Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Quantifying soil microbial effects on plant species coexistence: a conceptual synthesis

Gaurav Kandlikar

Published: 2024-01-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Soil microorganisms play a critical role in shaping the biodiversity dynamics of plant communities. These microbial effects can arise through direct mediation of plant fitness by pathogens and mutualists, and over the past two decades, numerous studies have shined a spotlight on the role of dynamic feedbacks between plants and soil microorganisms as key determinants of plant species coexistence. [...]

Puma space use and dispersal in tropical biodiversity hotspots: bridging a gap to connect individuals to populations

Bernardo Brandão Niebuhr, Sandra Maria Cintra Cavalcanti, Ermeson A. Vilalba, et al.

Published: 2024-01-25
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology

Assessing residency and dispersal behavior of apex predators and its consequences for landscape connectivity is of paramount importance for understanding population- and ecosystem- effects of anthropogenic land use change. However, basic information on animal space use is still lacking, particularly in the Tropics. Here we synthesize ranging and dispersal ecological information on pumas (Puma [...]

Predicting organismal response to marine heatwaves using mechanistic thermal landscape models

Andrew R Villeneuve, Easton R White

Published: 2024-01-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Marine heatwaves (MHWs) can cause thermal stress in marine ectotherms, experienced as a pulse against the press of anthropogenic warming. When thermal stress exceeds organismal capacity to maintain homeostasis, organism survival becomes time-limited and can result in mass mortality events. Current methods of detecting and categorizing MHWs rely on statistical analysis of historic climatology, and [...]

A systematic review and meta-analysis of anti-predator mechanisms of eyespots: conspicuous pattern vs eye mimicry

Ayumi Mizuno, Malgorzata Lagisz, Pietro Pollo, et al.

Published: 2024-01-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Eyespot patterns have evolved in many prey species. These patterns were traditionally explained by the eye mimicry hypothesis, which proposes that eyespots resembling vertebrate eyes function as predator avoidance. However, it is possible that eyespots are not the mimicry of eyes: according to the conspicuousness hypothesis, eyespots are just one form of vivid aposematic signals where only [...]

Evidence to inform spatial management of a western Pacific Ocean tuna purse seine fishery

Eric Gilman, Milani Chaloupka, Nialangis Posanau, et al.

Published: 2024-01-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology

Fisheries can have profound impacts on co-occurring species exposed to incidental capture, particularly those with life history traits that make them vulnerable to elevated mortality levels. Fisheries spatial management holds substantial potential to balance socioeconomic benefits and costs to threatened bycatch species. This study analyzed observer program data for a western Pacific Ocean tuna [...]

No time to die: Temporal patterns of nest predation in a multi-brooded Southern Hemisphere passerine bird

Richard S. Turner, Helen L. Osmond, Robert D. Magrath, et al.

Published: 2024-01-18
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Ornithology

1. Nest predation is frequently the primary cause of early-life mortality in wild avian populations, generating selection for optimising the timing of reproduction to reduce predation risk. Investigating temporal patterns of nest predation is therefore necessary for understanding the intricate relationships between birds and their predators. 2. In this study, we considered the role of temporal [...]

Opportunity Begets Opportunity to Drive Macroevolutionary Dynamics of a Diverse Lizard Radiation

Laura Alencar, Orlando Schwery, Meaghan R. Gade, et al.

Published: 2024-01-18
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Evolution proceeds unevenly across the tree of life, with some lineages accumulating diversity more rapidly than others. Explaining this disparity is challenging as similar evolutionary triggers often do not result in analogous shifts across the tree, and similar shifts may reflect different evolutionary triggers. We used a combination of approaches to directly consider such context-dependency [...]

neonPlantEcology: an R package for preparing NEON plant data for use in ecological research.

Adam Lee Mahood, Jacob Macdonald, Ranjan Muthukrishnan, et al.

Published: 2024-01-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a continental-scale endeavor of ecological data collection for 30 years. We created a software package, neonPlantEcology that automatically arranges the raw data from the plant presence and percent cover (DP1.10058.001) data product from NEON into tables familiar to plant ecologists. Because of the broad scale of the observatory, it is [...]

Asteraceae in isolation: diversity and island biogeography of the largest plant family

Lizzie Roeble, Koen van Benthem, Patrick Weigelt, et al.

Published: 2024-01-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

The hyperdiverse plant family Asteraceae, with over 32,000 species globally, forms an iconic component of island floras, including many spectacular radiations, but a global picture of their insular diversity is lacking. Here, we uncover the global biogeographical and evolutionary patterns of Asteraceae on islands to reveal the magnitude and potential causes of their evolutionary success. We [...]

A big data and machine learning approach for monitoring the condition of ecosystems

Miguel Equihua, Octavio Pérez-Maqueo, Julián Equihua, et al.

Published: 2024-01-16
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Ecosystems are highly valuable as a source of goods and services and as a heritage for future generations. Knowing their condition is extremely important for all management and conservation activities and public policies. Until now, the evaluation of ecosystem condition has been unsatisfactory and thus lacks practical implementation for most countries. We propose that ecosystem integrity is a [...]

Incubation behaviour of a boreal, food-caching passerine nesting in sub-zero temperatures

Joseph Burant, Roxan Chicalo, Emily J Williams, et al.

Published: 2024-01-14
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Our understanding of avian incubation behaviour is primarily derived from species that nest in the temperate conditions of spring and summer. This leaves uncertainties about strategies employed by a relatively small number of species adapted to breed under sub-zero, winter-like conditions. We used in-nest temperature loggers (iButtons) to monitor incubation behaviours of Canada Jays, [...]

Dense Sampling Phylogenomics Reveals Highly Dynamic Evolution of Batesian Mimicry Accuracy in Two Clades of Myrmecomorphic Spiders

Michael Kelly, Shahan Derkarabetian, Jim McLean, et al.

Published: 2024-01-14
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics

Batesian mimicry is an impressive example of convergent evolution driven by predation. However, the observation that many mimics only superficially resemble their models despite strong selective pressures is an apparent paradox. Here, we tested whether inaccurate mimicry represents an optimized or transitional stage at the macro-evolutionary scale by performing the hereto largest phylogenetic [...]

Animal social networks are robust to changing association definitions

Alex Hoi Hang Chan, Jamie Dunning, Terry Burke, et al.

Published: 2024-01-12
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology

The interconnecting links (edges) between individuals (nodes) in an animal social network are often defined by discrete, directed behaviours (interactions). However, where interactions are difficult to observe, a network edge is instead defined as individuals sharing space or overlapping in time (an association). Despite an increasingly accessible toolkit to assemble and analyse animal social [...]

Vulnerability of amphibians to global warming

Patrice Pottier, Michael R. Kearney, Nicholas C. Wu, et al.

Published: 2024-01-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Amphibians are the most threatened vertebrates, yet their resilience to rising temperatures remains poorly understood. This is primarily because knowledge of thermal tolerance is taxonomically and geographically biased, compromising global climate vulnerability assessments. Here, we employed a novel data imputation approach to predict the heat tolerance of 60% of amphibian species and assessed [...]

Meta-analysis reveals that the effects of precipitation change on soil and litter fauna in forests depends on body size

Philip Martin, Leonora Fisher, Leticia Pérez-Izquierdo, et al.

Published: 2024-01-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Anthropogenic climate change is altering precipitation regimes at a global scale. While precipitation changes have been linked to changes in the abundance and diversity of soil and litter invertebrate fauna in forests, general trends have remained elusive due to mixed results from primary studies. We used a meta-analysis based on 352 comparisons from 30 primary studies to address associated [...]

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