Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Complexity revealed in the greening of the Arctic
Published: 2019-02-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
As the Arctic warms, vegetation is responding and satellite measures indicate widespread greening at high latitudes. This ‘greening of the Arctic’ is among the world’s most significant large-scale ecological responses to global climate change. However, a consensus is emerging that the underlying causes and future dynamics of so-called Arctic greening and browning trends are more complex, [...]
Social genetic effects (IGE) and genetic intra- and intersexual genetic correlation contribute to the total heritable variance in parental care
Published: 2019-02-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The social environment can influence phenotypes through indirect genetic effects (IGEs), whereby genetic variance among interacting individuals explains some of the phenotypic variance. Empirical studies of wild populations often ignore IGEs especially among unrelated individuals, probably due to data limitations. This is problematic because IGEs can crucially affect estimates of heritable [...]
Be prudent if it fits you well: male mate choice depends on male size in a golden orb-weaver spider
Published: 2019-02-01
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Male preference for high-quality females is expected to evolve when male reproductive potential is restricted. However, when there is competition among males, some models predict the evolution of assortative male mate choice, in which good competitors choose high quality females while poor competitors choose lower quality females to avoid competition. In Trichonephila clavipes spiders, males have [...]
Replication alert: behavioural lateralisation in a detour test is not repeatable in fishes
Published: 2019-01-30
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Behavioural lateralisation, defined as the asymmetric expression of cognitive functions, is reported to enhance key fitness-relevant traits such as predator escape performance, multitasking abilities, and group coordination. Therefore, studies reporting negative effects on lateralisation in fish due to environmental stressors such as ocean acidification, hypoxia, and pollutants are worrisome. [...]
A comparative study of differential selection pressure over the nesting cycle in birds
Published: 2019-01-30
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Reproductive allocation varies greatly across species and is determined by their life-history and ecology. This variation is usually assessed as the number of eggs or propagules (hereafter: fecundity). However, in species with parental care, individuals face trade-offs that affect the allocation of resources among the stages of reproduction as well as to reproduction as a whole. Thus, it is [...]
Experimentally increased costs of parental care are shunted to offspring in species with extended care
Published: 2019-01-30
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Biparental care systems are a valuable model to examine conflict, cooperation, and coordination between unrelated individuals, as the product of the interactions between the parents influences the fitness of both individuals. A common experimental technique for testing coordinated responses to changes in the costs of parental care is to temporarily handicap one parent, inducing a higher cost of [...]
Elevated nest predation risk promotes offspring size variation in birds with prolonged parental care.
Published: 2019-01-30
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Predation of offspring is the main cause of reproductive failure in many species, and the mere fear of offspring predation shapes reproductive strategies. Yet, natural predation risk is ubiquitously variable and can be unpredictable. Consequently, the perceived prospect of predation early in a reproductive cycle may not reflect the actual risk to ensuing offspring. An increased variance in [...]
No honesty in warning signals across life stages in an aposematic bug
Published: 2019-01-29
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Theory predicts that warning signals should exhibit low variation to increase learning efficiency in predators. However, many species exhibit variation in warning colours within species and even within populations. An understudied example of within species variation is that between life stages, where animals change warning colouration throughout ontogeny. Understanding how warning signals change [...]
Steroid Receptors and Vertebrate Evolution
Published: 2019-01-26
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Considering that life on earth evolved about 3.7 billion years ago, vertebrates are young, appearing in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion about 542 to 515 million years ago. Results from sequence analyses of genomes from bacteria, yeast, plants, invertebrates and vertebrates indicate that receptors for adrenal steroids (aldosterone, cortisol), and sex steroids (estrogen, [...]
The more you get, the more you give: Positive cascading effects shape the evolutionary potential of prenatal maternal investment
Published: 2019-01-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Maternal effects are prevalent in nature and significantly contribute to variation in phenotypic trait expression. However, little attention has been paid to the factors shaping variation in the traits mediating these effects (maternal effectors). Specific maternal effectors are often not identified, and typically they are assumed to be inherited in an additive genetic and autosomal manner. Given [...]
Dominance determines fish community biomass in a temperate seagrass ecosystem
Published: 2019-01-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Biodiversity and ecosystem function are often correlated, but there are multiple hypotheses about the mechanisms underlying this relationship. Ecosystem functions such as primary or secondary production may be maximized by species richness, evenness in species abundances, or the presence or dominance of species with certain traits. Here, we combined surveys of natural fish communities (conducted [...]
Visual-based male mate preference for conspecific females in mutually ornamented fish: possible importance of species recognition hypothesis
Published: 2019-01-18
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Because sexual selection typically acts on males, evolution of conspicuous ornamentation in females has been understudied. Genetic correlation between sexes and sexual or social selection on females have been proposed to explain female ornamentation, but they cannot fully explain observed patterns in nature such as female ornamentation in non-territorial, promiscuous species. The species [...]
Rapid isolation and characterization of microsatellites in the critically endangered Mountain Bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus isaaci)
Published: 2019-01-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics
High-throughput sequencing tools promise to revolutionize many aspects of genetics research, e.g. by allowing the identification of functional adaptive genetic variation. However, the expense and expertise required to apply these tools to basic conservation questions is a challenge for applications outside academia, resulting in a so-called “conservation genomics gap” (Shafer et al. 2015). The [...]
The covariance between metabolic rate and behaviour varies across behaviours and thermal types: meta-analytic insights
Published: 2019-01-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physiology
Energy metabolism has received much attention as a potential driver of repeatable among-individual differences in behaviour (animal personality). Several factors have been hypothesized to mediate this relationship. We performed a meta-analysis of >70 studies comprised of >8000 individuals reporting relationships between measures of maintenance metabolic rates (i.e., basal metabolic rate, [...]
Macroecology of parental care in arthropods: higher mortality risk leads to higher benefits of offspring protection in tropical climates
Published: 2019-01-12
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The intensity of biotic interactions varies around the world, in such a way that mortality risk imposed by natural enemies is usually higher in the tropics. A major role of offspring attendance is protection against natural enemies, so the benefits of this behaviour should be higher in tropical regions. We tested this macroecological prediction with a meta‐regression of field experiments in which [...]