Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Lessons learned from organizing and teaching virtual phylogenetics workshops
Published: 2022-04-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
In 2020 and 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic led to an abrupt overhaul of many academic practices, including the transition of scientific events, such as workshops, to a fully virtual format. We describe our experiences organizing and teaching online-only statistical phylogenetics workshops and the lessons we learned along the way. We found that online workshops present some specific challenges, but [...]
What Determines the Minimum Body Size for Vertebrates?
Published: 2022-04-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The minimum body size of vertebrate species lies just above 6 millimeters, in stark contrast to the minimum sizes attained by species of other major taxonomic groups. This paper presents two connected hypotheses explaining this minimum size obtainable with a vertebrate Bauplan. Firstly, the complex bodies of vertebrates might not be amendable to reduction below a certain level of complexity. We [...]
Handling Character Dependency in Phylogenetic Inference: Extensive Performance Testing of Assumptions and Solutions Using Simulated Data
Published: 2022-04-07
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Character dependency is a major conceptual and methodological problem in phylogenetic inference of morphological datasets, as it violates the assumption of characters independency that is common to all phylogenetic methods. It is more frequently observed in higher-level phylogenies or in datasets characterizing major evolutionary transitions, as these represent parts of the tree of life where [...]
Are we underestimating the ecological and evolutionary effects of warming? Interactions with other environmental drivers may increase species vulnerability to high temperatures
Published: 2022-04-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Warming, the most prominent aspect of global environmental change, already affects most ecosystems on Earth. In recent years, biologists have increasingly integrated the effects of warming into their models by capturing how temperature shapes their physiology, ecology, behavior, evolutionary adaptation, and probability of extirpation/extinction. The more physiologically-grounded approaches to [...]
The evolution of conspicuousness in frogs: when to signal toxicity?
Published: 2022-04-06
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Many organisms use conspicuous color patterns to advertise their toxicity or unpalatability, a strategy known as aposematism. Despite the recognized benefits of this anti-predator tactic, not all chemically defended species exhibit warning coloration. Here, we use a comparative approach to investigate which factors predict the evolution of conspicuousness in frogs, a group in which conspicuous [...]
Surprising Abundant Mussel Beds in the Center of Boston Harbor in the Midst of a Regional Die-Back
Published: 2022-04-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Mussel beds in the rocky intertidal of New England have long been a paradigmatic example of how physical forces – wave action – reduces predator abundance and enables a distinct ecological community. These beds, however, have witnessed a precipitous >60% decline since the 1970s for currently unknown reasons. Here we report on the surprising persistence of large dense mussel beds in the middle [...]
Reducing the biases in false correlations between discrete characters
Published: 2022-04-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The correlation between two characters is often interpreted as evidence that there exists a significant and biologically important relationship between them. However, Maddison and FitzJohn (2015) recently pointed out that in certain situations find evidence of correlated evolution between two categorical characters is often spurious, particularly, when the dependent relationship stems from a [...]
A human-neutral large carnivore? No patterns in the body mass of gray wolves (Canis lupus) across a gradient of anthropization
Published: 2022-04-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
English - The gray wolf (Canis lupus) expanded its distribution in Europe over the last few decades. To better understand the extent to which wolves could re-occupy their historical range, nowadays including anthropized landscapes, it is important to test if and how anthropization can affect fitness-related traits in this species. We modeled how anthropization was associated with the body [...]
Plant spectra as integrative measures of plant phenotypes
Published: 2022-03-24
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Spectroscopy at the leaf or canopy scales is becoming one of the core tools of plant functional ecology. Remotely sensed reflectance spectra can allow ecologists to infer plant traits and strategies—and the community- or ecosystem-level processes they correlate with—continuously over unprecedented spatial scales. 2. Because of the complex entanglement of structural and chemical factors that [...]
Evidence-based Protection of Sea Turtle Eggs and Hatchery Practices
Published: 2022-03-24
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
It is important for emerging conservationists and wildlife managers to gain experience in the use of evidence-based conservation, by way of critical analysis and understanding of the context and application of conservation actions. We developed a teaching case and activity for undergraduate and graduate courses in conservation biology, wildlife management etc., although it could also be adopted [...]
Synergies and complementarities between ecosystem risk assessment and ecosystem accounting
Published: 2022-03-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Safeguarding biodiversity and human well-being depends on sustaining ecosystems. Global agreements, such as the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and UN Sustainable Development Goals, aim to halt and reverse loss and degradation of ecosystems, associated biodiversity and ecosystem services. They require standardised information for quantifying where ecosystem loss and degradation is [...]
Urban food forestry transforms fine-scale soil function for rapid and uniform carbon sequestration
Published: 2022-03-21
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Urbanization displaces agriculture and natural ecosystems, constraining food security and carbon (C) sinks. A proposed solution, Urban Food Forestry (UFF), promises local food from trees that can sequester C faster than other land cover types as long as soil function improves. We compared fine-scale variation in soil physical, chemical and biological properties within and between UFF and [...]
Biofilm formation is intrinsic to the origin of life
Published: 2022-03-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Biofilm formation the build up of multicellular, often surface-associated, communities of autonomous cells, is the natural mode of growth of up to 80% of microorganisms living on this planet. Their tolerance against multiple environmental stresses makes biofilms refractory towards antimicrobial treatment strategies and the actions of the immune system. But how did biofilm formation arise? Here, I [...]
Defence mitigation by predators of chemically defended prey integrated over the predation cycle and across biological levels
Published: 2022-03-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The long-term evolution of species involved in predator-prey interactions has resulted in many examples of specialised prey defences. The methods that predators use to mitigate prey defences has received less attention. The frequent reference to an arms races or coevolution without clear evidence that both strategies evolved under the influence of each other is problematic. In this review, we use [...]
Interpolation of temporal biodiversity change, loss, and gain across scales: a machine learning approach
Published: 2022-03-15
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistics and Probability
1. Estimates of temporal change of biodiversity, and its components loss and gain, are needed at local and geographical scales. However, we lack them because of data in-completeness, heterogeneity, and lack of temporal replication. Hence, we need a tool to integrate heterogeneous data and to account for their incompleteness. 2. We introduce spatiotemporal machine learning interpolation that can [...]