Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Litter decomposition is moderated by scale-dependent microenvironmental variation in tundra ecosystems
Published: 2022-04-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Tundra soils are one of the world’s largest organic carbon stores, yet this carbon is vulnerable to accelerated decomposition as climate warming progresses. We currently know very little about landscape-scale controls of litter decomposition in tundra ecosystems, which hinders our understanding of the global carbon cycle. 2. Here, we examined how local-scale topography, surface air [...]
Integrating presence-only and presence-absence data to model changes in species geographic ranges: An example of yaguarundí in Latin America
Published: 2022-04-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Anthropogenic changes such as land use and climate change affect species’ geographic ranges, causing range shifts, contractions, or expansions. However, data on range dynamics are insufficient, heterogeneous, and spatially and temporally biased in most regions. Integrated species distribution models (IDMs) offer a solution as they can complement good quality presence-absence data with [...]
High compositional dissimilarity among small communities is decoupled from environmental variation
Published: 2022-04-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Communities composed of small populations are predicted to be strongly influenced by stochastic demographic events and, thus, less affected by environmental selection than those composed of large populations. However, this prediction has only been tested with computer simulations, simplified controlled experiments, and limited observational data. Here, using multiple datasets on fish abundance in [...]
Patterns of selection across gene regulatory networks
Published: 2022-04-25
Subjects: Cell and Developmental Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) are the core engine of organismal development. If we would like to understand the origin and diversification of phenotypes, it is necessary to consider the structure of GRNs in order to reconstruct the links between genetic mutations and phenotypic change. Much of the progress in evolutionary developmental biology, however, has occurred without a nuanced [...]
Intra-individual variation in Galium odoratum is partly genetically based and is affected by experimental drought and shading
Published: 2022-04-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Background and aims: Climate-change induced warmer spring temperatures advance tree leaf-out and result in earlier shading of the forest floor. Climate change also leads to more frequent droughts. Forest understorey herbs may respond to these environmental changes by varying functional traits at different hierarchical levels of organisation. While trait variation at the intra-specific level is [...]
Multi-population analysis reveals spatial consistency in drivers of population dynamics of a declining migratory bird
Published: 2022-04-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Population Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Survival Analysis, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Many migratory species are in decline across their geographical ranges. Single-population studies can provide important insights into drivers at a local scale, but effective conservation requires multi-population perspectives. This is challenging because relevant data are often hard to consolidate, and state-of-the-art analytical tools are typically tailored to specific datasets. We capitalized [...]
Temporary behavioral responses to playbacks by a pest parrot and implications for management
Published: 2022-04-21
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Human-wildlife interactions continue to increase due to anthropogenic disturbances, with some interactions resulting in conflict. Leveraging a taxa’s bias for a particular sensory cue is a promising management avenue for reducing the potential and realized negative consequences of human-wildlife conflict. For instance, many avian species heavily depend on acoustic communication, and acoustic cues [...]
Plant families exhibit unique geographic trends in C4 richness and cover
Published: 2022-04-18
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Numerous studies have analysed the relationship between C4 plant cover and climate. However, few have examined how different C4 taxa vary in their response to climate, or how environmental factors alter C4:C3 abundance. Here we investigate (a) how proportional C4 plant cover and richness (relative to C3) responds to changes in climate and local environmental factors, and (b) if this response is [...]
Towards a cohesive understanding of ecological complexity
Published: 2022-04-15
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Systems Biology
Understanding phenomena typical of complex systems is key for progress in ecology and conservation amidst escalating global environmental change. However, myriad definitions of complexity hamper conceptual advancements and synthesis. Ecological complexity may be better understood by following the strong theoretical basis of complexity science. We conduct bibliometric and text-mining analyses to [...]
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 [...]