Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
A review of the heterogeneous landscape of biodiversity databases: opportunities and challenges for a synthesized biodiversity knowledge base
Published: 2021-06-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Abstract Aim: Addressing global environmental challenges requires access to biodiversity data across wide spatial, temporal and biological scales. Recent decades have witnessed an exponential increase of biodiversity information aggregated by biodiversity databases (hereafter ‘databases’). However, heterogeneous coverage, protocols, and standards of databases hampered the data integration among [...]
Aboveground carbon stocks in Madagascar’s vanilla production landscape – exploring rehabilitation through agroforestry in the light of land-use history
Published: 2021-06-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Forests and tree-dominated land uses store large amounts of carbon stocks in plant biomass. However, anthropogenic changes in land use and land cover decrease tree cover and associated carbon stocks. Agroforestry has the potential to maintain or restore carbon in plant biomass but the amount will be influenced by various factors that may include land-use history and management practices. However, [...]
Deep learning as a tool for ecology and evolution
Published: 2021-06-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Deep learning is driving recent advances behind many everyday technologies, including those relying on speech and image recognition, natural language processing, and autonomous driving. It is also gaining popularity in biology, where it has been used for automated species identification, environmental monitoring, behavioral studies, DNA sequencing, and population genetics and phylogenetics, among [...]
Seasonally variable relationships between surface water temperature and inflow in the upper San Francisco Estuary
Published: 2021-06-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management
Water temperature and inflow are key environmental drivers in aquatic systems that are linked through a causal web of factors including climate, weather, water management, and their downstream linkages. However, we do not yet fully understand the relationship between inflow and water temperature, especially in complex managed systems such as estuaries. The San Francisco Estuary is the center of a [...]
Integrating natural and sexual selection across the biphasic life cycle
Published: 2021-06-23
Subjects: Agriculture, Behavior and Ethology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Developmental Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Food Biotechnology, Food Science, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
An alternation between diploid and haploid phases is universal among sexual eukaryotes. Across this biphasic cycle, natural selection and sexual selection occur in both phases. Together, these four stages of selection act on the phenotypes of individuals and influence the evolutionary trajectories of populations, but are rarely studied holistically. Here, we provide a conceptual framework that [...]
Optimizing stable isotope sampling design in terrestrial movement ecology research
Published: 2021-06-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. The recognition of adequate sampling designs is an interdisciplinary topic that has gained popularity over the last decades. In ecology, many research questions involve sampling across extensive and complex environmental gradients. This is the case for stable isotope analyses, which are widely used to characterize large-scale movement patterns and dietary preferences of organisms across taxa. [...]
The quantitative genetics of fitness in a wild seabird
Published: 2021-06-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Additive genetic variance in fitness is a prerequisite for adaptive evolution, as a trait must be genetically correlated with fitness to evolve. Despite its relevance, additive genetic variance in fitness has not often been estimated in nature. Here, we investigate additive genetic variance in lifetime and annual fitness components in common terns (Sterna hirundo). Using 28 years of data [...]
Impact of Infectious Disease on Humans and Our Origins
Published: 2021-06-19
Subjects: Anthropology, Archaeological Anthropology, Arts and Humanities, Bacteriology, Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Biological Phenomena, Cell Phenomena, and Immunity, Cell and Developmental Biology, Cell Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetic Phenomena, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology, Life Sciences, Medical Biochemistry, Medical Cell Biology, Medical Genetics, Medical Immunology, Medical Microbiology, Medical Molecular Biology, Medical Pathology, Medical Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Molecular Genetics, Pathogenic Microbiology, Pharmacology, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Virology
On May 16, 2020, the Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny organized the symposium “Impact of Infectious Disease on Humans and Our Origins”. The symposium aimed to gather experts on infectious diseases in one place and discuss the interrelationship between different pathogens and humans in an evolutionary context. The talks discussed topics including SARS-CoV-2, dengue and [...]
Developing a Nature Recovery Network using systematic conservation planning
Published: 2021-06-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Conservation area networks in most countries are fragmented and inadequate. To tackle this in England, government policies are encouraging stakeholders to create local-level Nature Recovery Networks. Here we describe work led by a wildlife organisation that used the systematic conservation planning approach to identify a Nature Recovery Network for three English counties and select focal areas [...]
Disentangling food-web environment relationships: a review with guidelines
Published: 2021-06-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Food webs represent energy fluxes and nutrient cycling between interacting species, underpinning ecosystem functioning. Whether and how interactions vary over environmental gradients is still largely unknown. We reviewed the literature searching for systematic relationships between structural food-web properties and environmental gradients. Temperature and biotic factors are amongst the most [...]
Impacts of the invasive round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) on benthic invertebrate fauna: a case study from the Baltic Sea
Published: 2021-06-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) was first observed in the Baltic Sea in 1990 and has since displayed substantial secondary dispersal, establishing numerous dense populations where they may outcompete native fish and negatively impact prey species. There have been multiple round goby diet studies from both the Baltic Sea and the North American Great Lakes where they are similarly invasive. [...]
Analysing the distance decay of community similarity in river networks using Bayesian methods
Published: 2021-06-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Life Sciences
The distance decay of community similarity (DDCS) is a pattern that is widely observed in terrestrial and aquatic environments. Niche-based theories argue that species are sorted in space according to their ability to adapt to new environmental conditions. The ecological neutral theory argues that community similarity decays due to ecological drift. The continuum hypothesis provides an [...]
Evidence-based guidelines for automated conservation assessments of plant species
Published: 2021-06-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Assessing species’ extinction risk is vital to setting conservation priorities. However, assessment endeavours like the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species have significant gaps in coverage of some taxonomic groups. Automated assessment (AA) methods are gaining popularity to fill these gaps, leveraging improvements in computing and digitally-available information. Choices made in developing, [...]
An outline summary document of the current knowledge about prescribed vegetation burning impacts on ecosystem services compared to alternative mowing or no management
Published: 2021-06-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
A lay summary of our discussion paper: A critical review of the IUCN UK Peatland Programme’s “Burning and Peatlands” position statement (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13157-021-01400-1). In short, we discuss the prescribed burning on blanket bog evidence base and its interpretation within a UK context - specifically in relation to the International Union for Conservation of Nature UK [...]
Constructive criticism of “Misinterpreting carbon accumulation rates in records from near-surface peat” by Young et al: Further evidence of charcoal impacts in relation to long-term carbon storage on blanket bog under rotational burn management
Published: 2021-06-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
t is with great interest that we read the recent paper by Young et al. entitled “Misinterpreting carbon accumulation rates in records from near-surface peat”. However, we have some concerns about: (i) the use of an unvalidated deep drainage model to criticise studies investigating the impact of heather burning; (ii) the model scenarios and underlying model assumptions used; and (iii) misleading [...]