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Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Population structure plays a key role in community stability

Àlex Giménez Romero, Christina Maria Hernandez, Meritxell Genovart, et al.

Published: 2025-01-09
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

The relationship between ecosystem complexity and stability remains unresolved and a mechanistic explanation for the stunning levels of biodiversity observed in communities and ecosystems is still lacking. Recent work has shown that differences in the foraging capacity and predation risk of juveniles versus adults within populations result in larger, more complex communities than predicted by [...]

Phenological Plasticity and Its Thermal Determinants in Common Songbirds across Europe

Paul Cuchot

Published: 2025-01-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Phenological plasticity—the ability of organisms to adjust breeding timing in response to environmental variability —is the primary mechanism for seasonal organisms as it enables to synchronize their life cycles with seasonal resource availability. Theory predicts that phenological plasticity should vary among populations because of environmental heterogeneity, and among species because of [...]

Does post-natal parental care influence cognitive development in a social gecko?

Birgit Szabo, Eva Ringler

Published: 2025-01-06
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences

How cognition evolved remains a debated “hot-topic” in the field of animal cognition. Current hypotheses link variation in sociality, ecology, and more generally, environmental challenges to differences in cognitive development, both between as well as within species. Research supporting the Social Intelligence Hypothesis, which states that cognition evolved to deal with social challenges, is [...]

Phytoremediation of Heavy Metals: Techniques, Challenges, and Prospects

Tanzim Ahmed

Published: 2025-01-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences

Heavy metals, characterized by their high atomic mass and density, can pose significant risks to soil, water, plants, and human health. Contamination sources include manufacturing activities, mining, farming practices, and improper waste management. Metals such as arsenic, mercury, lead, chromium, and cadmium are most toxic with health consequences that can result from organ dysfunction to [...]

Interannual variability modulates Harrison’s rule between cymothoid isopod and their prawn host: Insights from a long-term stream study

Alison Wunderlich, Esli Emanoel Domingues Mosna, Marcelo Antonio Amaro Pinheiro

Published: 2024-12-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Host body size can influence the evolution of parasite body size in many host-parasite associations, a hypothesis called Harrison’s rule (HR). However, this pattern has not always been consistently observed, with some studies finding no association between host and parasite size. Moreover, other host-related factors (e.g., sex, immunity) and environmental changes can mediate this relationship. [...]

GUBIC: the global urban biological invasions compendium for plants

Daijiang Li, Luke Potgieter, Myla Aronson, et al.

Published: 2024-12-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

1. Urban areas are foci for the introduction of non-native plant species, and they often act as launching sites for invasions into the wider environment. Although interest in biological invasions in urban areas is growing rapidly, and the extent and complexity of problems associated with invasions in these systems have increased, data on the composition and numbers of non-native plants in [...]

Reduced levels of relatedness indicate that great-tailed grackles disperse further at the edge of their range

Dieter Lukas, Aaron D Blackwell, Maryam Edrisi, et al.

Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology

It is generally thought that behavioral flexibility, the ability to change behavior when circumstances change, plays an important role in the ability of a species to rapidly expand their geographic range. However, it is an alternative non-exclusive possibility that an increase in the amount of available habitat can also facilitate a range expansion. Great-tailed grackles (*Quiscalus mexicanus*) [...]

Forecasting patterns of shifting biodiversity refuges in an increasingly flammable world

William L Geary, Dale Nimmo, Tim Doherty, et al.

Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

In a warming and rapidly changing world, biodiversity is increasingly threatened by more frequent, severe, and larger fires. Variation in the life history attributes and habitat preferences of species mean that they may be affected differently by fire, and hence, decision makers must account for this. Understanding how fire affects the distribution of important areas of habitat and refuges for [...]

A dataset for benchmarking molecular identification tools based on genome skimming

Renata Asprino, Liming Cai, Yujing Yan, et al.

Published: 2024-12-19
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences

Genome skimming is an emerging tool allowing for scalable DNA barcoding efforts for numerous biodiversity science applications. Despite its growing importance, there are few standardized datasets for benchmarking genome skimming tools, making it challenging to evaluate new methods (e.g., using machine learning), and comparing to existing ones (e.g., conventional barcoding loci derived from [...]

Selecting indicators to track progress towards the Global Biodiversity Framework: A case study of Quebec's 2030 Nature Plan

Katherine Hébert, Dagoberto Hernandez Acevedo, Victor Cameron, et al.

Published: 2024-12-19
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Selecting biodiversity indicators to report national and subnational progress towards the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is a major challenge, one made even more urgent by the fast approaching 2030 targets. To efficiently identify appropriate indicators, the selection process must be streamlined, while remaining transparent, effective, and with the active engagement of [...]

Wood density variation across an Andes-to-Amazon elevational gradient

William Farfan-Rios, Sasan Saatchi, Imma Oliveras, et al.

Published: 2024-12-18
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences

1. Understanding how functional traits are related to species diversity and ecosystem properties is a central goal of ecology. Wood density is a trait that integrates many aspects of plant form and function and is highly variable among species. Previous studies of wood density across elevational gradients have been based on limited sampling and have reported declines with increasing elevation, [...]

Simple maternal effect animal models provide biased estimates of additive genetic and maternal variation

Joel L Pick, Craig A Walling, Loeske E. B. Kruuk

Published: 2024-12-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Zoology

Maternal effects (the consistent effect of a mother on her offspring) can inflate estimates of additive genetic variation (V_A) if not properly accounted for. As they are typically assumed to cause similarities only among maternal siblings, they are often accounted for by modelling maternal identity effects. However, if maternal effects have a genetic basis, they create additional similarities [...]

Pleistocene climatic changes drive expansion and fragmentation in a widespread arid zone specialist, Petrogale lateralis

Sally Potter, Craig Moritz, Kym Ottewell, et al.

Published: 2024-12-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Organisms living in arid biomes are predicted to be at threat of extinction associated with ongoing climatic and anthropogenic change. Our understanding of species responses to Pleistocene climatic changes within these environments is still limited, particularly in Australia. Here we evaluate the demographic and evolutionary history of a widespread Australian marsupial, the black-footed [...]

Foundations and future directions for causal inference in ecological research

Katherine Johannet Siegel, Laura E Dee

Published: 2024-12-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Ecology often seeks to answer causal questions, and while ecologists have a rich history of experimental approaches, novel observational data streams and the need to apply insights across naturally occurring conditions pose opportunities and challenges. Other fields have developed causal inference approaches that can enhance and expand our ability to answer ecological causal questions using [...]

A bottom-up mammoth population model predicts moderate densities and high vulnerability to hunting

Wolfgang Traylor, Matthew Forrest, Thomas Hickler

Published: 2024-12-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Paleobiology

During the last glacial, large grazers inhabited Eurasia’s mammoth steppe. This cold steppe was productive enough to sustain a diverse assemblage of large mammals, but it remains controversial which population densities it could support. In sufficient densities, large herbivores can act as ecosystem engineers: creating and maintaining grassland habitat by means of disturbance and accelerated [...]

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