Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Beneath the surface: community assembly and functions of the coral skeleton microbiome
Published: 2019-05-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology
Coral microbial ecology is a burgeoning field, driven by the urgency of understanding coral health and slowing reef loss due to climate change. Coral resilience depends on its microbiota, and both the tissue and the underlying skeleton are home to a rich biodiversity of eukaryotic, bacterial and archaeal species that form an integral part of the coral holobiont. New techniques now enable detailed [...]
Phylogenetic Comparative Methods: Learning From Trees
Published: 2019-05-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
A review of the field of phylogenetic comparative methods.
The role of selection and evolution in changing parturition date in a red deer population
Published: 2019-05-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Changing environmental conditions cause changes in the distributions of phenotypic traits in natural populations. However, determining the mechanisms responsible for these changes and, in particular, the relative contributions of phenotypic plasticity vs evolutionary responses, is difficult. To date, to our knowledge no study has reported evidence that evolutionary change underlies the most [...]
Replicating Natures Fabric - High Information Markets and the Sustainability of Global Seafood
Published: 2019-05-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Misinformation currently plagues our global seafood market. Because this globally interconnected, complex and dynamic market parallels food webs and places humans as apex predators, we can apply our understanding of nature’s structure to better understand the consequences of misinformation in the global seafood system. Here, we argue that this misinformation undermines the sustainability of our [...]
The importance of individual-to-society feedbacks in animal ecology and evolution
Published: 2019-05-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. The social decisions that individuals make—who to interact with and how frequently—gives rise to social structure. The resulting social structure then determines how individuals interact with their surroundings—resources and risks, pathogens and predators, competitors and cooperators. 2. However, despite intensive research on (i) how individuals make social decisions and (ii) how social [...]
Sexual Selection in Bacteria?
Published: 2019-05-08
Subjects: Bacteriology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Microbiology
A main mechanism of lateral gene transfer in bacteria is transformation, where cells take up free DNA from the environment which subsequently can be recombined into the genome. Bacteria are also known to actively release DNA into the environment through secretion or lysis, which could aid uptake via transformation. Various evolutionary benefits of DNA uptake and DNA release have been proposed but [...]
Into the wild: microbiome transplant studies need broader ecological reality
Published: 2019-05-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Gut microbial communities (microbiomes) profoundly shape the ecology and evolution of multicellular life. Interactions between host and microbiome appear to be reciprocal, and ecological theory is now being applied to better understand how hosts and their microbiome influence each other. However, some ecological processes that underlie reciprocal host-microbiome interactions may be obscured by [...]
Heritability and maternal effects on social attention during an attention bias task in a non-human primate, Macaca mulatta
Published: 2019-05-02
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Social attention is fundamental to a wide range of behaviours in non-human primates. However, we know very little about the heritability of social attention in non-human primates, and the heritability of attention to social threat has not been assessed. Here, we provide data to begin to fill this gap in knowledge. We tested 67 female rhesus macaques, Macaca mulatta, on an attention bias [...]
Open Access Principles and Practices Benefit Conservation
Published: 2019-05-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Open access is often contentious in the scientific community, but its implications for conservation are under-discussed or omitted entirely from scientific discourse. Access to literature is a key factor impeding implementation of conservation research, and many open access models and concepts that are little-known by most conservation researchers may facilitate implementation. Conservation [...]
Forest management effects on survival of a long-lived bird
Published: 2019-04-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
1. A high number of reproductive events is a critical fitness correlate for long-lived species. Thus, individuals of these species should be sensitive to factors that increase their mortality. Living in habitats with high exposure to predators can decrease lifespan, but the ecological drivers of longevity within populations remain poorly studied. Forest management in boreal forests can increase [...]
Exploratory and confirmatory research in the open science era
Published: 2019-04-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Applied ecological research is increasingly inspired by the open science movement. However, new challenges about how we define our science when biodiversity data is being shared and re-used are not solved. Among these challenges is the risk associated with blurring the distinction between research that mainly seeks to explore patterns with no a-priori articulated hypotheses (exploratory [...]
A protocol for using drones to assist monitoring of large breeding bird colonies
Published: 2019-04-29
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Zoology
Drones are rapidly becoming part of environmental monitoring and management applications. They provide an opportunity to improve a number of activities related to monitoring population dynamics of aggregations of wildlife. Bird surveys using drones have attracted particular attention, with a range of potential metrics able to be derived from high resolution drone imagery. Whilst a number of [...]
Disentangling chronic regeneration failure in endangered woodland ecosystems
Published: 2019-04-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ecological restoration of degraded ecosystems requires the facilitation of natural regeneration by plants, often augmented by large-scale active revegetation. The success of such projects is highly variable. Risk factors may be readily identifiable in a general sense, but it is rarely clear how they play out individually, or in combination. We addressed this problem with a field experiment on the [...]
Lack of definition of mathematical terms in ecology: The case of the sigmoid class of functions in macro-ecology
Published: 2019-04-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Defining mathematical terms and objects is a constant issue in ecology; often definitions are absent, erroneous, or imprecise. Through a bibliographic prospection, we show that this problem appears in macro-ecology (biogeography and community ecology) where the lack of definition for the sigmoid class of functions results in difficulties of interpretation and communication. In order to solve this [...]
Improving scientific impact: how to practice science that influences environmental policy and management
Published: 2019-03-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Scientists devote substantial time and resources to research intended to help solve environmental problems. Environmental managers and policymakers must decide how to use the best available research evidence to prioritize actions leading to desired environmental outcomes. Yet decision-makers can face barriers to using scientific evidence to inform action. They may be unaware of the evidence, lack [...]