Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Power and limitations of the mutations-area relationship to assess within-species genetic diversity targets for post-2020 Sustainable Development Goals

Moises Exposito-Alonso, Jeffrey Spence, Megan Ruffley, et al.

Published: 2022-12-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences

To evaluate the United Nation’s preliminary post-2020 sustainable goals on protecting high levels of genetic diversity per species, Exposito-Alonso et al. (2022) proposed a new framework to predict a species’ loss of genetic diversity given its loss of habitat area. This method, called the mutations-area relationship (MAR), is analogous to the species-area relationship (SAR), often used to assess [...]

Two species of montane redstarts (Myioborus) in Costa Rica differ in their elevational range shifts over four decades

Olivia Ann Steinmetz, Timothy H Parker

Published: 2022-12-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Tropical montane bird species may be vulnerable to climate change as they often have narrow elevational ranges that are expected to shift upslope in response to increasing temperatures. If highland endemics near mountaintops are forced upslope, these species may be especially at risk of local extinction. We investigated the elevational ranges of two species of montane cloud forest warblers, the [...]

Comparative analysis reveals assortative mate preferences in darters independent of sympatry and sex

Yseult Héjja-Brichard, Julien P Renoult, Tamra C Mendelson

Published: 2022-12-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution

A preference for mating with conspecifics over heterospecifics is fundamental to the maintenance of species diversity in sexually reproducing organisms. This type of positive assortative mating results in sexual isolation, a reduction in gene flow between species due to differences in mate choice. Sexual isolation is often stronger between closely related sympatric species as compared to [...]

Parasites during early life mediate the strength of phenotypic selection on sexual traits.

Jesus Martinez-Padilla, Carlos Camacho, David Canal, et al.

Published: 2022-12-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Sexually selected phenotypes are key to understanding population and eco-evolutionary dynamics since the expression of these traits is tightly linked to reproduction and population viability. Parasites are major agents of selection that alter both phenotypic expression and fitness. However, the carry-over effects of parasites in early life in selection on phenotypes expressed later in life are [...]

Quantifying between-individual variation using high-throughput phenotyping of behavioural traits in the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster)

Erin L Macartney, Patrice Pottier, Samantha Burke, et al.

Published: 2022-12-06
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Behavioural phenotyping is often time and labour-intensive, which can come at a cost to sample size and statistical precision. This is particularly a concern given that behaviours are often highly variable within and between individuals, so naturally requires a larger sample size. Drosophila melanogaster is a common model system in many research fields, and behavioural observations are frequently [...]

Ecological Dynamics and Forecasting: A graduate course on the fundamentals of time series and forecasting in ecology

S.K. Morgan Ernest, Hao Ye, Ethan White

Published: 2022-12-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Ecological Dynamics and Forecasting is a semester-long course to introduce students to the fundamentals of ecological dynamics and forecasting. This course implements a combination of paper-based discussion to introduce students to concepts and ideas and R-based tutorials for hands-on application and training. The course material includes a reading list with prompting questions for discussions, [...]

Alternative reading frames are an underappreciated source of protein sequence novelty

Zachary Ardern

Published: 2022-12-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences

Alternative reading frames of protein coding genes are a major contributor to the evolution of novel protein products. Recent studies demonstrating this include examples across the three domains of cellular life and in viruses. Alternative frame sequences both increase the number of trials available for the evolutionary invention of new genes and have unusual properties which may facilitate gene [...]

Understanding local plant extinctions before it’s too late: bridging evolutionary genomics with global ecology.

Moises Exposito-Alonso

Published: 2022-12-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences

Understanding evolutionary genomic and population processes within a species range is key to anticipating the extinction of plant species before it is too late. However, most models of biodiversity risk projections under global change do not account for the genetic variation and local adaptation of different populations. Population diversity is critical to understanding extinction because [...]

Describing posterior distributions of variance components: Problems and the use of null distributions to aid interpretation

Joel L Pick, Claudia Kasper, Hassen Allegue, et al.

Published: 2022-11-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

1. Assessing the biological relevance of variance components estimated using MCMC-based mixed-effects models is not straightforward. Variance estimates are constrained to be greater than zero and their posterior distributions are often asymmetric. Different measures of central tendency for these distributions can therefore vary widely, and credible intervals cannot overlap zero, making it [...]

Implications of microbial community assembly for ecosystem restoration: patterns, process, and potential

Emily Graham, Joseph E Knelman

Published: 2022-11-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences

While it is now widely accepted that microorganisms provide essential functions in restoration ecology, the nature of relationships between microbial community assembly and ecosystem recovery remain unclear. There has been a longstanding challenge to decipher whether microorganisms facilitate or simply follow ecosystem recovery, and evidence for each is mixed at best. We propose that [...]

Accounting for cloud cover and circannual variation puts the effect of lunar phase on deer-vehicle collisions into perspective

Jacopo Cerri, Laura Stendardi, Elena Bužan, et al.

Published: 2022-11-22
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology

Although several studies have focused on the influence of moonlight over deer-vehicle collisions, findings have been inconsistent. This may be due to neglecting the effects of cloud cover, a major impediment to moon illumination, and circannual variation in both deer and human activity. We modeled how median cloud cover interacted with the illuminated fraction of the moon in affecting daily roe [...]

A tale of two genomes: What drives mitonuclear discordance in asexual lineages of a freshwater snail?

Maurine Neiman, Joel Sharbrough

Published: 2022-11-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences

We use genomic information to tell us stories of evolutionary origins. But what does it mean when different genomes report wildly different accounts of lineage history? This “discordance” can be a consequence of a fascinating suite of natural history and evolutionary phenomena, from the different inheritance mechanisms of nuclear vs. cytoplasmic genomes to hybridization and introgression to [...]

Morphological plasticity in a caddisfly that co-occurs in lakes and streams

Christine Ann Parisek, Michael P Marchetti, Matthew R Cover

Published: 2022-11-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Lake and stream fauna are frequently studied, yet surprisingly little is known about ecological and evolutionary dynamics of species that inhabit both lentic and lotic habitats. There are few examples of species co-occurring in the different habitat flow types, which raises questions on how this may impact their ability to adapt to changing climatic conditions. The aquatic insect Limnephilus [...]

Misrepresenting biases in arrival: a comment on Svensson (2022)

Alejandro Cano, Alejandro Couce, Joanna Masel, et al.

Published: 2022-11-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences

The idea that adaptive change is subject to biases in variation by a "first come, first served" dynamic is not part of classic evolutionary reasoning. Yet, predictable effects of biases in the introduction of variation have been reported in models of population genetics, in laboratory evolution, and in retrospective analyses of natural adaptation. This effect of "arrival bias" has potentially [...]

The cost of being a non-native English speaker in science

Tatsuya Amano, Valeria Ramírez-Castañeda, Violeta Berdejo-Espinola, et al.

Published: 2022-11-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, International and Intercultural Communication, Publishing, Scholarly Publishing

The use of English as the common language of science represents a major impediment to maximising the contribution of non-native English speakers to science. Yet few studies have quantified the consequences of language barriers on the career development of researchers who are non-native English speakers. Our survey demonstrates that non-native English speakers, especially early in their careers, [...]

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