Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Warm Temperate Northwest Atlantic
Published: 2024-06-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The ‘Mangroves of the Warm Temperate Northwest Atlantic’ province is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Carolinian and Northern Gulf of Mexico. The biota is characterized by 3 species of mangroves: Avicennia germinans, Laguncularia racemosa, and Rhizophora mangle, and 1 mangrove associate Conocarpus erectus, [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Tropical East Pacific
Published: 2024-06-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Tropical East Pacific (TEP) province is a regional ecosystem subgroup (Level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology), present in the coastal ecoregions of the Mexican Tropical Pacific, Chiapas-Nicaragua, Nicoya, Panama Bight, and Guayaquil. In 2020, mangroves cover 7782 km2 in the province, representing 5.3% of the global coverage. In the province, there are eight true [...]
Asian Hornbill Bibliography: a dynamic, online, open-access reference database for use in manuscript citations and hornbill research
Published: 2024-06-18
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Library and Information Science, Nature and Society Relations, Ornithology, Plant Sciences, Publishing, Scholarly Publishing
Bibliographic databases and citation tools are integral aids to research. The Asian Hornbill Bibliography presents a compendium of research on Asian hornbills by combining an open access bibliographic database with the free and open source reference manager, Zotero. The bibliography, also hosted and made accessible from the IUCN Hornbill Specialist Group website, includes 725 publications, [...]
Predator activity, proactive anti-predator strategies, and nesting phenology produce a dynamic landscape of risk to tundra goose reproduction
Published: 2024-06-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Birds generally rely on proactive anti-predator strategies when selecting nest sites, as they have limited options to adapt to changing levels of risk once incubation begins. Arctic waterfowl often nest colonially as an anti-predator strategy but dispersed-breeding species may use other proactive strategies, such as nesting in less risky areas. However, empirical links between spatial patterns of [...]
Biodiversity indicators miss local and short-term change: A blank space waiting to be filled
Published: 2024-06-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The year 2030 is rapidly approaching. Building, monitoring, and reporting indicators to evaluate the 2030 targets in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is a major challenge that requires, at minimum, nations to assess their progress at least once within the next five years. To effectively capture this progress, we need indicators that capture fast-paced, on-the-ground [...]
The promise of community-driven preprints in ecology and evolution
Published: 2024-06-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Publishing preprints is quickly becoming commonplace in ecology and evolutionary biology. Preprints can facilitate the rapid sharing of scientific knowledge establishing precedence and enabling feedback from the research community before peer review. Yet, significant barriers to preprint use exist including language barriers, a lack of understanding about the benefits of preprints and a lack of [...]
Making use of spatially biased variables in ecosystem condition accounting – a GIS based workflow
Published: 2024-06-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring
Ecosystem Condition Accounts (ECA) should reflect the integrity or quality of all nature inside the scope of the account, and therefore rely on spatially representative indicators for condition. All ECAs are subject to data constraints in some way. Therefore, being able to make use of spatially biased data sets would be very valuable. For national ECAs, modelling approaches can in some cases be [...]
Behavioral flexibility is similar in two closely related species where only one is rapidly expanding its geographic range
Published: 2024-06-06
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Comparative Psychology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Human modified environments are rapidly increasing, which puts other species in the precarious position of either adapting to a new area or, if they are not able to adapt, shifting their range to a more suitable environment. It is generally thought that behavioral flexibility, the ability to change behavior when circumstances change, plays an important role in the ability of a species to rapidly [...]
Tail-dependence of masting synchrony results in continent-wide seed scarcity
Published: 2024-06-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Spatial synchrony may be tail-dependent, meaning it is stronger for peaks rather than troughs, or vice versa. High interannual variation in seed production in perennial plants, called masting, can be synchronized at subcontinental scales, triggering extensive resource pulses or famines. We used data from 99 populations of European beech (\emph{Fagus sylvatica}) to examine whether masting [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Western Indian Ocean
Published: 2024-06-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
‘Mangroves of the Western Indian Ocean’ is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). This province spans 10 countries and includes the following marine ecoregions: Cargados Carajos/Tromelin Island, Delagoa, Mascarene Islands, Seychelles, Southeast Madagascar, East African Coral Coast, Northern Monsoon Current Coast, Bight of Sofala/Swamp [...]
Supporting study registration to reduce research waste
Published: 2024-06-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Research suffers from many inefficiencies. These lead to much research being avoidably wasted, with no or limited value to the end user (e.g. an estimated 82-89% of ecological research, and 85% of medical research). Here, we argue that the quality and impact of ecological research could be drastically improved by registration: pre-registration, and registered reports. However, without a [...]
Eco-evolutionary dynamics in grasslands during land use change: consequences for plant-microbe interactions and ecosystem function
Published: 2024-05-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Land use change can cause the loss of plant species and functional diversity, but whether it drives eco-evolutionary changes within plant species is unclear. 2. Semi-natural grasslands are particularly threatened by land use change, including management intensification on productive soils and abandonment on marginal land. As such, they serve as an excellent system for exploring if and how [...]
Evolutionary principles underpinning codon usage bias: patterns, functions, and mechanisms
Published: 2024-05-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Synonymous codons are used unevenly despite coding for the same amino acid. Recent work has provided critical insights into the functions, mechanisms, and fitness consequences of codon usage bias and synonymous mutations. However, experiments aimed at understanding the role of synonymous mutations often involve only a small number of reporter genes. How do these observations generalize across [...]
The role of large language models in interdisciplinary research: opportunities, challenges, and ways forward
Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
1. Large language models (LLMs) are gaining importance in research as they offer many benefits. One often overlooked benefit is their potential to facilitate and support interdisciplinary research, which is key to addressing current global challenges, such as the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. 2. LLMs can help reduce the [...]
Poor hypotheses and research waste in biology: learning from a theory crisis in psychology
Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
While psychologists have extensively discussed a ‘theory crisis’, there has been no debate about such a crisis in biology. However, biologists, especially those working in the fields of ecology and evolution, have long discussed communication failures between theoreticians and empiricists. We argue such failure is one aspect of a theory crisis because misapplied and misunderstood [...]