Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
The impact of rising temperatures on the prevalence of coral diseases and its predictability: a global meta-analysis
Published: 2023-01-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistical Models
Coral reefs are under threat from disease as climate change alters environmental conditions. Rising temperatures exacerbate coral disease, but this relationship is likely complex as other factors also influence coral disease prevalence. To better understand this relationship, we meta-analytically examined 108 studies for changes in global coral disease over time alongside temperature, expressed [...]
Marine cleaning mutualisms provide new insights in biological market dynamics
Published: 2023-01-23
Subjects: Life Sciences
Most mutually beneficial social interactions (cooperation within species, mutualism between species) involve some degree of partner choice. In an analogy to economic theory as applied to human trading practices, biological market theory (BMT) focusses on how partner choice affects payoff distributions among non-human traders. BMT has inspired a great diversity of research, including research on [...]
Sex-specific covariation between exploratory behavior and natal dispersal strategies in a natural cooperative breeding passerine population
Published: 2023-01-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Natal dispersal is a major life-history strategy that has pervasive consequences on the spatial and genetic structure of populations. Between-individual variation in personality traits is increasingly recognized as an important determinant of natal dispersal via ‘personality-dependent dispersal’. However, few studies have investigated the importance of personalities in the context of delayed [...]
Psychological and Cultural Factors Influencing Antibiotic Prescription
Published: 2023-01-20
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Psychiatry and Psychology
Humans have been giving a selective advantage to antibiotic-resistant bacteria worldwide by inundating the environment with antimicrobials for about one century. As a result, the efficacy of antibiotics has been impaired. Antibiotic resistance is a public health problem, responsible for increases in mortality and extended stays at hospitals. Hospitals and other clinical settings have implemented [...]
The Ecological Relevance of Critical Thermal Maxima Methodology (CTM) for Fishes
Published: 2023-01-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Critical thermal maxima methodology (CTM) has been used to infer acute upper thermal tolerance in fishes since the 1950s, yet its ecological relevance remains debated. Here, we synthesize evidence to identify methodological concerns and common misconceptions that have limited the interpretation of CTmax (value for an individual fish during one trial) in ecological and evolutionary studies of [...]
Metabolic division of labor in social insects
Published: 2023-01-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Social insects are known for reproductive and behavioral division of labor, but little attention has been paid to metabolic forms of division of labor. Metabolic division of labor is the partitioning of complementary metabolic tasks between individuals, and it is widespread in social insects. We define two forms of metabolic division of labor, homosynergetic and heterosynergetic, we pinpoint [...]
Social regulation of reproduction: control or signal?
Published: 2023-01-13
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Traditionally, dominant breeders have been considered to be able to control the reproduction of other individuals in multimember groups that have high variance in reproductive success/reproductive skew (e.g., forced sterility/coercion of conspecifics in eusocial animals; sex-change suppression in sequential hermaphrodites). These actions are typically presented as active impositions by [...]
Quantitative evidence synthesis: a practical guide on meta-analysis, meta-regression, and publication bias tests for environmental sciences
Published: 2023-01-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Meta-analysis is a quantitative way of synthesizing results from multiple studies to obtain reliable evidence of an intervention or phenomenon. Indeed, an increasing number of meta-analyses are conducted in environmental sciences, and resulting meta-analytic evidence is often used in environmental policies and decision-making. We conducted a survey of recent meta-analyses in environmental [...]
orchaRd 2.0: An R package for visualizing meta-analyses with orchard plots
Published: 2023-01-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Although meta-analysis has become an essential tool in ecology and evolution, reporting of meta-analytic results can still be much improved. To aid this, we have introduced the orchard plot, which presents not only overall estimates and their confidence intervals but also shows corresponding heterogeneity (as prediction intervals) and individual effect sizes. 2. Here, we have added [...]
Dominant attitudes and values towards wildlife and the environment in coastal Alabama
Published: 2023-01-03
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Surveys assessing attitudes and values about the environment can help predict human behavior towards wildlife and develop effective conservation goals alongside local communities. Southern Alabama is a hotspot for biodiversity and endemism in the United States and is in need of studies to protect its wildlife. Land and wildlife management practices in Alabama have moved from indigenous-led [...]
Psychological and Cultural Factors Influencing Antibiotic Prescription
Published: 2023-01-02
Subjects: Biology, Economics, Geography, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Psychiatry and Psychology, Psychology, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Humans have inundated the environment worldwide with antimicrobials for about one century, giving selective advantage to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Therefore, antibiotic resistance has become a public health problem responsible for increased mortality, and extended hospital stays because the efficacy of antibiotics has diminished. Hospitals and other clinical settings have implemented [...]
ForageFeeder: a low-cost open source feeder for randomly distributing food
Published: 2022-12-30
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Automated feeders have long fed mice, livestock, and poultry, but are incapable of feeding zoo animals such as gorillas. Gorilla food, consisting of cut vegetables and fruits, is too large to be dispensed by automated feeders. Instead gorillas are manually at a set time and location, which decreases the exercise and enrichment that accompanies their natural foraging. We designed and built [...]
Like little lagoons: the contribution of valli da pesca to the Ecosystem Services supply of the Venice Lagoon
Published: 2022-12-23
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The Venice lagoon social-ecological system is characterized by a strong relationship between the natural environment and human activities. This is especially noticeable in the aquaculture and hunting reserves of the lagoon, locally known as valli da pesca. Previous works about Ecosystem Services (ESs) in the Venice lagoon focused on the so-called “open lagoon”, overlooking the role of the valli [...]
Use of Airborne Laser Scanning to assess effects of understorey vegetation structure on nest-site selection and breeding performance in an Australian passerine bird
Published: 2022-12-18
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology
In wild bird populations, the structure of vegetation around nest-sites can influence the risk of predation of dependent offspring, generating selection for nest-sites with vegetation characteristics associated with lower predation rates. However, vegetation structure can be difficult to quantify objectively in the field, which might explain why there remains a general lack of understanding of [...]
How do monomorphic bacteria evolve? The Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex and the awkward population genetics of extreme clonality
Published: 2022-12-15
Subjects: Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics, Pathogenic Microbiology, Population Biology
Exchange of genetic material through sexual reproduction or horizontal gene transfer is ubiquitous in nature. Among the few outliers that rarely recombine and mainly evolve by de novo mutation are a group of deadly bacterial pathogens, including the causative agents of leprosy, plague, typhoid, and tuberculosis. The interplay of evolutionary processes is poorly understood in these organisms. [...]