Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Social media records hold valuable information for conservation planning
Published: 2023-05-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Citizen science plays a crucial role in helping monitor biodiversity and inform conservation. With the widespread use of smartphones, many people share biodiversity information on social media, but this information is still not widely used in conservation. Here, focussing on Bangladesh - a tropical mega-diverse and mega-populated country, we examine the potential importance of social media [...]
Individualisation and Individualised Science: Integrating Disciplinary Perspectives
Published: 2023-05-05
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Economics, Medical Sciences, Philosophy, Psychology, Public Health, Sociology
Recent trends in a range of scientific fields have seen a shift towards research and methods concerning individual differences and individualisation. This article brings together various scientific disciplines—ecology, evolution, and animal behaviour; medicine and psychiatry; public health and sport/exercise science; sociology; psychology; economics and management—and conceptually integrates [...]
Beyond Darwin: General Theory of Evolution of Everything - From the origin of life to the market economy
Published: 2023-05-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The basic concern of the general theory of evolution is to understand the entire evolution from the origin of life to the biological, technological, social, and economic structures of the present from a unified point of view and structure. The general theory of evolution can be seen as a comprehensive generalization and extension of Darwin's theory of evolution. It goes far beyond [...]
Population decline reduces cooperative breeding in a spatially heterogenous population of superb fairy-wrens
Published: 2023-05-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Reproductive performance in birds can be affected by both social environment and small-scale environmental heterogeneity via food abundance, availability of nesting sites, and predation risk. However, to date, the best studies of effects of microhabitat variation on avian populations have been on northern hemisphere passerines using nestboxes, where birds have limited control over nest sites [...]
Conservation macrogenetics
Published: 2023-04-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Genetic diversity is a core aspect of biodiversity that has been underrepresented in global conservation policy but is gaining rapidly increasing recognition. Conservation geneticists have traditionally focused on identifying, managing, and safeguarding the adaptive potential of specific populations or species. However, for almost all species, conservation relevant, population-level genetic data [...]
Bioremediation by Chlorella vulgaris: Potentials for Treatment of Municipal, Agricultural, and Industrial Wastewater Sources
Published: 2023-04-26
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Developing countries such as the Philippines suffer from a lack of policy development and implementation on wastewater treatment and discharge. Chlorella vulgaris is a microscopic green algae that has been employed in other countries for WWT due to its ability to simultaneously reduce pollutants and produce valuable biomass. However, challenges in technology adaptation such as differential [...]
Repeated evolution of extreme locomotor performance independent of changes in extended phenotype use in spiders
Published: 2023-04-24
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Biology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Many animals utilize self-built structures – so-called extended phenotypes – to enhance body functions, such as thermoregulation, prey capture or defence. Yet, it is unclear whether the evolution of animal constructions supplements or substitutes body functions. Here, using Austral brown spiders, we explored if the evolutionary loss and gain of silken webs as extended prey capture devices [...]
Interspecific behavioural interference and range dynamics: current insights and future directions
Published: 2023-04-24
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Other Animal Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Novel biotic interactions in shifting communities play a key role in determining the ability of species’ ranges to track suitable habitat. To date, the impact of biotic interactions on range dynamics have predominantly been studied in the context of interactions between different trophic levels or, to a lesser extent, exploitative competition between species of the same trophic level. Yet, both [...]
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.