Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Timing and intensity of weather events shape nestling development strategies in three alpine breeding songbirds
Published: 2020-06-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Across taxa, offspring size traits are linked to survival, and life-time fitness. Inclement weather can be a major constraint on offspring growth and parental care. Despite the adaptive benefits of larger offspring, we have a limited understanding of the effects of severe environmental conditions across developmental stages and how coping strategies differ among species. We assessed the influence [...]
FIRED (Fire Events Delineation): An open, flexible algorithm & database of US fire events derived from the MODIS burned area product (2001-19)
Published: 2020-06-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Harnessing the fire data revolution, i.e., the abundance of information from satellites, government records, social media, and human health sources, now requires complex and challenging data integration approaches. Defining fire events is key to that effort. In order to understand the spatial and temporal characteristics of fire, or the classic fire regime concept, we need to critically define [...]
Ecosystem-based metrics provide better targets than explicit extinction targets for biodiversity frameworks
Published: 2020-06-26
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The post-2020 global biodiversity framework has the potential to shape the future of life on Earth, so great care must be taken in deciding its aims. The failure of all but one of the Aichi Targets requires a rethinking of prior agreements [1], and conservationists are now exploring new types of targets that are more likely to succeed. One commonly-suggested potential metric is extinction, with [...]
Variation in regrowth ability in relation to land use intensity and predictability in three common grassland herbs
Published: 2020-06-25
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aims Plant populations in managed grasslands are subject to strong selection exerted by grazing, mowing and fertilization. Many previous studies showed that this can cause evolutionary changes in mean trait values, but little is known about the evolution of adaptive plant phenotypic plasticity in response to grassland management. Methods We conducted an outdoor common garden experiment to test [...]
Online conferences for better learning
Published: 2020-06-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Conferences provide an invaluable set of opportunities for professional development. Online, virtual, and distributed conferences do not necessarily mean less opportunity for growth and innovation in science but varied and novel options for communicating the scientific process. Open science and many existing tools and structures are in place in the practice of contemporary ecology and evolution [...]
PRIORITY EFFECTS AND ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION
Published: 2020-06-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Priority effects refer to the order or timing of species arrival, including how species that arrive early to a site either positively or negatively affect establishment, growth, or reproduction of species that arrive later. Despite clear implications of priority effects on ecological restoration, to date there are no reviews of how and where priority effects have been studied and the extent to [...]
Husby, Reed & Visser - Demonstrating temperature induced phenological mismatch does not require negative effects on fitness or population growth: A comment on Samplonius et al.
Published: 2020-06-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
In a recent article Samplonius et al. (2020; preprint on EcoEvoRxiv, Version 1, Submitted 05, 2020 | Last edited: May 06, 2020) argue that there are “systematic weaknesses in the evidence for temperature mediated phenological mismatch”. While we appreciate their review of the literature on this topic and their call for a broadening of the taxonomic and geographic scope of mismatch research, their [...]
Potential effects of habitat fragmentation on wild animal welfare
Published: 2020-06-18
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
The fragmentation of habitat has occurred throughout the history of life on Earth, but has been accelerated and magnified in scale over the past few centuries as a result of human industrial development. Habitat fragmentation affects the welfare of some wild animals directly, through the often violent processes that bring about fragmentation and by reducing the distance between them and the [...]
Do the ages of parents or helpers affect offspring fitness in a cooperatively breeding bird?
Published: 2020-06-16
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Age-related changes in either the phenotypes or genotypes of care-givers can impact juvenile performance. However, rarely in wild populations have germline and non-germline transgenerational effects of ageing been separately quantified. In cooperatively breeding animals, in addition to parental ages, the age of ‘helpers’ attending the nest may also impact juvenile performance. Using a wild [...]
Phylogeny can Inform Animal Model Development for Both Inherited and Induced Conditions: Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD)
Published: 2020-06-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The use of animal models in research on human and veterinary diseases and disorders is retracting, though it is likely to remain critical for decades. In light of increasing regulation and expectations of judicious use of animal subjects, we examine the idea that the use of animal models can be guided by phylogenetic relationships and modern evolutionary and cladistic analyses. Given that [...]
Potential long-distance dispersal of freshwater diatoms adhering to waterfowl plumage
Published: 2020-06-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Waterfowl are potential long-distance dispersal vectors for aquatic microbes such as diatoms, but supporting empirical data are scarce, especially concerning external transport on feathers. 2. We conducted an experiment designed to partially emulate diatom dispersal via adherence to waterfowl, and to evaluate the effects of relative humidity (RH) and exposure time on viability. We dipped [...]
A guide to using the Internet to monitor and quantify the wildlife trade
Published: 2020-05-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Life Sciences
The unrivalled growth in e-commerce of animals and plants presents an unprecedented opportunity to monitor wildlife trade to inform conservation, biosecurity, and law enforcement. Using the Internet to quantify the scale of the wildlife trade (volume, frequency) is a relatively recent and rapidly developing approach, which currently lacks an accessible framework for locating relevant websites and [...]
Local landscape position impacts demographic rates in a widespread North American steppe bunchgrass
Published: 2020-05-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
[this article now published at Ecosphere: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3351] Understanding the environmental drivers of demographic rates and population dynamics over space and time is critical for anticipating how species will respond to climate change. While the influence of temporal environmental variation and large environmental gradients are well recognized, less is known about how local [...]
Crowdsourcing global perspectives in ecology using social media
Published: 2020-05-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Transparent, open, and reproducible research is still far from routine, and the full potential of open science has not yet been realized. Crowdsourcing––defined as the usage of a flexible open call to a heterogeneous group of individuals to recruit volunteers for a task ––is an emerging scientific model that encourages larger and more outwardly transparent collaborations. While crowdsourcing, [...]
Fieldwork in landscape ecology
Published: 2020-05-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Fieldwork has played a critical role in the development of landscape ecology, and it remains essential for addressing contemporary challenges such as understanding the landscape ecology of global change. Advances in technology have expanded the scope of fieldwork to include the deployment of drones and other sensors, and in recent years, researchers have expressed concerns that traditional [...]