Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Urban biodiversity and the importance of scale
Published: 2020-09-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Many ecological and evolutionary processes are affected by urbanization, but cities vary by orders of magnitude in their human population size and areal extent. To quantify and manage urban biodiversity we must understand both how biodiversity scales with city size, and how ecological, evolutionary, and socioeconomic drivers of biodiversity scale with city size. We show how environmental abiotic [...]
How microbes can, and cannot, be used to assess soil health
Published: 2020-09-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Healthy soils are critical to the health of ecosystems, economies, and human populations. Thus, it is widely acknowledged that soil health is important to quantify, both for assessment and as a tool to help guide management strategies. What is less clear is how soil health should actually be measured, especially considering that soil health is not exclusively a product of soil physical and [...]
Filling the Information Gap in Meta-Ecosystem Ecology
Published: 2020-09-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Fluxes of matter, energy, and information over space and time contribute to ecosystems’ functioning. The meta-ecosystem framework addresses the dynamics of ecosystems linked by these fluxes, however, to date, meta-ecosystem research focused solely on fluxes of energy and matter, neglecting information. This is problematic due to organisms’ varied responses to information, which influence local [...]
Range-wide factors shaping space use and movements by the Neotropic’s flagship predator: the jaguar
Published: 2020-09-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The range-wide management of the jaguar (Panthera onca) depends upon maintaining core populations connected through multi-national, transboundary cooperation, which is dependent upon understanding the movement ecology and space use of jaguars throughout their range. Using 117 telemetry trajectories from 12 ecoregions, we examined the landscape-level environmental and anthropogenic factors related [...]
VIRUS-HOST RELATIONSHIPS: AN OVERVIEW
Published: 2020-08-31
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Virology
In order to survive in nature, different pathogens follow different procedures to manipulate their host plants for the pathogen favor. Plant viruses are not an exception of this rule. They are often found to alter the host plant traits in the way that affects the community of organisms in the host plant as well as the vectoring insects. It has been indicated that virus-infected plants are more [...]
Unifying individual differences in personality, predictability, and plasticity: a practical guide
Published: 2020-08-23
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
1. Many animal species show individual differences in behaviour that are partially consistent across repeated measurements. Commonly referred to as personality traits, differences in average behaviours are often correlated across individuals, forming ‘behavioural syndromes’ (e.g. individuals who are more aggressive are also bolder). 2. Generally, differences in the average behaviour of [...]
Investigating sex differences in genetic relatedness in great-tailed grackles in Tempe, Arizona to infer potential sex biases in dispersal (version 5 of this preprint has been peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community In Ecology [https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.ecology.100074])
Published: 2020-08-23
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
In most bird species, females disperse prior to their first breeding attempt, while males remain closer to the place they hatched for their entire lives. Explanations for such female bias in natal dispersal have focused on the resource-defense based monogamous mating system that is prevalent in most birds. In this system, males are argued to benefit from philopatry because knowing the local [...]
A systematic review of ecological responses to variation in seasonal snow cover
Published: 2020-08-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Seasonal snow is among the most important factors governing the ecology of many terrestrial ecosystems, but rising global temperatures are changing snow regimes and driving widespread declines in the depth and duration of snow cover. Loss of the insulating snow layer will fundamentally change the environment. Understanding how individuals, populations, and communities respond to different snow [...]
Differential effects of steroid hormones on levels of genetic variance in a wild bird: possible mechanism of maternal-effects x genetic variance interaction?
Published: 2020-08-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Genetic variation is one of the key concepts in evolutionary biology and an important prerequisite of evolutionary change. Still, we know very little about processes that modulate its levels in wild populations. In particular – we still are to understand why genetic variances often depend on environmental conditions. One of possible environment-sensitive modulators of observed levels of genetic [...]
Studies of insect temporal trends must account for the complex sampling histories inherent to many long-term monitoring efforts
Published: 2020-08-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
In a recently published study, Crossley et al. (2020, Nature Ecology & Evolution, “No net insect abundance and diversity declines across US Long Term Ecological Research sites”) examine patterns of change in insect abundance and diversity across US Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites, concluding “a lack of overall increase or decline”. This is notable if true, given mixed conclusions [...]
Diet modulates components of animal personality in house sparrows: insights into a possible hormone-mediated mechanism
Published: 2020-08-18
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Animals do not eat whatever food item they find. They usually balance the intake of key nutrients, for example, essential amino acids that cannot be synthesized by animals and must be provided in the diet. However, ability to gain optimal ratios, proportions, and amounts of nutrients may be hampered by a changing environment, competitive conspecifics or species, and predators. Here, we used an [...]
Adaptation, Local Frequency-Dependent and Global Frequency-Independent Selection
Published: 2020-08-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Population Biology
There is a tension between, on the one hand, the view that natural selection produces adaptations, and on the other hand, the theoretical results showing that the links between natural selection are weakened in different evolutionary scenarios such as situations of (negative) frequency-dependent selection or more generally in situations where fitnesses are not constant. If these results are taken [...]
Evolution, Origins and Diversification of Parasitic Cnidarians
Published: 2020-08-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Parasitism has evolved in cnidarians on multiple occasions but only one clade – the Myxozoa – has undergone substantial radiation. We briefly review minor parasitic clades that exploit pelagic hosts and then focus on the comparative biology and evolution of the highly speciose Myxozoa and its monotypic sister taxon, Polypodium hydriforme, which collectively form the Endocnidozoa. Cnidarian [...]
Predation as a driver of behavioural variation and trait integration: effects on personality, plasticity, and predictability
Published: 2020-08-17
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Predation is increasingly viewed as an important driver in maintaining ecological and phenotypic diversity. In contrast to classic evolutionary theory which predicts that predation will shift trait means and erode variance within prey species, several studies indicate higher behavioural trait variance and integration in high predation populations. These results come predominately from [...]
Connected data landscape of long-term ecological studies: the SPI-Birds data hub
Published: 2020-08-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The integration and synthesis of the data in different areas of science is drastically slowed and hindered by a lack of standards and networking programmes. Long-term studies of individually marked animals are not an exception. These studies are especially important as instrumental for understanding evolutionary and ecological processes in the wild. Further, their number and global distribution [...]