Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Reducing land use-induced spillover risk by fostering landscape immunity: policy priorities for conservation practitioners
Published: 2020-10-15
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Animal Studies, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, Immunopathology, International and Area Studies, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Parasitology, Population Biology, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Science and Technology Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Systems Biology
Anthropogenic land use change is the major driver of zoonotic pathogen spillover from wildlife to humans. In response to the global spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the agent of COVID-19 disease), there have been renewed calls for landscape conservation as a disease preventive measure. While protected areas are a vital conservation tool for wildlands, more than 50% of habitable land is now [...]
Non-additive genetic effects induce novel phenotypic distributions in male mating traits of F1 hybrids
Published: 2020-10-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Hybridization is a source of phenotypic novelty and variation because of increased additive genetic variation. Yet, the roles of non-additive allelic interactions in shaping phenotypic mean and variance of hybrids have been underappreciated. Here we examine the distributions of male-mating traits in F1 hybrids via a meta-analysis of 3,208 effect sizes from 39 animal species pairs. Although [...]
Epigenetics and the success of invasive plants
Published: 2020-10-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Biological invasions impose ecological and economic problems on a global scale, but also provide extraordinary opportunities for studying contemporary evolution. It is critical to understand the evolutionary processes that underly invasion success in order to successfully manage existing invaders, and to prevent future invasions. As successful invasive species sometimes are suspected to rapidly [...]
Accounting for year effects and sampling error in temporal analyses of population and biodiversity change - Response to Seibold et al. 2019 “Arthropod decline in grasslands and forests is associated with landscape-level drivers”
Published: 2020-10-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
An accumulating number of studies are reporting severe biomass, abundance and/or species richness declines of insects (Hallmann et al., 2017; Lister & Garcia, 2018; Seibold et al., 2019; Sánchez-Bayo & Wyckhuys, 2019). Collectively these studies aim to quantify the net change in invertebrate populations and/or community composition over time and to establish whether such changes can be [...]
Phylogenetic Comparative Methods: A User’s Guide for Paleontologists
Published: 2020-10-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Recent advances in statistical approaches called Phylogenetic Comparative Methods (PCMs) have provided paleontologists with a powerful set of analytical tools for investigating evolutionary tempo and mode in fossil lineages. However, attempts to integrate PCMs with fossil data often present workers with practical challenges or unfamiliar literature. In this paper, we present guides to the theory [...]
Reported individual costs and benefits of sharing open data among Canadian academic faculty in ecology and evolution
Published: 2020-10-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Open data facilitate reproducibility and accelerate scientific discovery but are hindered by perceptions that researchers bear costs and gain few benefits from publicly sharing their data, with limited empirical evidence to the contrary. We surveyed 140 faculty members working in ecology and evolution across Canada’s top 20-ranked universities and found that more researchers report benefits [...]
Including Rural America in academic conservation science
Published: 2020-10-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Law, Law, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
Entrenched political partisanship in the United States has placed long-standing constraints on conservation policy and climate change legislation. These barriers persist, demanding fresh insights into the ways that conservation has become a victim of political polarization, and pathways for encouraging bipartisan support for climate change and other U.S. conservation policies. We suggest three [...]
Impacts of human disturbance in marine mammals: Do behavioral changes translate to disease consequences? Full methods and Analysis
Published: 2020-10-01
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Humans have been altering wildlife habitats and wildlife behavior worldwide at an accelerated pace in recent decades. While it is well-understood how human-induced behavioral changes affect infectious disease risk in terrestrial wildlife, less is known in marine life. Here we examine this link in marine mammal populations by (1) conducting a systematic literature review to determine how human [...]
Understanding biological resilience, from genes to ecosystems
Published: 2020-10-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The natural world is under unprecedented and accelerating pressure. Much work on understanding resilience to local and global environmental change has, so far, focussed on ecosystems. However, understanding a system’s behaviour requires knowledge of its component parts and their interactions. Here we present a framework for understanding ‘biological resilience’, or the processes that enable [...]
A fine balance: specialized questioning techniques and their use in conservation
Published: 2020-10-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Conservationists measuring noncompliance with rules about the exploitation of natural resources often need to ask sensitive questions. However, respondents can introduce bias through distorting their answers to direct questions, due to social norms and/or the risk of legal sanctions. Specialized Questioning Techniques (SQTs) are often a more suitable approach to counteracting respondent bias, as [...]
Combining social information use and comfort-seeking for nest site selection in a cavity-nesting raptor
Published: 2020-09-30
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology
When selecting a breeding site, individuals can use social information to reduce the uncertainty regarding habitat quality. In particular, individuals from several bird species tend to reuse nests previously occupied by competitors. Re-occupying nests previously used by conspecifics or heterospecifics could result from exploiting social information by copying competitors’ choice (the ‘social [...]
A call to action: Understanding land use-induced zoonotic spillover to protect environmental, animal, and human health
Published: 2020-09-25
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Biodiversity, Biology, Diseases, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Parasitic Diseases, Public Health, Systems Biology, Veterinary Medicine
The rapid, global spread and human health impacts of SARS-CoV-2, the agent of COVID-19 disease, demonstrates humanity’s vulnerability to zoonotic disease pandemics. Although anthropogenic land use change is known to be the major driver of zoonotic pathogen spillover from wildlife to human populations, the scientific underpinnings of land use-induced zoonotic spillover have rarely been [...]
Cushion plants act as facilitators for soil microarthropods in high alpine Sweden
Published: 2020-09-24
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Cushion plants can have positive impacts on plant richness in severe environments and possibly across trophic levels on arthropods, an under-studied topic. 2. This study examined whether soil communities under cushions of Silene acaulis and Diapensia lapponica have higher richness and abundance of soil microarthropods (Acari, Collembola) than adjacent non-cushion vegetation; and whether [...]
Püllomen: an ethnoecological perspective of the Mapuche protector spirit insect
Published: 2020-09-17
Subjects: Anthropology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Anthropology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Biodiversity plays an important role in cultural worldviews, influencing myths, stories, and spiritual beliefs of indigenous peoples. This short review explores an ecological phenomenon that may have influenced and contributed to the development of the Mapuche good spirit insect (Püllomen), which represents the spirit of someone who passed away and comes back to the world of the living providing [...]
Changes in plant composition and diversity in an Alpine heath and meadow after 18 years of experimental warming
Published: 2020-09-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Background and aim Global warming is expected to have large impacts on high alpine and Arctic ecosystems in future. Here we report the effects of 18 years of experimental warming on two contrasting high alpine plant communities in subarctic Sweden. Methods Using open-top chambers (OTCs), we analysed the effects of long-term passive experimental warming on two high alpine plant communities, a [...]