Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences

Performance-dependent movement: An alternative driver of adaptive divergence

Gabriel Munar-Delgado, Francisco Pulido, Pim Edelaar

Published: 2024-01-02
Subjects: Life Sciences

It is a tenet of evolutionary biology that local adaptation is driven by natural selection, while it is hindered by gene flow. This is because random movements between populations disrupt the match between phenotype and the local environment. However, if individuals moved to the environments where they have higher ecological performance, movements between populations could facilitate local [...]

The Role of Pollination Services in Seed Production: A review

Falk Krumbe, Simone Melder, Arndt Feuerbacher

Published: 2023-12-28
Subjects: Life Sciences

In the face of declining insect biodiversity, this study reviews the critical role of pollination services in seed production of food crops. Insects, as pollinators, play a fundamental role in the reproductive processes of both wild and domesticated plants, impacting global agriculture. While previous reviews have assessed the influence of pollinators on primary food production, this review [...]

Integrating multiple datasets to align biological and statistical populations for abundance estimation

Michelle L Kissling, Paul Lukacs, Kelly Nesvacil, et al.

Published: 2023-12-28
Subjects: Life Sciences

Ideally, a statistical population is the same as, or accurately represents its corresponding biological population. However, in practice, they rarely align in space and time, which can lead to variable exposure to sampling and biased inference. We often view a population mismatch as a temporary emigration process and resolve it with replicate and/or repeat sampling, though this approach is not [...]

Biogeographical diet variation within and between the rabbitfishes Siganus corallinus, Siganus virgatus, Siganus doliatus and Siganus trispilos

Salvador Zarco-Perello, Andrew Hoey, Storm Martin

Published: 2023-12-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Feeding habits of herbivorous fish play an important role in the form and function of coastal marine ecosystems. Rabbitfishes (Siganidae) have been recognized as important consumers of macroalgae in the coral reefs of the Indo-Pacific region. However, it is unclear how their diet varies among and within species at biogeographical scales. The present study assessed the inter- and intra-specific [...]

Untangling the complex food webs of tropical rainforest streams

Victor Satoru Saito, Pavel Kratina, Gedimar Barbosa, et al.

Published: 2023-12-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

1- Describing food webs with precision and detail is critical for understanding the functioning of ecosystems. Streams in the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest stand out as one of the most threatened ecosystems worldwide and yet, little is known about whether these systems house stable food webs and what are the trophic properties associated with that. 2 - In this study, we applied a Bayesian [...]

Bird life history traits influence the diversity of their associated microbiomes

Corey T Callaghan, Stephanie D Jurburg

Published: 2023-12-23
Subjects: Life Sciences

Background: The avian microbiome plays an essential role in host development, health, and behavior, but while microbiomes of captive birds have been extensively studied, little is known about how life history traits influence the resident microbial diversity of individuals and of species in wild birds. Host traits may shape their associated microbiomes by modulating the exposure of the host to [...]

European native oyster reef ecosystems are universally Collapsed

Philine SE zu Ermgassen, Hannah McCormick, Alison Debney, et al.

Published: 2023-12-23
Subjects: Life Sciences

Oyster reefs are often referred to as the temperate functional equivalent of coral reefs. Yet evidence for this analogy is lacking for the European native species Ostrea edulis and its biogenic habitat. Recently assembled historical data provide a unique opportunity to develop a robust definition for this ecosystem type, confirm that O. edulis are biogenic reef builders, and assess its current [...]

Inferring the seasonal dynamics and abundance of an invasive species using a spatio-temporal stacked machine learning model

Daniele Da Re, Giovanni Marini, Carmelo Bonannella, et al.

Published: 2023-12-22
Subjects: Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Public Health, Virus Diseases

Various modelling techniques are available to understand the temporal and spatial variations of the phenology of species. Scientists often rely on correlative models, which establish a statistical relationship between a response variable (such as species abundance or presence-absence) and a set of predominantly abiotic covariates. The modelling approach choice, i.e. the algorithm, is a crucial [...]

VectAbundance: a spatio-temporal database of vector observations

Daniele Da Re, Giovanni Marini, Carmelo Bonannella, et al.

Published: 2023-12-22
Subjects: Entomology, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Life Sciences, Zoology

Modelling approaches play a crucial role in supporting local public health agencies by estimating and forecasting vector abundance and seasonality. However, the reliability of these models is contingent on the availability of standardized, high-quality data. Addressing this need, our study focuses on collecting and harmonizing egg count observations of Aedes albopictus, obtained through ovitraps [...]

Ecosystem functions and services provided by dung beetles: a global meta-analysis

Fevziye Hasan, Louis A Schipper, Kiri Joy Wallace, et al.

Published: 2023-12-19
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences

Dung beetles are known to carry out a range of ecosystem functions such as secondary seed dispersal, bioturbation, nutrient cycling, plant growth, pest and parasite control, and trophic regulation, many of which support key ecosystem services. Despite the globally purported significance of this group of insects for ecosystem functioning, there has been no quantitative synthesis to establish the [...]

The trade-offs of honest and dishonest signals

Szabolcs Számadó, István Zachar, Dustin J. Penn

Published: 2023-12-19
Subjects: Life Sciences

Explaining the evolution of honest versus dishonest signals under conflicts of interest has long posed a major challenge, but several recent developments should spur renewed interest in this problem. First, the Handicap Principle, which maintains that signals must be costly to be honest, has been refuted and the model that claimed to validate this idea has been shown to have been misinterpreted. [...]

Evolutionary Immunology to Explore Original Antiviral Strategies

Jean-Luc Imler, Hua Cai, Carine Meignin, et al.

Published: 2023-12-18
Subjects: Life Sciences

Over the past 25 years, the field of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) has used genomics and genetics to gain insight on the developmental mechanisms underlying the evolution of morphological diversity of animals. Evo-devo exploits the key insight that conserved toolkits of development (e.g., Hox genes) are used in animals to produce genetic novelties that provide adaptation to a new [...]

The genetic basis for social network traits in the wild.

Jessica Kay Hunter, Julia Schroeder, Jamie Dunning, et al.

Published: 2023-12-14
Subjects: Life Sciences

Sociality is fundamental for many species, linked to an individual’s survival and reproductive success. The evolution of social behaviours has been studied, especially in complex social animals such as birds. However, discerning the genetic basis of these behaviours has been difficult due to the lack of ecological validity and life-history in controlled environments. In wild populations, however, [...]

Shrinking body size may not provide meaningful thermoregulatory benefits in a warmer world

Andreas Nord, Elin Persson, Joshua Kenneth Robertson Tabh, et al.

Published: 2023-12-13
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physiology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology

In a recent and impressive analysis of avian morphological data (covering >250 000 male birds from 105 species), Youngflesh et al.1 report that birds breeding in North America have become significantly lighter over the last three decades, coincident with rising breeding season temperatures. Because these observations recapitulate predictions under Bergmann’s Rule (i.e., that the body size of [...]

Complementando inventarios biológicos con datos abiertos a través de un método semiautomatizado

Sergio A. Cabrera-Cruz, José Luis Aguilar López, Rafael Villegas Patraca

Published: 2023-12-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Introducción: Los muestreos directos constituyen la mejor manera de documentar la riqueza biológica de un lugar, pero pueden verse limitados por diversas circunstancias. Nos preguntamos si la riqueza de especies documentada en campo puede ser complementada con datos de plataformas digitales de biodiversidad. Objetivo: Analizar si los datos de ocurrencia de especies disponibles en la Global [...]

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