Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
The effects of an obesogenic diet on behaviour and cognition in zebrafish (Danio rerio): traits average, variability, repeatability, and behavioural syndromes
Published: 2022-02-07
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
The obesity epidemic, largely driven by the accessibility of ultra-processed high-energy foods, is one of the most pressing public health challenges of the 21st century. Consequently, there is increasing concern about the impacts of diet-induced obesity on behaviour and cognition. While research on this matter continues, to date, no study has explicitly investigated the effect of obesogenic diet [...]
Mismatch between IUCN range maps and species interactions data illustrated using the Serengeti food web
Published: 2022-02-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Background. Range maps are a useful tool to describe the spatial distribution of species. However, they need to be used with caution, as they essentially represent a rough approximation of a species’ suitable habitats. When stacked together, the resulting communities in each grid cell may not always be realistic, especially when species interactions are taken into account. Here we show the extent [...]
Origins and evolution of biological novelty
Published: 2022-02-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Understanding the origins and impacts of novel traits has been a perennial interest in many realms of ecology and evolutionary biology. Here, we build on previous evolutionary and philosophical treatments of the subject to encompass novelties across biological scales and eco-evolutionary perspectives. By defining novelties as new features at one biological scale that have emergent effects at [...]
101 years of biofluorescent animal studies: trends in literature, novel hypotheses, and best practices moving forward
Published: 2022-02-06
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Bioinformatics, Life Sciences
Biofluorescent animals have become a recent trend in natural history publishing. While the functions and origins of biofluorescence in fauna remains somewhat controversial, trends in biofluorescence throughout published literature may elucidate these concepts. Here we review 101 years of biofluorescent studies encompassing 108 published papers and 977 unique species records. Our results provide [...]
A set of principles and practical suggestions for equitable fieldwork in biology
Published: 2022-02-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Forest Sciences, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Plant Sciences
Field biology is an area of research that involves working directly with living organisms in situ through a practice known as “fieldwork.” Conducting fieldwork often requires complex logistical planning within multiregional or multinational teams, interacting with local communities at field sites, and collaborative research led by one or a few of the core team members. However, existing power [...]
Foraging complexity and the evolution of childhood
Published: 2022-02-05
Subjects: Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
Our species’ long childhood is hypothesized to have evolved as a period for learning complex foraging skills. Researchers studying the development of foraging proficiency have focused on assessing this hypothesis, yet studies present inconsistent conclusions regarding the connection between foraging skill development and niche complexity. In this paper, we leverage published records of child [...]
The costs of abating threats to Australias biodiversity
Published: 2022-02-04
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
1. Budgeting for biodiversity conservation requires realistic estimates of the costs of threat abatement. However, data on the costs of managing threats to biodiversity is often unavailable or unable to be extrapolated across relevant locations and scales due to a lack of transparency and consistency in how it was collated. Conservation expenditure largely occurs without a priori estimates costs [...]
A low-cost solution for documenting, tracking, and verifying cage-level animal husbandry tasks using wireless QR scanners and cloud-based spreadsheets
Published: 2022-02-04
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Animal Studies, Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Animal care is a critical component underlying successful behavioral and cognition experiments. Technological solutions for documentation and verification of care can aid in monitoring that activities are completed according to standard operating procedures and ensure that no individuals are overlooked. Here, I summarize a low-cost, flexible, and easy to use system that I developed to document [...]
Do conservation designations provide positive benefits for bird species and communities?
Published: 2022-02-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
There have been recent renewed commitments to increase the extent of protected areas to combat the growing biodiversity crisis, but yet the underpinning evidence for their effectiveness is mixed with causal connections rarely evaluated. We use data gathered by four large-scale citizen science programmes in the UK to provide the most comprehensive assessment to date of whether national (SSSI) and [...]
New insight into colonies of Microcystis (Cyanobacteria) as multi-specific floating biofilms
Published: 2022-01-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology
The ability to form biofilms is a functional trait shared by many bacterial species. Biofilms provide bacteria a sheltered environment where the nutrients and oxygen gradients create a heterogeneous matrix and promote cells to differentiate their metabolism and functions according to the position they occupy inside the matrix. Species of the Microcystis genus are among the most common [...]
How to behave when marooned: the behavioural component of the island syndrome remains underexplored
Published: 2022-01-29
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Animals on islands typically depart from their mainland relatives in assorted aspects of their biology. Because they seem to occur in concert, and to some extent evolve convergently in disparate taxa, these changes are referred to as the “island syndrome”. While morphological, physiological, and life history components of the island syndrome have received considerable attention, much less is [...]
Intraspecific diversity of threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) populations in eastern Canada
Published: 2022-01-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) is a small, mesopredatory fish that is widespread in coastal regions of the northern hemisphere. Although this species does not directly support a commercial or recreational fishery, threespine stickleback often serve as important prey for larger fish that do support important fisheries, as well as many bird species. Although studied extensively [...]
Genomic evidence of a functional RH2 opsin in New Zealand parrots and implications for pest control
Published: 2022-01-25
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
Recent genomic evidence suggest that kea (Nestor notabilis) have a non-functional RH2 opsin gene potentially leading to impaired vision in the green region of the electromagnetic spectrum. In New Zealand, it is standard procedure to add green dye to aerial poison baits used in mammalian predator control operations to deter native birds from eating toxic bait. A visual deficiency could impact how [...]
Inferring trends in pollinator distributions across the Neotropics from publicly available data remains challenging despite mobilisation efforts
Published: 2022-01-25
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aim: Aggregated species occurrence data are increasingly accessible through public databases for the analysis of temporal trends in species’ distributions. However, biases in these data present challenges for robust statistical inference. We assessed potential biases in data available through GBIF on the occurrences of four flower-visiting taxa: bees (Anthophila), hoverflies (Syrphidae), [...]
Monitoring and modelling the effects of ecosystem engineers on ecosystem functioning
Published: 2022-01-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Ecosystem engineers modify biophysical environments, create novel habitats, and change biodiversity, with the ultimate effect of modulating critical ecosystem functions. This review describes and synthesises approaches, methodologies, and analytical frameworks for quantifying how ecosystem engineers drive ecosystem functioning. 2. We i) outline what variables to measure, how to measure them, [...]