Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Navigating phylogenetic conflict and evolutionary inference in plants with target capture data
Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Target capture has quickly become a preferred approach for plant systematic and evolutionary research, marking a step-change in the generation of data for phylogenetic inference. While this advancement has facilitated the resolution of many phylogenetic relationships, phylogenetic conflict continues to be reported, and often attributed to genome duplication, reticulation, deep coalescence or [...]
Multiple Disturbances, Multiple Legacies: Fire, Canopy Gaps, and Deer Jointly Change the Forest Seed Bank
Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
The manipulation of pre-colonial disturbances in U.S. forests can play a critical role in determining ecological composition, structure, and function. However, our understanding of how concurrent disturbances influence non-tree species is extremely limited in forests. To this end, we used a long-term, multi-disturbance experiment in an oak dominated forest in West Virginia, U.S.A. that [...]
Is the audience gender-blind? Smaller audience in female talks highlights prestige differences in academia
Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Evolution, Gender Equity in Education, Higher Education, Inequality and Stratification, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Psychological Phenomena and Processes
Although diverse perspectives are fundamental for fostering and advancing science, power relations have limited the development, propagation of ideas, and recognition of minority groups in academia. Gender bias is one of the most well-documented processes, leading women to drop out of their academic careers due to fewer opportunities and lower prestige. Using long-term data (2008-2019) on talks [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Central Pacific
Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The Central Pacific mangrove province is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology) including the marine ecoregions of the Gilbert/Ellis Islands, Marshall Islands, Phoenix/Tokelau/Northern Cook Islands, and Samoa Islands. The Central Pacific mangroves had a mapped extent in 2020 of 4.8 km2, representing less than 0.01% of the global mangrove area. The biota [...]
Behavioral flexibility is related to foraging, but not social or habitat use behaviors, in a species that is rapidly expanding its range
Published: 2024-05-24
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Psychology
The ability of other species to adapt to human modified environments is increasingly crucial because of the rapid expansion of this landscape type. Behavioral flexibility, the ability to change behavior in the face of a changing environment by packaging information and making it available to other cognitive processes, is hypothesized to be a key factor in a species’ ability to successfully adapt [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Eastern Coral Triangle
Published: 2024-05-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Eastern Coral Triangle are a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of the Bismarck Sea, Solomon Archipelago, Solomon Sea, and Southeast Papua New Guinea. The mapped extent of mangroves in this province in 2020 was 2128.9 km2, representing 1.4% of the global mangrove area. The Eastern Coral Triangle is [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the South Kuroshio
Published: 2024-05-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mangroves of the South Kuroshio is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of the Central Kuroshio Current and South Kuroshio. In 2020, the mapped extent of the South Kuroshio mangrove province was 8.0 km2, representing less than 0.01% of the global mangrove area; the biota is characterized by 19 true mangrove species. [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Warm Temperate Northeast Pacific
Published: 2024-05-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Warm Temperate Northeast Pacific is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of the South-Californian Pacific and the Gulf of California. The mapped extent of the Warm Temperate Northeast Pacific mangrove province in 2020 was 1,810.4 km², which represents 1.5% of the global mangrove area. There are three [...]
Ten golden rules for restoration to secure resilient and just seagrass social-ecological systems
Published: 2024-05-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology, Plant Sciences
It is unequivocal that the world has lost a significant proportion of its seagrass, and although glimmers of hope exist, losses continue with many ongoing negative trajectories. First and foremost, we need to put the world on a global pathway to seagrass net gain. Conservation of what remains must be a priority, but we need to increase coverage at rates unlikely to be achieved naturally; [...]
A minimum data standard for wildlife disease studies
Published: 2024-05-19
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Diseases, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Parasitic Diseases, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Virology, Virus Diseases
Thousands of scientists and practitioners conduct research on infectious diseases of wildlife. Rapid and comprehensive data sharing is vital to the transparency and actionability of their work, but unfortunately, most efforts designed to publically share these data are focused on pathogen determination and genetic sequence data. Other facets of existing surveillance data – particularly [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Tropical Northwestern Atlantic
Published: 2024-05-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Tropical Northwestern Atlantic is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Bahamian, Carolinian, Eastern Caribbean, Floridian, Greater Antilles, Northern Gulf of Mexico, Southern Caribbean, Southern Gulf of Mexico, Southwestern Caribbean and Western Caribbean. The mapped extent of mangroves in 2020 [...]
Proactive management outperforms reactive strategies for wildlife disease control
Published: 2024-05-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Finding effective pathogen mitigation strategies is one of the biggest challenges humans face today. In the context of wildlife, emerging infectious diseases have repeatedly caused widespread host morbidity and population declines of numerous taxa. In areas yet unaffected by a pathogen, a proactive management approach has the potential to minimize or prevent host mortality. However, we typically [...]
Simple and robust models of ecological abundance
Published: 2024-05-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
1. Counts of species in ecological samples are of interest when they tell us about community assembly processes. Older process-based models of count distributions are either complex, widely rejected, or not able to predict high unevenness. 2. I leverage a general strategy for deriving simple one-parameter models. A distribution of abundances x on a continuous scale is predicted from a [...]
Brownification shapes the food web of aquatic invertebrates: a review
Published: 2024-05-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Brownification, a global phenomenon of increasing surface water colour to yellow-brown hues, has an array of effects on drinking water supply and aquatic biodiversity. Aquatic invertebrates, as indicators of aquatic ecosystem health and providers of ecosystem services, have received limited attention in the context of water browning. In this review, we explored the effects of brownification on [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of New Zealand
Published: 2024-05-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mangroves of New Zealand is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Central New Zealand, Northeastern New Zealand and Three Kings-North Cape. Their mapped extent in 2018 was 281.7 to 296.2 km2, representing 0.2% of the global mangrove area. The biota is characterized by a single species: Avicennia marina subsp. [...]