Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Computationally reproducing results from meta-analyses in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology using shared code and data
Published: 2023-07-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Many journals in ecology and evolutionary biology encourage or require authors to make their data and code available alongside articles. In this study we investigated how often this data and code could be used together, when both were available, to computationally reproduce results published in articles. We surveyed the data and code sharing practices of 177 meta-analyses published in ecology and [...]
Biogeographical distributions of trickster animals
Published: 2023-07-03
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Human language encompasses almost endless potential for meaning and folklore can theoretically incorporate themes beyond time and space. However, actual distributions of the themes are not always universal and their constraints remain unclear. Here, we specifically focused on zoological folklore and aimed to reveal what restricts the distribution of trickster animals in folklore. We applied the [...]
Lipid Metabolism in Parasitoids and Parasitized Hosts
Published: 2023-06-30
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Physiology
Parasitoids have an exceptional lifestyle where juvenile development is spent on or in a single host insect, but the adults are free-living. Unlike parasites, parasitoids always kill their host. How parasitoids use such a limiting resource, particularly lipids, is important for their chances to survive and reproduce. In part 1, we describe the parasitoid lifestyle, including typical developmental [...]
A call to expand global change research in LTER coastal wetlands
Published: 2023-06-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Global change stressors are altering the structure of ecological communities with significant implications for the functions and services that ecosystems provide. Coastal zones are particularly susceptible to such stressors, yet our collective understanding of the long-term effects of global change on these systems and, in particular, the consumer species found within them, is limited. The US [...]
Too simple, too complex, or just right? Advantages, challenges and resolutions for indicators of genetic diversity
Published: 2023-06-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Policy, Genetics, Life Sciences
Measuring genetic diversity of wild species using DNA-based data remains resource intensive and time-consuming for nearly all species. Yet, genetic assessments are needed for global conservation commitments including the Convention on Biological Diversity and for governments and managers to evaluate conservation progress and to prioritize species and populations to preserve and recover genetic [...]
Designing a collective prototype of future (sub)tropical science
Published: 2023-06-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Higher Education
Heterogeneous dispersal networks to improve biodiversity science
Published: 2023-06-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Dispersal plays a key role in shaping spatial patterns of biodiversity, yet its spatial heterogeneity is often overlooked in biodiversity analyses and management strategies. Properly parametrized heterogeneous dispersal networks capture the complex interplay between landscape structure and species-specific dispersal capacities. This heterogeneity, however, is recurrently neglected when studying [...]
Griffon Vultures restrict movements around roosts and supplementary feeding stations, even when carrion is available on the field: a call for wind energy zonation to avoid ecological traps on Mediterranean islands
Published: 2023-06-19
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Engineering
Wind energy is developing on Mediterranean islands, where endangered populations of Griffon Vulture (Gyps fulvus) occur. As griffons are subjected to collisions with wind turbines while foraging, it is necessary to understand which factors affect their movements, to minimize the potential impact of wind farms. We assessed habitat use by 37 griffons (n. GPS locations = 130,218) and its overlap [...]
Links between an insectivorous bird and moths disentangled through national scale monitoring data
Published: 2023-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Insects play important roles in food chains, but quantifying how insect abundance affects population dynamics in natural communities is challenging. National scale monitoring data provides opportunities to identify trophic relationships at broad spatial and temporal scales but requires careful approaches to link data from different schemes. Here, using two monitoring datasets from Great Britain, [...]
Plio-Pleistocene African megaherbivore losses associated with community biomass restructuring
Published: 2023-06-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution
Fossil abundance data can reveal ecological dynamics underpinning taxonomic declines. Using fossil dental metrics, we reconstructed body mass and mass-abundance distributions in Late Miocene to recent African large mammal communities. Despite collection biases, fossil and extant mass-abundance distributions are highly similar, with unimodal distributions likely reflecting savanna environments. [...]
Anticoagulant rodenticides are climbing the food chain to the top: a first proof of widespread positivity in grey wolves (Canis lupus)
Published: 2023-06-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
Second-generation Anticoagulant Rodenticides (ARs) can be particularly critical for large carnivores, due to their widespread use and time-delayed impacts on their populations. While many studies explored the impacts of ARs on small and mesocarnivores, no study explored the extent to which they could contaminate large carnivores in anthropized landscapes of Europe. We filled this gap by [...]
Welcoming more participation in open data science for the oceans
Published: 2023-05-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Open science is a global movement happening across all research fields. It builds on years of efforts by individual researchers and a broad array of institutions, agencies, and grassroots organizations. Enabled by technology and the open web, the goal is to share knowledge and broaden participation in science, from team formation and early ideation to making intermediate and final research [...]
The trade-off between vocal learning and dexterity: a balancing act
Published: 2023-05-30
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Behavioral Neurobiology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Uncontroversial evidence of vocal production learning, the capacity to modify vocal output on the basis of experience, is sparsely distributed in the animal kingdom. We suggest that this is in large part due to a trade-off between vocal learning complexity and a much more widely distributed trait—non-vocal dexterity. We argue that given some generally required neural and anatomical conditions for [...]
Predation and biophysical context control long-term carcass nutrient inputs in an Andean ecosystem
Published: 2023-05-30
Subjects: Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Animal carcass decomposition is an often-overlooked component of nutrient cycles. The importance of carcass decomposition for increasing nutrient availability has been demonstrated in several ecosystems, but impacts in arid lands are poorly understood. In a protected high desert landscape in Argentina, puma predation of vicuñas is a main driver of carcass distribution. Here, we sampled puma kill [...]
Breaking the Ice: A Review of Phages in Polar Ecosystems
Published: 2023-05-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Microbiology
Bacteriophages, or phages, are viruses that infect and replicate within bacterial hosts, playing a significant role in regulating microbial populations and ecosystem dynamics. However, phages from extreme environments such as polar regions remain relatively understudied due to challenges like restricted ecosystem access and low biomass. Understanding the diversity, structure, and functions of [...]