Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Consistent replacement of small- by large-ranged plant species across habitats
Published: 2021-01-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
The direction and magnitude of long-term changes in local plant species richness are highly variable among studies, while species turnover is ubiquitous. However, it is unknown whether the nature of species turnover is idiosyncratic or whether certain types of species are consistently gained or lost across different habitats. To address this question, we analyzed the trajectories of 1,827 [...]
Complex environments alter competitive dynamics in fungi
Published: 2021-01-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Competition is a key biotic factor that often structures natural communities. Many attempts to disentangle how competition shapes natural communities have relied on experiments on simplified systems or through simple mathematical models. But these simplified approaches are limited in their ability to represent the complexity seen in more natural settings. Here, we considered the competitive [...]
Raczka et al. Interactions between microbial diversity and substrate chemistry determine the fate of carbon in soil.
Published: 2021-01-19
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Microbial decomposition drives the transformation of plant-derived substrates into microbial products that form stable soil organic matter (SOM). Recent theories have posited that decomposition depends on an interaction between SOM chemistry with microbial diversity and resulting function. Here, we explicitly test these theories by coupling quantitative stable isotope probing and metabolomics to [...]
Humans as the world’s greatest eco-evolutionary force
Published: 2021-01-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Humans are dominant global drivers of ecological and evolutionary change, rearranging ecosystems and natural selection in many ways. Here, we show increasing evidence that human activity also plays a disproportionate role in shaping the eco-evolutionary potential of systems. We suggest the net outcome of human influences on trait change, ecology, and the feedbacks that link them, will often (but [...]
The Three Ts of Pathogen Evolution During Zoonotic Emergence
Published: 2021-01-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences
There is increasing interest in the role that evolution may play in current and future pandemics, but there is often also considerable confusion about the actual evolutionary predictions. This may be, in part, due to a historical separation of evolutionary and medical fields, but there is a large, somewhat nuanced body of evidence-supported theory on the evolution of infectious disease. In this [...]
Assembly processes lead to divergent soil fungal communities within and among twelve forest ecosystems along a latitudinal gradient
Published: 2021-01-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
- Latitudinal gradients provide opportunities to better understand soil fungal community assembly and its relationship with vegetation, climate, soil and ecosystem function. Understanding the mechanisms underlying community assembly is essential for predicting compositional responses to changing environments. - We quantified the relative importance of stochastic and deterministic processes in [...]
Hardwood content impacts the parasitoid community associated with Eastern spruce budworm (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae)
Published: 2021-01-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
A major pest of eastern North American forests is spruce budworm, Choristoneura fumiferana Clemens (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), which outbreaks every 30–40 years and causes large scale tree mortality. Researchers have established that hardwood content reduces the defoliation and mortality of balsam fir and spruces during spruce budworm outbreaks. One mechanism posited to explain these patterns is [...]
Early-life seasonal, weather and social effects on telomere length in a wild mammal
Published: 2021-01-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Early-life environmental conditions can provide a source of individual variation in life-history strategies and senescence patterns. Conditions experienced in early life can be quantified by measuring telomere length, which can act as a biomarker of survival probability. Here, we investigate whether seasonal changes, weather conditions, and group size are associated with early-life and/or [...]
Condition-transfer maternal effects modulate sexual conflict
Published: 2021-01-08
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Strong sexual selection frequently favours males that increase their reproductive success by harming females, with potentially negative consequences for population growth. Understanding what factors modulate conflict between the sexes is hence critical to understand both the evolution of male and female phenotypes and the viability of populations in the wild. Here, we model the evolution of male [...]
Re-understanding evolution: the Information Continuum Model
Published: 2021-01-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Evolution is contingent on inherited information shaped by natural selection. Few biologists familiar with evolution would object to this description. This apparent consensus could be taken to indicate agreement on the forces shaping evolution, but vivid discussions reveal profound divergences on how evolution is perceived. The predominant paradigm of the Modern Synthesis (MS) holds the position [...]
Mate-guarding duration is mainly influenced by the risk of sperm competition and not by female quality in a golden orb-weaver spider
Published: 2021-01-05
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Males are expected to mate with as many females as possible, but can maximize their reproductive success through strategic mating decisions. For instance, males can increase their own fitness by mating with high quality females that produce more offspring. Additionally, males can adjust mating effort based on the relative distribution of females and male competitors. To test factors that [...]
Evolutionary Insights from DNA Sequences from Chaetanthera Ruiz & Pav. and Oriastrum Poepp. & Endl. (Asteraceae; Mutisieae). I. Of Molecules and Systematics
Published: 2021-01-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Phylogenetic analysis of combined ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and chloroplast DNA rpl32-trnL intergenic spacer sequences greatly improves phylogenetic resolution of Chaetanthera Ruiz & Pav. and Oriastrum Poepp. & Endl. (Asteraceae; Mutisieae) over a previously published phylogeny based on ITS alone. The results support segregation of Chaetanthera subg. Liniphyllum [...]
Parallel pandemics illustrate the need for One Health solutions
Published: 2021-01-01
Subjects: Environmental Public Health, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Immunology and Infectious Disease, Public Health, Translational Medical Research
African Swine Fever (ASF) was reported in domestic pigs in China in 2018. This highly contagious viral infection with no effective vaccine reached pandemic proportions by 2019, substantially impacting protein availability in the same region where the COVID-19 pandemic subsequently emerged. We discuss the genesis, spread, and wide-reaching impacts of an epidemic in a vital livestock species, [...]
Collecting eco-evolutionary data in the dark: Impediments to subterranean research and how to overcome them
Published: 2020-12-22
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
(1) Caves and other subterranean habitats fulfill the requirements of experimental model systems to address general questions in ecology and evolution. Yet, the harsh working conditions of these environments and the uniqueness of the subterranean organisms have challenged most attempts to pursuit standardized research (2) Two main obstacles have synergistically hampered previous attempts. First, [...]
Challenges and opportunities of species distribution modelling of terrestrial arthropod predators
Published: 2020-12-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Species distribution models (SDMs) are emerging as essential tools in the equipment of many ecologists; they are useful in exploring species distributions in space and time and in answering an assortment of questions related to historical biogeography, climate change biology and conservation biology. Given that arthropod distributions are strongly influenced by microclimatic conditions and [...]