Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The Ecology of Sleep in Reptiles
Published: 2021-02-03
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Sleep is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom and yet displays considerable variation in its extent and form in the wild. Ecological factors, such as predation, competition, and microclimate, therefore, are likely to play a strong role in shaping characteristics of sleep. Despite the potential for ecological factors to influence various aspects of sleep, the ecological context of sleep in reptiles [...]
The diversity of plant sex chromosomes highlighted through advances in genome sequencing
Published: 2021-01-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
For centuries scientists have been intrigued by the origin of dioecy in plants, characterizing sex-specific development, uncovering cytological differences between the sexes, and developing theoretical models. However, through the invention and continued improvements in genomic technologies, we have truly begun to unlock the genetic basis of dioecy in many species. Here we broadly review the [...]
Systematic review protocol to guide the delineation of critical habitat in the riparian zone for listed freshwater fishes and mussels
Published: 2021-01-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Background Habitat that is necessary for the survival and recovery of a species listed as threatened, endangered, or extirpated (i.e., Critical Habitat) is protected in Canada. For aquatic species, Critical Habitat may include riparian habitat, however it is unclear how much of this riparian habitat needs to be protected to support the survival and recovery of a listed species (primary question). [...]
Reptile smuggling is predicted by trends in the legal exotic pet trade
Published: 2021-01-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Western countries are less frequently implicated in illegal wildlife trade (IWT), contrasted with other transnational consumers, yet substantial evidence suggests that they contribute prominently. Live animal smuggling presents a suite of biosecurity concerns, including invasive species and disease risks. Here, we compared the live alien reptile species smuggled to Australia (75 species) to the [...]
Soil fungal diversity and community assembly: Affected by island size or type?
Published: 2021-01-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Fungi have huge biodiversity and play important roles in soil biogeochemical cycling and ecosystem services in island ecosystems. Although island biogeography has been widely studied in macroorganisms, the relationship between soil fungal diversity and area in islands is less documented. Here, we examine soil fungal communities of 18 oceanic islands belonged to two types of islands (8 general [...]
Set theory and types of groups in phylogenetics
Published: 2021-01-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Mathematically, it is possible to be a subset (⊂) of a set and not to be its member (∈)—e.g. the empty set. Here, I highlight that a similar principle applies to undiscovered objects in sets of real objects. The current definitions of holophyly (monophyly sensu stricto) and paraphyly suggest a direct membership (∈) of ancestors in taxa. These ancestors are almost always unknown (undiscovered) in [...]
Multi-replicated enrichment communities as a model system in microbial ecology
Published: 2021-01-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Recent advances in robotics and affordable genomic sequencing technologies have made it possible to establish and quantitatively track the assembly of enrichment communities in high-throughput. By conducting community assembly experiments in up to thousands of synthetic habitats, where the extrinsic sources of variation among replicates can be controlled, we can now study the reproducibility and [...]
Complex environments alter competitive dynamics in fungi
Published: 2021-01-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Competition is a key biotic factor that often structures natural communities. Many attempts to disentangle how competition shapes natural communities have relied on experiments on simplified systems or through simple mathematical models. But these simplified approaches are limited in their ability to represent the complexity seen in more natural settings. Here, we considered the competitive [...]
Raczka et al. Interactions between microbial diversity and substrate chemistry determine the fate of carbon in soil.
Published: 2021-01-20
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Microbial decomposition drives the transformation of plant-derived substrates into microbial products that form stable soil organic matter (SOM). Recent theories have posited that decomposition depends on an interaction between SOM chemistry with microbial diversity and resulting function. Here, we explicitly test these theories by coupling quantitative stable isotope probing and metabolomics to [...]
Humans as the world’s greatest eco-evolutionary force
Published: 2021-01-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Humans are dominant global drivers of ecological and evolutionary change, rearranging ecosystems and natural selection in many ways. Here, we show increasing evidence that human activity also plays a disproportionate role in shaping the eco-evolutionary potential of systems. We suggest the net outcome of human influences on trait change, ecology, and the feedbacks that link them, will often (but [...]
The Three Ts of Pathogen Evolution During Zoonotic Emergence
Published: 2021-01-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences
There is increasing interest in the role that evolution may play in current and future pandemics, but there is often also considerable confusion about the actual evolutionary predictions. This may be, in part, due to a historical separation of evolutionary and medical fields, but there is a large, somewhat nuanced body of evidence-supported theory on the evolution of infectious disease. In this [...]
Assembly processes lead to divergent soil fungal communities within and among twelve forest ecosystems along a latitudinal gradient
Published: 2021-01-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
- Latitudinal gradients provide opportunities to better understand soil fungal community assembly and its relationship with vegetation, climate, soil and ecosystem function. Understanding the mechanisms underlying community assembly is essential for predicting compositional responses to changing environments. - We quantified the relative importance of stochastic and deterministic processes in [...]
Hardwood content impacts the parasitoid community associated with Eastern spruce budworm (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae)
Published: 2021-01-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
A major pest of eastern North American forests is spruce budworm, Choristoneura fumiferana Clemens (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), which outbreaks every 30–40 years and causes large scale tree mortality. Researchers have established that hardwood content reduces the defoliation and mortality of balsam fir and spruces during spruce budworm outbreaks. One mechanism posited to explain these patterns is [...]
Early-life seasonal, weather and social effects on telomere length in a wild mammal
Published: 2021-01-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Early-life environmental conditions can provide a source of individual variation in life-history strategies and senescence patterns. Conditions experienced in early life can be quantified by measuring telomere length, which can act as a biomarker of survival probability. Here, we investigate whether seasonal changes, weather conditions, and group size are associated with early-life and/or [...]
Condition-transfer maternal effects modulate sexual conflict
Published: 2021-01-08
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Strong sexual selection frequently favours males that increase their reproductive success by harming females, with potentially negative consequences for population growth. Understanding what factors modulate conflict between the sexes is hence critical to understand both the evolution of male and female phenotypes and the viability of populations in the wild. Here, we model the evolution of male [...]