Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Quantifying clearance rates of restored shellfish reefs using modular baskets
Published: 2023-12-08
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management, Zoology
Shellfish reefs are among the most degraded ecosystems globally, prompting substantial efforts to restore them. While biodiversity gains of restored reefs are well documented, other ecosystem services such as water filtration remain poorly quantified. We present a novel way of measuring water filtration by restored reefs using modular restoration structures called Robust Oyster Baskets (ROB 400). [...]
Linking biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people (NCP): a macroecological energy flux perspective
Published: 2023-12-08
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Linking biodiversity and the provision of nature’s contribution to people (NCP) remains a challenge. This hinders our ability to properly cope with the decline in biodiversity and the provision of NCP under global climate and land use changes. Here, we propose a framework that combines biodiversity models with food web energy flux approaches to evaluate and map NCP at large spatio-temporal [...]
Towards the next generation of species delimitation methods: an overview of Machine Learning applications
Published: 2023-12-07
Subjects: Biology, Computational Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics
Species delimitation is the process of distinguishing between populations of the same species and distinct species of a particular group of organisms. Various methods exist for inferring species limits, whether based on morphological, molecular, or other types of data. In the case of methods based on DNA sequences, most of them are rooted in the coalescent theory. However, coalescence-based [...]
Historical redlining impacts wildlife biodiversity across California
Published: 2023-12-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Legacy effects describe the persistent, long-term impacts on an ecosystem following the removal of an abiotic or biotic feature. Redlining, a policy that codified racial segregation and disinvestment in minoritized neighborhoods, has produced legacy effects with profound impacts on urban ecosystem structure and health. These legacies have detrimentally impacted public health outcomes, [...]
Detecting context-dependence in the expression of life history tradeoffs
Published: 2023-12-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Population Biology
Life history tradeoffs are one of the central tenets of evolutionary demography. Tradeoffs, depicting negative covariances between individuals’ life history traits, can arise from genetic constraints, or from a finite amount of resources that each individual has to allocate in a zero-sum game between somatic and reproductive functions. While theory predicts that tradeoffs are ubiquitous, [...]
Genetic diversity decreases toward species range edges
Published: 2023-12-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Changing species distributions amidst global change underscores a pressing need to better understand the processes that cause range limits. However, despite over a century of work, there is no consensus regarding whether there are generalizable contributors to the emergence of species range limits. Species’ geographic distributions frequently taper without obvious physical or environmental [...]
Escape tendency and the mobility behavior of four alpine rodents do not change with altitude
Published: 2023-12-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Zoology
Behavioural responses are particularly important to quantify species-specific habitat influences on natural selection. Mountains, with their wide range of habitats, can be regarded as a valuable context where the environmental conditions influence animal behaviour. We studied the inter-specific variation in the escape tendency and the mobility behaviour in four alpine rodents’ species, a bank [...]
Functional coherence among miRNA targets: a potential metric for assessing biological signal among target prediction methods in non-model species
Published: 2023-11-30
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Although miRNA regulation of protein production is a likely target of adaptive evolution, high false-positive rates in the identification of mRNAs targeted by miRNAs in non-model species’ complicates interpretation of recent advances. Here we document the challenges and then outline steps for the community to address these challenges.
Vocal Dimorphism in Anna’s Hummingbirds
Published: 2023-11-28
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Zoology
Whereas vocal sexual dimorphism is widespread amongst birds, it has been historically overlooked in non-passerines such as hummingbirds. By evaluating correlations among sex, behaviors, and vocalizations, the meaning and utility of intentional sound production may be inferred. Anna's Hummingbirds (Calypte anna) exhibit pronounced sexual dimorphism, with males being larger and having more vibrant [...]
this version should be deleted, it is duplicated
Published: 2023-11-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
this version should be deleted it is duplicated with the ID 6292 which is the correct version. Please delete this entry. I don't know why you guys have created two entries and this one with a wrong file that reads for review only.
Opinion: Missing half the picture, focus on stony corals during bleaching events has left critical knowledge gaps in our understanding of reef-scale bleaching and recovery
Published: 2023-11-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Honest Signalling Made Simple
Published: 2023-11-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Honest communication is a common phenomenon in animal behaviour, and is frequently explained by appeal to the so-called handicap hypothesis by which signal costs deter dishonesty. However, the handicap models commonly used to explain honest signalling have has been subject to several lines of criticism in recent literature. This trend may have led researchers outside of the field of animal [...]
A pluralistic framework for measuring and stratifying heterogeneity in meta-analyses
Published: 2023-11-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistics and Probability
1. Measuring heterogeneity, or inconsistency, among effect sizes is a crucial step for interpreting the meta-analytic evidence across diverse taxonomic groups and spatiotemporal contexts. However, ecologists and evolutionary biologists often interpret mean population effects (i.e., meta-analytic mean effect size) as consistent, either explicitly or implicitly, without proper heterogeneity [...]
Amazonian soundscapes: unravelling the secrets of insect acoustic niches in diverse habitats
Published: 2023-11-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Insects are the most diverse animal taxon on Earth and play a key role in ecosystem functioning. However, they are often neglected from biodiversity surveys due to the difficulties of monitoring this small and hyper-diverse taxon. With technological advancements in biomonitoring and analytical methods, these shortcomings may finally be addressed. Here, we performed passive acoustic monitoring at [...]
Local and regional processes drive distance decay in structure in a spatial multilayer plant-pollinator network
Published: 2023-11-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Understanding spatial variation in species distribution and community structure is at the core of biogeography and community ecology. Nevertheless, the effect of distance on metacommunity structure remains little studied. We use plant-pollinator network data from the Canary Islands to examine how plant-pollinator community structure changes across geographical distances at a regional scale and [...]