Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Analyzing health of forcibly displaced communities through an integrated ecological lens
Published: 2023-01-11
Subjects: Demography, Population, and Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Public Health, International Public Health, Medicine and Health, Public Health
Healthcare among forcibly displaced persons is frequently driven by siloed approaches. Aspects of the built environment, social factors, and the bi-directional relationship between the changing ecosystem and residents are often ignored in health policy design and implementation. While recognizing factors that create a preference for siloed approaches and appreciating the work of humanitarian [...]
Like little lagoons: the contribution of valli da pesca to the Ecosystem Services supply of the Venice Lagoon
Published: 2022-12-24
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The Venice lagoon social-ecological system is characterized by a strong relationship between the natural environment and human activities. This is especially noticeable in the aquaculture and hunting reserves of the lagoon, locally known as valli da pesca. Previous works about Ecosystem Services (ESs) in the Venice lagoon focused on the so-called “open lagoon”, overlooking the role of the valli [...]
Use of Airborne Laser Scanning to assess effects of understorey vegetation structure on nest-site selection and breeding performance in an Australian passerine bird
Published: 2022-12-18
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology
In wild bird populations, the structure of vegetation around nest-sites can influence the risk of predation of dependent offspring, generating selection for nest-sites with vegetation characteristics associated with lower predation rates. However, vegetation structure can be difficult to quantify objectively in the field, which might explain why there remains a general lack of understanding of [...]
Evaluating top-down, bottom-up, and environmental drivers of pelagic food web dynamics along an estuarine gradient
Published: 2022-12-16
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Identification of the key biotic and abiotic drivers within food webs is important for understanding species abundance changes in ecosystems, particularly across ecotones where there may be strong variation in interaction strengths. Using structural equation models and four decades of integrated data from the San Francisco Estuary, we investigated the relative effects of top-down, bottom-up, and [...]
Assessing species interactions using integrated predator-prey models
Published: 2022-12-16
Subjects: Biostatistics, Dynamic Systems, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Statistical Methodology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Inferring the strength of species interactions from demographic data is a challenging task. The Integrated Population Modelling (IPM) approach, bringing together population counts, capture-recapture, and individual-level fecundity data into a unified model framework, has been extended from single species to the community level. This allows to specify IPMs for multiple species with interactions [...]
Habitat destruction threatens jaguars in a mixed land use region of eastern Bolivia
Published: 2022-12-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Large carnivores such as the jaguar (Panthera onca) are particularly susceptible to population decline and local extinction as a result of habitat loss. Here, we report on the long-term monitoring of a local jaguar population in a mixed land use area in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia from March 2017 to December 2019. We recorded 15 jaguar individuals and four reproduction events (five offspring [...]
Advances in the reconstruction of the Spider Tree of Life: a roadmap for spider systematics and comparative studies
Published: 2022-12-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Genomics, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
In the last decade and a half, advances in genetic sequencing technologies have revolutionized systematics, transforming the field as studying morphological characters; a few genetic markers have given way to genomic data sets in the phylogenomic era. A plethora of molecular phylogenetic studies on many taxonomic groups have come about, converging on, or refuting prevailing morphology or [...]
A framework for improving the reproducibility of data extraction for meta-analysis
Published: 2022-12-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Psychology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Extracting data from studies is the norm in meta-analyses, enabling researchers to generate effect sizes when raw data are otherwise not available. While there has been a general push for increased reproducibility in meta-analysis, the transparency and reproducibility of the data extraction phase is still lagging behind. Unfortunately, there is little guidance of how to make this process more [...]
Evolutionary repeatability of emergent properties of ecological communities
Published: 2022-12-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Most species belong to ecological communities where their interactions give rise to emergent community-level properties, such as diversity and productivity. Understanding and predicting how these properties change over time has been a major goal in ecology, with important practical implications for sustainability and human health. Less attention has been paid to the fact that community-level [...]
Power and limitations of the mutations-area relationship to assess within-species genetic diversity targets for post-2020 Sustainable Development Goals
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
Published: 2022-12-08
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
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.
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)
Published: 2022-12-07
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
Published: 2022-12-06
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, [...]