Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Adaptive sampling for ecological monitoring using biased data: A stratum-based approach
Published: 2024-09-10
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Indicators of biodiversity change across large extents of geographic, temporal and taxonomic space are frequent products of various types of ecological monitoring and other data collection efforts. Unfortunately, many such indicators are based on data that are highly unlikely to be representative of the intended statistical populations: they are biased with respect to their estimands. Where there [...]
Harnessing social media data to track species range shifts
Published: 2024-09-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Biodiversity monitoring programs and citizen science data remain heavily biased towards the Global North. Incorporating social media data can complement existing gaps, especially in megadiverse countries with limited records, but whether such data can significantly improve our understanding of range-shifting species is unknown. Here, we collated locality data from Flickr and Facebook, in addition [...]
The difficulty of inferring process from pattern - sex ratio adaptation with helpers at the nest
Published: 2024-09-09
Subjects: Life Sciences
The possibility that animals can adaptively adjust their offspring sex ratio has intrigued biologists since Darwin. While the population sex ratio is expected to be equal in many species, it was later also hypothesised that parents should adjust their offspring sex ratio based on their situation (e.g. parental condition, temperature, timing within the breeding season, territory quality, [...]
Climate change amplifies extinction risk of a subshrub in anthropogenic landscapes
Published: 2024-09-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
In most ecosystems, the increasingly strong effects of climate change on biodiversity co-occur with other anthropogenic pressures, most importantly land-use change. However, many long-term studies of population dynamics focus on populations monitored in protected areas, and our understanding of how climate change will affect population persistence under anthropogenic land use is still limited. To [...]
Molecular plasticity contributes to thermal resilience in two coastal fish species
Published: 2024-09-03
Subjects: Life Sciences, Zoology
Understanding species capacities to adjust to shifting thermal environments is crucial amidst current climate-mediated ocean warming. Fish populations displaying high thermal plasticity can undergo molecular, metabolic, and mitochondrial modifications in response to heat stress. Under the context of heat stress, such acclimation provides a means to maintain normal biological functions through [...]
Evidence of the Impacts of Pharmaceuticals on Aquatic Animal Behaviour (EIPAAB): a systematic map and open access database
Published: 2024-09-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
Background The global proliferation of pharmaceutical pollutants in aquatic ecosystems has emerged as a pressing environmental concern. These contaminants—designed to modulate biological functions at minute dosages—pose a unique threat to aquatic organisms, particularly through behavioural alterations. Recent years have seen a surge in scientific interest in the use of behavioural endpoints in [...]
Genetic adaptation to climate change: a systematic literature review identifies opportunities to strengthen existing studies of wild populations
Published: 2024-09-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
To understand to what extent evolution can contribute to bending the curve of ongoing biodiversity losses, we urgently need to characterize what determines the adaptive potential of populations. We argue that capitalising on existing examples of genetic adaptation to climate change provides the opportunities to fill this major knowledge gap. We performed a systematic literature review and [...]
The role of forests in global climate adaptation
Published: 2024-09-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Forests play a crucial role in regulating the global climate. Yet, forests also influence the local climate conditions through biophysical processes that directly impact human wellbeing. With growing policy emphasis on these climate adaptation effects, we review the scale dependent impacts of forests on climate conditions and their implications for human wellbeing. Generally, existing forests [...]
Fear of supernatural punishment harmonises human societies with nature
Published: 2024-09-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Human activities largely impact the natural environment negatively and radical changes in human societies would be required to achieve their sustainable relationship with nature. Although frequently overlooked, previous studies have suggested that supernatural beliefs can protect nature from human overexploitation via beliefs that supernatural entities punish people who harm nature. Studies of [...]
Quantifying Carbon Sequestration and Ecosystem Enhancement Through Novel Phytoplankton Farming Techniques
Published: 2024-08-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Farming phytoplankton has significant potential in addressing global warming and enriching marine ecosystems. Moreover, phytoplankton is more or less the ocean's small powerhouse, with the ability to sequester carbon, produce oxygen, and support food webs for marine ecosystems. To explore this potential, we developed new cultivation techniques to increase phytoplankton populations [...]
Rethinking Environmental Impact Assessment for nature positive development
Published: 2024-08-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Achieving nature positive development within existing regulatory frameworks will be challenging. Halting and reversing biodiversity loss requires restoration and enhancement of ecosystems alongside a fundamental shift in how we value biodiversity and assess quantifiable improvements. Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) focussed on mitigating negative impacts do not promote positive outcomes – [...]
On the use of directed acyclic graphs in behavioural ecology and evolution
Published: 2024-08-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) are graphical models to visualise hypotheses. DAGs are generally used in the field of causal inference and their use is spreading across different fields. However, in biology and especially in behavioural ecology and evolution, DAGs are still underutilised. Here, we point out why DAGs are such useful tools for these fields. Using concrete examples, we demonstrate [...]
Quantifying disturbance effects on ecosystem services in a changing climate
Published: 2024-08-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Disturbances, such as hurricanes, fires, droughts, and pest outbreaks, can cause major changes in ecosystem conditions that threaten nature’s contributions to people (ecosystem services). However, approaches to assess these impacts on diverse services under climate change are rare. To advance such efforts, we build on the accelerating research on disturbance ecology and ecosystem services to [...]
Navigating the complexities of “One Health”
Published: 2024-08-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
For two decades, a One Health approach to managing the emergence of novel zoonotic pathogens has been increasingly called for by the animal and public health sectors. One health systems require the integration of data from wildlife indicator species, domesticated animals, and humans into a framework of monitoring and analysis that provides for early warning of impending pathogen spillover and [...]
A novel method to study the ecological role of sleep in small mammals.
Published: 2024-08-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Sleep, is a complex, vital, and universal behavior that strongly differs from mere inactivity. Its ecological role remains, however, largely unknown mostly owing to the lack of methodological tools to record animal sleep states in the wild. By using a small, low power consumption biologger, capable of recording brain activity, body movements, and core physiology, we were able to record and [...]