Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Re-understanding evolution: the Information Continuum Model
Published: 2021-01-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Evolution is contingent on inherited information shaped by natural selection. Few biologists familiar with evolution would object to this description. This apparent consensus could be taken to indicate agreement on the forces shaping evolution, but vivid discussions reveal profound divergences on how evolution is perceived. The predominant paradigm of the Modern Synthesis (MS) holds the position [...]
Mate-guarding duration is mainly influenced by the risk of sperm competition and not by female quality in a golden orb-weaver spider
Published: 2021-01-05
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Males are expected to mate with as many females as possible, but can maximize their reproductive success through strategic mating decisions. For instance, males can increase their own fitness by mating with high quality females that produce more offspring. Additionally, males can adjust mating effort based on the relative distribution of females and male competitors. To test factors that [...]
Collecting eco-evolutionary data in the dark: Impediments to subterranean research and how to overcome them
Published: 2020-12-22
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
(1) Caves and other subterranean habitats fulfill the requirements of experimental model systems to address general questions in ecology and evolution. Yet, the harsh working conditions of these environments and the uniqueness of the subterranean organisms have challenged most attempts to pursuit standardized research (2) Two main obstacles have synergistically hampered previous attempts. First, [...]
Challenges and opportunities of species distribution modelling of terrestrial arthropod predators
Published: 2020-12-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Species distribution models (SDMs) are emerging as essential tools in the equipment of many ecologists; they are useful in exploring species distributions in space and time and in answering an assortment of questions related to historical biogeography, climate change biology and conservation biology. Given that arthropod distributions are strongly influenced by microclimatic conditions and [...]
Population divergence in aggregation and sheltering behaviour in surface and cave-adapted Asellus aquaticus (Crustacea: Isopoda)
Published: 2020-12-19
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Aggregation (gathering together) and sheltering (hiding in cover) are basic behaviours that might reduce the risk of predation. However, both behaviours have costs, like increased competition over resources and high prevalence of contact-spread parasites (aggregation) or lost opportunities for foraging and mating (sheltering). Therefore, adaptive variation in these behaviours is expected between [...]
Lets talk about sex: what influences researchers’ perceptions of sex differences in animal behaviour?
Published: 2020-12-17
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The traditional theory of sexual selection posits the idea of sex roles: females should be choosy and caring, while males should be competitive and promiscuous. Despite criticism of these stereotypes from some evolutionary biologists, sex roles still appear as a norm in the literature. This may be because scientists anthropomorphize animal behaviours, which raises the question of whether human [...]
Computer vision, machine learning, and the promise of phenomics in ecology and evolutionary biology
Published: 2020-12-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
For centuries, ecologists and evolutionary biologists have used images such as drawings, paintings and photographs to record and quantify the shapes and patterns of life. With the advent of digital imaging, biologists continue to collect image data at an ever-increasing rate. This immense body of data provides insight into a wide range of biological phenomena, including phenotypic trait [...]
Large contribution of recent photosynthate to soil respiration in Dipterocarpaceae-dominated tropical forest revealed by girdling
Published: 2020-12-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
• Tropical forests are the most productive terrestrial ecosystem, fixing around 41 Pg of carbon from the atmosphere each year. A substantial portion of this carbon is allocated belowground to roots and root-associated microorganisms. However, there have been very few empirical studies on the dynamics of this transfer, especially in tropical forests where the response is mediated by high plant [...]
Visual and olfactory cues of predation affect body and brain growth in the guppy
Published: 2020-12-14
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
1. Phenotypic plasticity requires animals to acquire reliable environmental information. When multiple sources of information agree, cues should be perceived as reliable and induce a relatively strong response. Conversely, where stimuli conflict, animals must weigh the accuracy of the sources of information and responses should be reduced. 2. Availability of reliable information is often [...]
Beta and phylogenetic diversities tell complementary stories about ecological networks biogeography
Published: 2020-12-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The beta-diversity of interactions between communities does not necessarily correspond to the differences related to their species composition because interactions show greater variability than species co-occurrence. Additionally, the structure of species interaction networks can itself vary over spatial gradients, thereby adding constraints on the dissimilarity of communities in space. We used [...]
Concepts and applications in functional diversity
Published: 2020-12-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The use of functional analyses in ecology has grown exponentially over the past two decades, broadening our understanding of biological diversity and its change across space and time. Virtually all ecological sub-disciplines recognize the critical value of looking at species and communities from a functional perspective, and this has led to a proliferation of methods for estimating contrasting [...]
Space-for-time inferences about range-edge dynamics of tree species can be influenced by sampling biases
Published: 2020-12-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Differences between the distributions of tree saplings and adults in geographic or niche space have been used to infer climate change effects on tree range dynamics. Previous studies have reported narrower latitudinal or climatic niche ranges of juvenile trees compared to adults, concluding that tree ranges are contracting, contradicting climate-based predictions. However, more comprehensive [...]
Ecological Countermeasures for Pandemic Prevention: When Ecological Restoration is a Human Health Imperative
Published: 2020-12-05
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Bacteriology, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, Immunopathology, Integrative Biology, International Public Health, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Parasitology, Pathogenic Microbiology, Population Biology, Public Health, Systems Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Microbiology and Immunobiology, Veterinary Pathology and Pathobiology, Zoology
Ecological restoration should be regarded as a public health service. Unfortunately, the lack of quantitative linkages between environmental and human health has limited recognition of these principle. Advent of COVID-19 pandemic provides the impetus for the further discussion. We propose ecological countermeasures as highly targeted, landscape-based interventions to arrest the drivers of land [...]
Experimentally testing the response of feral cats and their prey to poison baiting
Published: 2020-12-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Feral cats Felis catus have caused the decline and extinction of many species worldwide, particularly on islands and in Australia where native species are generally naïve to the threat of this introduced predator. Effectively reducing cat populations to protect wildlife is challenging because cats have a cryptic nature, high reproductive rate and strong reinvasion ability. We experimentally [...]
All together now: Limitations and recommendations for the simultaneous analysis of all eukaryotic soil sequences
Published: 2020-12-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The soil environment contains a large, but historically underexplored reservoir of biodiversity. While sequencing of prokaryotic marker genes has become commonplace for the discovery and characterization of soil bacteria and archaea, this approach has been increasingly applied to sequencing eukaryotic marker genes to characterize the diversity of soil eukaryotes. However, understanding the [...]