Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Reduced levels of relatedness indicate that great-tailed grackles disperse further at the edge of their range

Dieter Lukas, Aaron D Blackwell, Maryam Edrisi, et al.

Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology

It is generally thought that behavioral flexibility, the ability to change behavior when circumstances change, plays an important role in the ability of a species to rapidly expand their geographic range. However, it is an alternative non-exclusive possibility that an increase in the amount of available habitat can also facilitate a range expansion. Great-tailed grackles (*Quiscalus mexicanus*) [...]

Forecasting patterns of shifting biodiversity refuges in an increasingly flammable world

William L Geary, Dale Nimmo, Tim Doherty, et al.

Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

In a warming and rapidly changing world, biodiversity is increasingly threatened by more frequent, severe, and larger fires. Variation in the life history attributes and habitat preferences of species mean that they may be affected differently by fire, and hence, decision makers must account for this. Understanding how fire affects the distribution of important areas of habitat and refuges for [...]

A dataset for benchmarking molecular identification tools based on genome skimming

Renata Asprino, Liming Cai, Yujing Yan, et al.

Published: 2024-12-19
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences

Genome skimming is an emerging tool allowing for scalable DNA barcoding efforts for numerous biodiversity science applications. Despite its growing importance, there are few standardized datasets for benchmarking genome skimming tools, making it challenging to evaluate new methods (e.g., using machine learning), and comparing to existing ones (e.g., conventional barcoding loci derived from [...]

Selecting indicators to track progress towards the Global Biodiversity Framework: A case study of Quebec's 2030 Nature Plan

Katherine Hébert, Dagoberto Hernandez Acevedo, Victor Cameron, et al.

Published: 2024-12-19
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Selecting biodiversity indicators to report national and subnational progress towards the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is a major challenge, one made even more urgent by the fast approaching 2030 targets. To efficiently identify appropriate indicators, the selection process must be streamlined, while remaining transparent, effective, and with the active engagement of [...]

Wood density variation across an Andes-to-Amazon elevational gradient

William Farfan-Rios, Sasan Saatchi, Imma Oliveras, et al.

Published: 2024-12-18
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences

1. Understanding how functional traits are related to species diversity and ecosystem properties is a central goal of ecology. Wood density is a trait that integrates many aspects of plant form and function and is highly variable among species. Previous studies of wood density across elevational gradients have been based on limited sampling and have reported declines with increasing elevation, [...]

Simple maternal effect animal models provide biased estimates of additive genetic and maternal variation

Joel L Pick, Craig A Walling, Loeske E. B. Kruuk

Published: 2024-12-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Zoology

Maternal effects (the consistent effect of a mother on her offspring) can inflate estimates of additive genetic variation (V_A) if not properly accounted for. As they are typically assumed to cause similarities only among maternal siblings, they are often accounted for by modelling maternal identity effects. However, if maternal effects have a genetic basis, they create additional similarities [...]

Pleistocene climatic changes drive expansion and fragmentation in a widespread arid zone specialist, Petrogale lateralis

Sally Potter, Craig Moritz, Kym Ottewell, et al.

Published: 2024-12-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Organisms living in arid biomes are predicted to be at threat of extinction associated with ongoing climatic and anthropogenic change. Our understanding of species responses to Pleistocene climatic changes within these environments is still limited, particularly in Australia. Here we evaluate the demographic and evolutionary history of a widespread Australian marsupial, the black-footed [...]

Foundations and future directions for causal inference in ecological research

Katherine Johannet Siegel, Laura E Dee

Published: 2024-12-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Ecology often seeks to answer causal questions, and while ecologists have a rich history of experimental approaches, novel observational data streams and the need to apply insights across naturally occurring conditions pose opportunities and challenges. Other fields have developed causal inference approaches that can enhance and expand our ability to answer ecological causal questions using [...]

A bottom-up mammoth population model predicts moderate densities and high vulnerability to hunting

Wolfgang Traylor, Matthew Forrest, Thomas Hickler

Published: 2024-12-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Paleobiology

During the last glacial, large grazers inhabited Eurasia’s mammoth steppe. This cold steppe was productive enough to sustain a diverse assemblage of large mammals, but it remains controversial which population densities it could support. In sufficient densities, large herbivores can act as ecosystem engineers: creating and maintaining grassland habitat by means of disturbance and accelerated [...]

The Development and Evolution of Arthropod Tagmata

Ariel D Chipman

Published: 2024-12-11
Subjects: Biology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Developmental Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences

The segmented body plan is a hallmark of the arthropod body plan. Morphological segments are formed during embryogenesis, through a complex procedure involving the activation of a series of gene regulatory networks. The segments of the arthropod body are organized into functional units known as tagmata, and these tagmata are different among the arthropod classes (e.g. head, thorax and abdomen in [...]

Don’t ask “when is it coevolution?” — ask “how?”

Jeremy B. Yoder

Published: 2024-12-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences

Coevolution is widely defined as specific, simultaneous, reciprocal adaptation by pairs of interacting species. This strict-sense definition arose from a desire for conceptual clarity, but it has never reflected the much wider diversity of ways in which interacting species may shape each other's evolution. As a result, much of the literature on the evolutionary consequences of species [...]

Assessing Transparency and Reproducibility in Invasion Science

Fabio Mologni, Jason Pither

Published: 2024-12-06
Subjects: Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences

Policymakers and practitioners overseeing invasive species management depend on reliable research for guidance. Transparency and reproducibility are core features of reliable research, and prerequisites for successful study replication, but are evidently lacking in many science disciplines. Whether this shortfall characterizes invasion science remains unknown. We evaluated a sample of invasion [...]

Synthesis of nature’s extravaganza: an augmented meta-meta-analysis on (putative) sexual signals

Pietro Pollo, Malgorzata Lagisz, Renato Chaves Macedo-Rego, et al.

Published: 2024-12-06
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution

Why have conspicuous characteristics evolved? Our augmented meta-meta-analysis of 41 meta-analyses, encompassing 375 animal species and 7,428 individual effect sizes, shows that the conspicuousness of (putative) sexual signals is positively related to attractiveness and benefits to mates, as well as to the fitness, condition, and other traits (e.g. body size) of their bearers. These patterns are [...]

Unbaited underwater video evidences the presence of previ-ously unrecorded fish species, sea krait (Laticauda sp.) and a high frequency of sharks at a remote reef complex (Coral Sea Marine Park, Southwest Pacific)

Dominique Pelletier, Abigail Powell, Pierre Laboute, et al.

Published: 2024-12-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology

The Chesterfield-Bellona atolls and reefs are a vast reef complex located in the Coral Sea Marine Park, estab-lished in 2014 in the New Caledonian Economic Exclusive Zone. In 2013, the New Caledonia government supported the first assessment of fish and benthic habitats conducted in all habitats and over the entire area. The assessment provided a primary knowledge base for establishing the [...]

Temperature-related developmental plasticity, not selection, affects offspring body size and shape in a bird of prey

Alejandro Corregidor-Castro, Andrea Romano, Michael Butler, et al.

Published: 2024-11-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Recent climate warming has led to a reduction in bird body size and a relative elongation of their appendages, consistent with Bergmann’s and Allen’s ecogeographical rules. These changes are generally interpreted as thermoregulatory adaptations for more efficient passive heat dissipation; however, direct evidence supporting this assumption is currently missing, and laboratory studies failed to [...]

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