Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Disentangling the effects of male-male competition, reproductive investment and social dominance on telomere length
Published: 2023-04-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Energetically costly events can accelerate telomere loss and ageing via oxidative damage. For adult males, increased levels of reproduction and more frequent fighting for access to mates are therefore stressful experiences that should hasten telomere shortening. Testing for these relationships is, however, confounded by potential correlations between social status and reproductive investment. We [...]
Killer prey: Pre-interaction ecology reverses bacterial predation
Published: 2023-04-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Ecological variation influences the character of many biotic interactions, but examples of predator-prey reversal mediated by abiotic context are few. We show that the temperature at which prey grow before interacting with a bacterial predator can determine the very direction of predation, reversing predator and prey identities. While Pseudomonas fluorescens reared at 32 °C was extensively killed [...]
Vicuña antipredator diel migration drives spatial nutrient subsidies in a high Andean ecosystem
Published: 2023-04-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Spatial subsidies of nutrients within and among ecosystems have profound effects on ecosystem structure and functioning. Large animals can be important drivers of nutrient cycling and transport as they ingest resources in some habitats and release them in others, even moving nutrients against elevational gradients. In high Andean deserts, vicuñas (Vicugna vicugna) navigate a landscape of fear by [...]
Metabolic consequences of sex-reversal in two lizard species: a test of the like genotype and like phenotype hypotheses
Published: 2023-04-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Vertebrate sex is typically determined genetically, but in many ectotherms sex can be determined by genes (Genetic Sex Determination: GSD), temperature (Temperature-dependent Sex Determination: TSD), or interactions between genes and temperature during development. Temperature dependent sex determination may involve GSD systems with either male or female heterogamety (XX/XY or ZZ/ZW) where [...]
Multilevel allometric growth equations improve accuracy of carbon monitoring during forest restoration.
Published: 2023-03-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences
Managing disturbed forests for climate mitigation and biodiversity requires monitoring the carbon (C) cycle consequences of replacing established exotic vegetation with native seedlings. Standard approaches rely on allometric growth equations with unexplored limitations for measuring C changes during restoration. Most plants lack species-specific allometric growth equations, which may perform [...]
Developing systems theory in soil agroecology: Incorporating heterogeneity and dynamic instability
Published: 2023-03-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Applied Mathematics, Biogeochemistry, Biology, Dynamic Systems, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Soil Science, Sustainability
Ecosystem management is integral to the future of soils, yet anthropogenic drivers represent a key source of uncertainty in ecosystem models. First- and new-generation soil models formulate many soil pools using first-order decomposition, which tends to generate simpler yet numerous parameters. Systems or complexity theory, developed across various scientific and social fields, may help improve [...]
Breaking down microbial hierarchies
Published: 2023-03-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Microbiology
Microbial communities that degrade natural polysaccharides are thought to have a hierarchical organization and one-way positive interactions from higher to lower trophic levels. Daniels et al. have recently shown that reciprocal interactions between trophic levels can occur and that these interactions change over the duration of a batch culture.
Allelopathy-selected microbiomes mitigate chemical inhibition of plant performance
Published: 2023-03-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Plant Biology
Allelopathy is a common and important stressor that shapes plant communities and can alter soil microbiomes, yet little is known about the direct effects of allelochemical addition on bacterial and fungal communities or the potential for allelochemical-selected microbiomes to mediate plant performance responses, especially in habitats naturally structured by allelopathy. Here we present the first [...]
Fragmentation disrupts microbial effects on native plant community productivity
Published: 2023-03-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences
1. Anthropogenic habitat fragmentation – the breaking up of natural landscapes – is a pervasive threat to biodiversity and ecosystem function worldwide. Fragmentation results in a mosaic of remnant native habitat patches embedded in human-modified habitat known as the “matrix”. By introducing novel environmental conditions in matrix habitats and reducing connectivity of native habitats, [...]
Partitioning variance in population growth for models with environmental and demographic stochasticity
Published: 2023-03-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
1. How demographic factors lead to variation or change in growth rates can be investigated using life table response experiments (LTRE) based on structured population models. Traditionally, LTREs focused on decomposing the asymptotic growth rate, but more recently decompositions of annual ‘realized’ growth rates have gained in popularity. 2. Realized LTREs have been used particularly to [...]
Multi-species dependencies improve forecasts of population dynamics in a long-term monitoring study
Published: 2023-03-13
Subjects: Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Multivariate Analysis, Population Biology, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
Forecasts of community dynamics are essential for the management of biodiversity. Theory suggests these predictions can be improved by leveraging multi-species dependencies to improve models, but empirical support for this is lacking. We test whether models that learn from multiple species, both to estimate nonlinear environmental effects and temporal dependence, improve forecasts for a semi-arid [...]
Telomere length vary with sex, hatching rank and year of birth in little owls, Athene noctua
Published: 2023-03-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Telomeres are non-coding DNA sequences located at the end of linear chromosomes, protecting genome integrity. In numerous taxa, telomeres shorten with age and telomere length (TL) is positively correlated with longevity. Moreover, TL is also affected by environmental stressors and/or resource-demanding situations particularly during early-life. Thus, TL has been used as a physiological marker of [...]
A diversity of fungal pathways contribute to improved soil carbon stability and storage
Published: 2023-03-03
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
While various fungi could facilitate soil C storage and climate change mitigation via carbon (C) cycling, standard soil C tests that measure only bulk soil C cannot disentangle mechanisms underpinning fungal influences and so far research has largely focused on mycorrhizal fungi. Here, we assessed the soil C storage potential of 12 non-mycorrhizal fungi, selected from a wide pool based on traits [...]
Lipid Metabolism in Response to Cold
Published: 2023-03-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology
Temperature directly shapes insect physiology and has a preponderant effect on life history traits. Winter conditions in temperate and polar regions are especially challenging for insects. Extremely low temperatures can indeed compromise insect survival by promoting freezing of body fluids, but mild cold temperatures above 0 °C (i.e. chilling) can also lead to complex and severe physiological [...]
How do microbes grow in nature? The role of population dynamics in microbial ecology and evolution
Published: 2023-02-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Evolution, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Systems Biology
The growth of microbial populations in nature is dynamic, as the cellular physiology and environment of these populations change. Population dynamics have wide-ranging consequences for ecology and evolution, determining how species interact and which mutations fix. Understanding these dynamics is also critical for clinical and environmental applications in which we need to promote or inhibit [...]