Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Whither scientific debate? A rebuttal of “Contextualising UK moorland burning studies: geographical versus potential sponsorship-bias effects on research conclusions” by Brown and Holden (bioRxiv 2019; 731117)
Published: 2019-10-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
To read the preprint which this publication seeks to criticise, see here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/731117v1 To read our original peer-reviewed critique of the EMBER project, see here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1365-2664.13476 1. We recently published a peer-reviewed critique of the EMBER report. In a preprint response, Brown & Holden (2019) [...]
Thermal ecology or interspecific competition: what drives the warm and cold distribution limits of mountain ectotherms?
Published: 2019-10-24
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Current climate change-forced local extinctions of ectotherms in their warmer distribution limits have been linked to a reduction in their activity budgets by excess of heat. However, warmer distribution limits of species may be determined by biotic interactions as well. We aimed to understand the role of thermal activity budgets as drivers of the warmer distribution limit of cold-adapted [...]
The Price equation and the unity of social evolution theory
Published: 2019-10-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The Price equation has been entangled with social evolution theory from the start. It has been used to derive the most general versions of kin selection theory, and Price himself produced a multilevel equation which provides an alternative formulation of social evolution theory, dividing selection into components between and within groups. In this sense, the Price equation forms a basis for both [...]
Honey Bee Diversity Is Swayed by Migratory Beekeeping and Trade Despite Conservation Practices: Genetic Evidences for the Impact of Anthropogenic Factors on Population Structure
Published: 2019-10-13
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Apiculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Zoology
The intense admixture of honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) populations at a global scale is mostly attributed to the widespread migratory beekeeping practices and replacement of queens and colonies with non-native races or hybrids of different subspecies. These practices are also common in Anatolia and Thrace, but their influence on the genetic make-up of the five native subspecies of honey bees has [...]
Experimenting with the past to improve environmental monitoring programs
Published: 2019-10-13
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Long-term monitoring programs are a fundamental part of both understanding system dynamics and informing management decisions. However, monitoring programs not always designed to consider statistical power, site selection, or the full costs and benefits of monitoring. Further, data from monitoring programs with different goals and protocols are now being combined for comparative analyses. Key [...]
The causes and consequences of ornament variation in a natural population
Published: 2019-10-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The role of sexual selection in natural populations has long been the subject of debate in evolutionary biology. Ornaments are sexually selected traits, which means they should vary within a population, have a genetic basis, and be associated with fitness. Despite evidence of ornaments meeting these criteria, evolutionary responses to sexual selection are rare in nature. This study focuses on two [...]
The role of replication studies in ecology
Published: 2019-10-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Recent large-scale projects in other disciplines have shown that results often fail to replicate when studies are repeated. The conditions contributing to this problem are also present in ecology but there have not been any equivalent replication projects. Here we examine ecologists’ understanding of and opinions about replication studies. When asked what percentage of ecological studies are [...]
Avian trait specialization is negatively associated with urban tolerance
Published: 2019-10-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Generalist species — with their wide niche breadths — are often associated with urban environments, while specialist species are likely to be most at-risk of increasing urbanization processes. But studies which quantify the relationship between trait specialization (i.e., niche breadth) and urban tolerance are generally methodologically limited, with repeatable robust methods to easily quantify [...]
Toward a metabolic theory of life history
Published: 2019-09-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Significance Data and theory reveal how organisms allocate metabolic energy to components of the life history that determine fitness. In each generation animals take up biomass energy from the environment and expended it on survival, growth, and reproduction. Life histories of animals exhibit enormous diversity – from large fish and invertebrates that produce literally millions of tiny eggs and [...]
Assessing symbiont extinction risk using cophylogenetic data
Published: 2019-09-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Parasitology
Symbionts have a unique mode of life that has attracted the attention of ecologists and evolutionary biologists for centuries. As a result of this attention, these disciplines have produced a mature body of literature on host-symbiont interactions. In contrast, the discipline of symbiont conservation is still in a foundational stage. Here, we aim to integrate methodologies on symbiont [...]
Evidence synthesis for tackling research waste
Published: 2019-09-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
There is an urgent need for a change in research workflows so that pre-existing knowledge is better utilised in designing new research. A formal assessment of the accumulated knowledge prior to research approval would reduce the waste of already limited resources caused by asking low priority questions.
Movement-mediated community assembly and coexistence
Published: 2019-09-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Organismal movement is ubiquitous and facilitates important ecological mechanisms that drive community and metacommunity composition and hence biodiversity. In most existing ecological theories and models in biodiversity research, movement is represented simplistically, ignoring the behavioural basis of movement and consequently the variation in behaviour at species and individual level. However, [...]
Survival and migration of rock ptarmigan in central Scandinavia
Published: 2019-09-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
In a world undergoing massive declines in the distribution and abundance of many wildlife species, documenting basic ecological characteristics is often needed to be able to understand and potentially mitigate current and future pressures. Species living in alpine areas might be particularly vulnerable to climate change, in part because they are less likely to be able to migrate to new suitable [...]
Disentangling the role of shared ancestry and the environment on leaf stable isotopes
Published: 2019-09-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ratios of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) stable isotopes in plants are important indicators of intrinsic water use efficiency and N acquisition strategies. Here, we examined patterns of inter- and intraspecific variation and phylogenetic signal in foliar δ13C and δ15N for 59 alpine tundra plant species, stratifying our sampling across five habitat types. Overall, we found that variation in both δ13C [...]
Illustrating the importance of meta-analysing variances alongside means in ecology and evolution
Published: 2019-09-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Meta-analysis is increasingly used in biology to both quantitatively summarize available evidence for specific questions, and generate new hypotheses. While this powerful tool has mostly been deployed to study mean effects, there is untapped potential to study effects on (trait) variance. Here, we use a recently published dataset as a case study to demonstrate how meta-analysis of variance can be [...]