Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Synergies and complementarities between ecosystem risk assessment and ecosystem accounting
Published: 2022-03-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Safeguarding biodiversity and human well-being depends on sustaining ecosystems. Global agreements, such as the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and UN Sustainable Development Goals, aim to halt and reverse loss and degradation of ecosystems, associated biodiversity and ecosystem services. They require standardised information for quantifying where ecosystem loss and degradation is [...]
Urban food forestry transforms fine-scale soil function for rapid and uniform carbon sequestration
Published: 2022-03-22
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Urbanization displaces agriculture and natural ecosystems, constraining food security and carbon (C) sinks. A proposed solution, Urban Food Forestry (UFF), promises local food from trees that can sequester C faster than other land cover types as long as soil function improves. We compared fine-scale variation in soil physical, chemical and biological properties within and between UFF and [...]
Biofilm formation is intrinsic to the origin of life
Published: 2022-03-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Biofilm formation the build up of multicellular, often surface-associated, communities of autonomous cells, is the natural mode of growth of up to 80% of microorganisms living on this planet. Their tolerance against multiple environmental stresses makes biofilms refractory towards antimicrobial treatment strategies and the actions of the immune system. But how did biofilm formation arise? Here, I [...]
Defence mitigation by predators of chemically defended prey integrated over the predation cycle and across biological levels
Published: 2022-03-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The long-term evolution of species involved in predator-prey interactions has resulted in many examples of specialised prey defences. The methods that predators use to mitigate prey defences has received less attention. The frequent reference to an arms races or coevolution without clear evidence that both strategies evolved under the influence of each other is problematic. In this review, we use [...]
Interpolation of temporal biodiversity change, loss, and gain across scales: a machine learning approach
Published: 2022-03-16
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistics and Probability
1. Estimates of temporal change of biodiversity, and its components loss and gain, are needed at local and geographical scales. However, we lack them because of data in-completeness, heterogeneity, and lack of temporal replication. Hence, we need a tool to integrate heterogeneous data and to account for their incompleteness. 2. We introduce spatiotemporal machine learning interpolation that can [...]
Endosymbiosis or Bust: Influence of Ectosymbiosis on Evolution of Obligate Endosymbiosis
Published: 2022-03-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Endosymbiosis, symbiosis in which one symbiont lives inside another, is woven throughout the history of life and the story of its evolution. From the mitochondrion residing in almost every eukaryotic cell to the gut microbiome found in every human, endosymbiosis is a cornerstone of the biological processes that sustain life on Earth. While endosymbiosis is ubiquitous, many questions about its [...]
Keep Your Frenemies Closer: Bacteriophage That Benefit Their Hosts Evolve to be More Temperate
Published: 2022-03-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Bacteriophages, also known as phages, are viruses that infect bacteria. They are found everywhere in nature, playing vital roles in microbiomes and bacterial evolution due to the selective pressure that they place on their hosts. As obligate endosymbionts, phages depend on bacteria for successful reproduction, and either destroy their hosts through lysis or are maintained within the host through [...]
Machine learning pipeline extracts biologically significant data automatically from avian monitoring videos
Published: 2022-03-08
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Measuring parental care behaviour in the wild is central to the study of animal life-history trade-offs, but is often labour and time-intensive. More efficient machine learning-based video processing tools have recently emerged that allow parental nest visit rates to be measured using video cameras and computer processing. Here, we used open-source software to detect movement events from videos [...]
Technical comment on Negative-assortative mating for color in wolves
Published: 2022-03-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Hedrick et al. (2016) reported on "negative-assortative mating for color in wolves" from Yellowstone National Park, the "first documented case of significant negative-assortative mating in mammals." Here I report a logical inconsistency in their population genetic model that effectively imposes selection against some assortatively mating genotype. After pointing out this inconsistency, I derive [...]
Summer temperature – but not growing season length – influences radial growth of Salix arctica in coastal Arctic tundra
Published: 2022-03-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Arctic climate change is leading to an advance of plant phenology (the timing of life history events) with uncertain impacts on tundra ecosystems. Although the lengthening of the growing season is thought to lead to increased plant growth, we have few studies of how plant phenology change is altering tundra plant productivity. Here, we test the correspondence between 14 years of Salix arctica [...]
Long-term trends in seasonality and abundance of three key zooplankters in the upper San Francisco Estuary
Published: 2022-03-02
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Zooplankton provide critical food for threatened and endangered fish species in the San Francisco Estuary (estuary). Reduced food supply has been implicated in the Pelagic Organism Decline of the early 2000s and further changes in zooplankton abundance, seasonality, and distribution may continue to threaten declining fishes. While we have a wealth of monitoring data, we know little about the [...]
Dirty Transmission Hypothesis: Increased Mutations During Horizontal Transmission Can Select for Increased Levels of Mutualism in Endosymbionts
Published: 2022-02-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
A mutualistic symbiosis occurs when organisms of different species cooperate closely for a net benefit over time. Mutualistic relationships are important for human health, food production, and ecosystem maintenance. However, they can evolve to parasitism or breakdown all together and the conditions that maintain and influence them are not completely understood. Vertical and horizontal [...]
Mountain Gorillas benefit from social distancing too: Close proximity from tourists affects gorillas sociality
Published: 2022-02-26
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Gorilla tourism supports the protection of the gorilla ecosystem, benefiting humans and wildlife populations living therein. Assessing to what degree the presence and proximity of tourists affect wildlife aids long-term benefits. Because wild animals might see human activities as stressors, we hypothesised that the increased presence and proximity of tourists leads to an immediate increase in [...]
Survival of the luckiest
Published: 2022-02-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Opposite dynamics are behind natural selection and sexual selection. While the fittest survives in natural selection, the survivor will most likely be the luckiest when both dynamics are combined.
Achieving global biodiversity goals by 2050 requires urgent and integrated actions
Published: 2022-02-25
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Plant Sciences
Human impacts on the Earth’s biosphere are driving the global biodiversity crisis. Governments are preparing to agree on a set of actions intended to halt the loss of biodiversity and put it on a path to recovery by 2050. We provide evidence that the proposed actions can bend the curve for biodiversity, but only if these actions are implemented urgently and in an integrated manner.