Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Lets talk about sex: what influences researchers’ perceptions of sex differences in animal behaviour?
Published: 2020-12-18
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The traditional theory of sexual selection posits the idea of sex roles: females should be choosy and caring, while males should be competitive and promiscuous. Despite criticism of these stereotypes from some evolutionary biologists, sex roles still appear as a norm in the literature. This may be because scientists anthropomorphize animal behaviours, which raises the question of whether human [...]
Computer vision, machine learning, and the promise of phenomics in ecology and evolutionary biology
Published: 2020-12-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
For centuries, ecologists and evolutionary biologists have used images such as drawings, paintings and photographs to record and quantify the shapes and patterns of life. With the advent of digital imaging, biologists continue to collect image data at an ever-increasing rate. This immense body of data provides insight into a wide range of biological phenomena, including phenotypic trait [...]
Large contribution of recent photosynthate to soil respiration in Dipterocarpaceae-dominated tropical forest revealed by girdling
Published: 2020-12-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
• Tropical forests are the most productive terrestrial ecosystem, fixing around 41 Pg of carbon from the atmosphere each year. A substantial portion of this carbon is allocated belowground to roots and root-associated microorganisms. However, there have been very few empirical studies on the dynamics of this transfer, especially in tropical forests where the response is mediated by high plant [...]
Visual and olfactory cues of predation affect body and brain growth in the guppy
Published: 2020-12-15
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
1. Phenotypic plasticity requires animals to acquire reliable environmental information. When multiple sources of information agree, cues should be perceived as reliable and induce a relatively strong response. Conversely, where stimuli conflict, animals must weigh the accuracy of the sources of information and responses should be reduced. 2. Availability of reliable information is often [...]
Beta and phylogenetic diversities tell complementary stories about ecological networks biogeography
Published: 2020-12-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The beta-diversity of interactions between communities does not necessarily correspond to the differences related to their species composition because interactions show greater variability than species co-occurrence. Additionally, the structure of species interaction networks can itself vary over spatial gradients, thereby adding constraints on the dissimilarity of communities in space. We used [...]
Concepts and applications in functional diversity
Published: 2020-12-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The use of functional analyses in ecology has grown exponentially over the past two decades, broadening our understanding of biological diversity and its change across space and time. Virtually all ecological sub-disciplines recognize the critical value of looking at species and communities from a functional perspective, and this has led to a proliferation of methods for estimating contrasting [...]
Space-for-time inferences about range-edge dynamics of tree species can be influenced by sampling biases
Published: 2020-12-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Differences between the distributions of tree saplings and adults in geographic or niche space have been used to infer climate change effects on tree range dynamics. Previous studies have reported narrower latitudinal or climatic niche ranges of juvenile trees compared to adults, concluding that tree ranges are contracting, contradicting climate-based predictions. However, more comprehensive [...]
Ecological Countermeasures for Pandemic Prevention: When Ecological Restoration is a Human Health Imperative
Published: 2020-12-06
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Bacteriology, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, Immunopathology, Integrative Biology, International Public Health, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Parasitology, Pathogenic Microbiology, Population Biology, Public Health, Systems Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Microbiology and Immunobiology, Veterinary Pathology and Pathobiology, Zoology
Ecological restoration should be regarded as a public health service. Unfortunately, the lack of quantitative linkages between environmental and human health has limited recognition of these principle. Advent of COVID-19 pandemic provides the impetus for the further discussion. We propose ecological countermeasures as highly targeted, landscape-based interventions to arrest the drivers of land [...]
Experimentally testing the response of feral cats and their prey to poison baiting
Published: 2020-12-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Feral cats Felis catus have caused the decline and extinction of many species worldwide, particularly on islands and in Australia where native species are generally naïve to the threat of this introduced predator. Effectively reducing cat populations to protect wildlife is challenging because cats have a cryptic nature, high reproductive rate and strong reinvasion ability. We experimentally [...]
All together now: Limitations and recommendations for the simultaneous analysis of all eukaryotic soil sequences
Published: 2020-12-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The soil environment contains a large, but historically underexplored reservoir of biodiversity. While sequencing of prokaryotic marker genes has become commonplace for the discovery and characterization of soil bacteria and archaea, this approach has been increasingly applied to sequencing eukaryotic marker genes to characterize the diversity of soil eukaryotes. However, understanding the [...]
Qualitative and quantitative methods show stability in patterns of Cepaea nemoralis shell polymorphism in the Pyrenees over five decades
Published: 2020-12-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
One of the emerging strengths of working with the land snail genus Cepaea is that historical collections can be compared against modern day samples, for instance to understand the impact of changing climate and habitat upon shell morph frequencies. However, one potential limitation is that prior studies scored shell ground colour by eye, usually in the field, into three discrete colours yellow, [...]
Evidence for an Allee effect in a declining fur seal population
Published: 2020-11-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Population Biology
Allee effects play an important role in the dynamics of many populations and can increase the risk of local extinction. However, some authors have questioned the weight of evidence for Allee effects in wild populations. We therefore exploited a natural experiment provided by two adjacent breeding colonies of contrasting density to investigate the potential for Allee effects in an Antarctic fur [...]
Adaptive ageing theory of faster adaptation and inconsistency of the conventional selection shadow evolutionary theory of ageing.
Published: 2020-11-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Selection shadow has been the conventional theory of evolution of ageing for decades. I argue that selection shadow is merely a phenomenon by which deleterious mutation will be inevitably passed on if they manifest only after mating. However, to explain prevalence of ageing, the authors of the conventional theory erroneously equated passing on and persistence by interpreting selection shadow as [...]
Mobilising molluscan models and genomes in biology
Published: 2020-11-24
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Laboratory and Basic Science Research Life Sciences, Life Sciences
Molluscs are amongst the most ancient, diverse, and important of all animal taxa. Even so, no individual mollusc species has emerged as a broadly applied model system in biology. We here make the case that both perceptual and methodological barriers have played a role in the relative neglect of molluscs as research organisms. We then summarize the current application and potential of molluscs and [...]
Land use-induced spillover: priority actions for protected and conserved area managers
Published: 2020-11-24
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Biodiversity, Communication, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies, Geography, Health Policy, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, International and Area Studies, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Immunology and Infectious Disease, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation, Population Biology, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Public Health, Public Policy, Recreation, Parks and Tourism Administration, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Veterinary Medicine
Earth systems are under ever greater pressure from human population expansion and intensifying natural resource use. Consequently, novel micro-organisms that cause disease are emerging, dynamics of pathogens in wildlife are altered by land use change bringing wildlife and people in closer contact. We provide a brief overview of the processes governing ‘land use-induced spillover’, emphasising [...]