause, a complex and key trait that allows temporal escape from unfavorable conditions in many insects, including our model system, butterflies. Using a thorough literature survey, we first scored the [...]
Energetic costs of mounting an immune response in a coral reef damselfish (Pomacentrus amboinensis)
Published: 2024-02-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
While immune responses can be energetically costly, quantifying these costs is challenging. We tested the metabolic costs of immune activation in damselfish (Pomacentrus amboinensis Bleeker, 1868) following a mass-adjusted injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) endotoxin. Fish were divided into eight treatments: two controls (handling and saline injection) and six LPS groups with concentrations [...]
Theoretical research to extract, combine and generate concepts for understanding life phenomena
Published: 2024-02-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
Living systems evolve through interactions with the environment, which are nonequilibrium processes that resist the law of increasing entropy in the environment and maintain their organization by exhausting an entropy inflow from the environment. Although several principles have been proposed to explain the nonequilibrium processes of living systems and the mechanism of entropy extraction, a [...]
Loring Pond Duckweed Abundance and Diversity Assessment Via By-Catch of Surface Skimming, and Suitability of Compost for Organic Gardens
Published: 2024-02-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
Duckweed are tiny aquatic plants that are part of the Lemnaceae family including five genera: Lemna, Landoltia, Spirodela, Wolffia, and Wolfiella. Previous research has shown duckweed to have strong properties of phytoremediation of heavy metals and other pollutants (Ekperusi et al., 2019). Here we examine Loring Pond, an urban pond in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that is partially covered by [...]
Reduced plasticity and variance in physiological rates of ectotherm populations under climate change
Published: 2024-02-17
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Climate change is expected to result in warmer and more variable thermal environments globally. Maintaining phenotypic variability in physiological rates and adjusting them in response to extreme temperatures (plasticity) is essential for allowing populations to adapt to climate change. Yet, incorporating both plasticity and changes in phenotypic variation when predicting the impacts of climate [...]
Why are trees hollow? Termites, microbes, and tree internal stem damage in a tropical savanna
Published: 2024-02-15
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Wood plays a vital role in the terrestrial carbon cycle, serving as a significant carbon store that is then released back to the atmosphere during decomposition. Decomposition has largely been studied in fallen and standing deadwood; however, decomposition can occur within living trees via hollowing by wood-feeding termites and microbial heart rot. Internal stem damage is difficult to measure, [...]
The ecology of ageing in wild societies: linking age structure and social behaviour in natural populations
Published: 2024-02-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
The age of individuals has consequences not only for their fitness and behaviour, but also for the functioning of the groups they form. Because social behaviour often changes with age, population age structure is expected to shape the social organisation, the social environments individuals experience, and the operation of social processes within populations. Although research has explored [...]
Probing the functional significance of wild animal microbiomes using omics data
Published: 2024-02-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Host-associated microbiomes are thought to play a key role in host physiology and fitness, but this conclusion mainly derives from studies of a handful of animal models and humans. To test the generality of this conclusion, studies in non-model and wild animals are needed. However, whilst microbiome taxonomic diversity has recently received much attention, characterization of its functional [...]
Smartphones as a new tool for biodiversity research
Published: 2024-02-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Assessing the risk of climate maladaptation for Canadian polar bears
Published: 2024-02-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Abstract The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the world, threatening the persistence of Arctic species. It is uncertain if Arctic wildlife will have sufficient time to adapt to such rapidly warming environments. We used genetic forecasting to measure the risk of maladaptation to warming temperatures and sea ice loss in polar bears (Ursus maritimus) sampled across the Canadian [...]
Balancing production and environmental outcomes in Australia’s tropical savanna under global change
Published: 2024-02-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Livestock production is an integral part of the global food system and the livelihoods of local people, but it also raises issues of environmental sustainability due to issues such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, biodiversity decline, land degradation, and water use. Further challenges to the social and environmental sustainability of extensive livestock systems may arise from changes in [...]
Barcoding Brazilian mammals to monitor biological diversity and threats: trends, perspectives, and knowledge gaps
Published: 2024-02-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
DNA barcoding and environmental DNA (eDNA) represent an important advance for biomonitoring the world's biodiversity and its threats. However, these methods are highly dependent on the presence of species sequences on molecular databases. Brazil is one of the largest and most biologically diverse countries in the world. However, many knowledge gaps still exist for the description, identification, [...]
Evolutionary perspectives on thiamine supplementation of managed Pacific salmonid populations
Published: 2024-02-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Thiamine deficiency complex (TDC) in fishes has been identified in an ever-expanding list of species and populations. In many documented occurrences of TDC in fishes, rates of juvenile mortality have reached 90% at the population level, with many females producing no surviving offspring. Such sweeping demographic losses and concomitant decreases in genetic diversity due to TDC can be prevented by [...]
Selection versus Transmission: Quantitative and Organismic Biology in Antibiotic Resistance
Published: 2024-02-01
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
We aimed to determine the importance of selection (mostly dependent on the anthropogenic use of antimicrobials) and transmission (mostly dependent on hygiene and sanitation) as drivers of the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacterial populations. The first obstacle to estimating the relative weight of both independent variables is the lack of detailed quantitative data concerning the number of [...]