Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Origin of the impact of rock climbing on cliff ecosystems: A guide to evidence-based conservation management to regulate climbing
Published: 2024-05-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Cliff ecosystems provide refuge to 35-66% of the world’s endemic plants. However, they face growing threats from climbing. Evidence suggests that untouched cliffs harbor approximately twice the plant richness compared to climbed cliffs, with increasing impact as climbing intensity increases. Unfortunately, the origin and extent of the climbing impact has not been assessed so far. 2. We [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden
Published: 2024-05-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine eco-regions of Gulf of Aden, Northern and Central Red Sea, and Southern Red Sea, and extends across Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia. The biota is characterized by two species of true mangroves namely; Avicennia [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Gulf of Guinea - South
Published: 2024-05-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
The Mangroves of the Gulf of Guinea - South is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the Angolan, Gulf of Guinea Central, Gulf of Guinea Islands and Gulf of Guinea South marine ecoregions. The biota is characterized by six species of true mangroves with several associated mangrove species. The majority of the mangroves are found in the [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Arabian (Persian) Gulf
Published: 2024-05-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Arabian (Persian) Gulf is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of the Arabian (Persian) Gulf, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, Western Arabian Sea and Western India (Asia). Mangroves of the Arabian (Persian) Gulf occupy sheltered intertidal lagoons along coastlines and offshore islands, occupying various [...]
Symbiotic status does not preclude hybridisation in Mediterranean octocorals
Published: 2024-05-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
Understanding how species can form and remain isolated in the marine environment is still an active research area. Correctly delimiting species if also of interest for biodiversity conservation and for a wide range of biological studies. Here we study the differentiation and the possibility of hybridization among three temperate octocorals : Eunicella cavolini, E. singularis and E. verrucosa. [...]
Predator-Prey movement interactions: jaguars and peccaries in the spotlight
Published: 2024-05-05
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Understanding how the landscape influences the distribution and behavior of predators and prey gives us insights into the spatial dynamics of their interactions and the factors that shape their populations across space and time. This study analyzed interactions between jaguars (Panthera onca) and white-lipped peccaries (Tayassu pecari) at different forest and grassland distances and under varying [...]
Revisiting Wolbachia detections: old and new issues in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and other insects
Published: 2024-05-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Microbiology
Wolbachia continue to be reported in species previously thought to lack them, particularly Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. The presence of Wolbachia in this arbovirus vector is considered important because releases of mosquitoes with transinfected Wolbachia are being used around the world to suppress pathogen transmission and these efforts depend on a lack of Wolbachia in natural populations of this [...]
University herbaria are uniquely important
Published: 2024-05-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
University herbaria play critical roles in biodiversity research and training and provide an interdisciplinary academic environment that fosters innovative uses of natural history collections. Universities have a responsibility to steward these important collections in perpetuity, in alignment with their academic missions and for the good of science and society.
Quantifying the Value of Community Science Data for Conservation Decision-making
Published: 2024-05-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Monitoring biodiversity can be critical for informing effective conservation strategies, but can also deplete the resources available for management actions. Freely-available community science data may help alleviate this issue, but only if data quality is sufficient to inform the best decisions. Our objective was to quantify the predicted outcomes of prioritizing conservation action based on [...]
Wildlife health perceptions and monitoring practices in globally distributed protected areas
Published: 2024-04-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Monitoring, Epidemiology, Health Information Technology, Health Policy, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Recreation, Parks and Tourism Administration, Sustainability, Veterinary Preventive Medicine, Epidemiology, and Public Health
Diseases are a threat to biodiversity conservation and global health, however, wildlife health (WH) surveillance systems remain uncommon. This deficit is especially relevant in protected areas (PAs) facing anthropogenic pressures. Integration of field conservation actors patrolling PAs can drastically strengthen WH surveillance. Nevertheless, baseline information regarding current WH monitoring [...]
Seasonal patterns of resource use within natural populations of burying beetles
Published: 2024-04-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
For organisms in temperate environments, seasonal variation in resource availability and weather conditions exert fluctuating selection pressures on survival and fitness, resulting in diverse adaptive responses. By manipulating resource availability on a local spatial scale, we studied seasonal patterns of resource use within natural populations of burying beetles (Nicrophorus vespilloides) in a [...]
Trimming the hedges in a hurricane: Endangered Species lack research on the outcomes of conservation action
Published: 2024-04-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Given widespread biodiversity declines, there is an urgent need to ensure that conservation interventions are working. Yet, evidence regarding the effectiveness of conservation actions is often lacking. Using a case study of 208 terrestrial species listed as Endangered in Canada, we conducted a literature review to collate the evidence base on conservation actions to: 1) explore the outcomes of [...]
Dissecting transmission to understand parasite evolution
Published: 2024-04-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
The prevailing theory of the evolution of virulence assumes that evolution maximizes its transmission and relies on a trade-off between virulence and the parasite's transmission rate. While this simple idea finds some empirical support, it is often criticized, in part because of its ambiguity about transmission, the key measure of pathogen fitness. In theoretical and empirical studies, [...]
Hijackers, hitchhikers, or co-drivers? The mysteries of microbial mobilizable genetic elements
Published: 2024-04-26
Subjects: Bacteriology, Evolution, Genetics, Life Sciences, Molecular Biology
Mobile genetic elements shape microbial gene repertoires and population dynamics, but their mechanisms of horizontal transmission are often unknown. Recent results reveal that many, possibly most, bacterial mobile genetic elements require helper elements to transfer between (or within) genomes. We refer to these non-autonomous, albeit mobile, elements as Hitcher Genetic Elements (hitchers or [...]
MacArthur’s consumer-resource model: a Rosetta Stone for competitive interactions
Published: 2024-04-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Recent developments in competition theory, namely, Modern Coexistence Theory (MCT), have aided empiricists in formulating tests of species persistence, coexistence, and evolution from simple to complex community settings. However, the parameters used to predict competitive outcomes, such as interaction coefficients, invasion growth rates, or stabilizing differences, remain biologically opaque, [...]