Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Animal social networks are robust to changing association definitions

Alex Hoi Hang Chan, Jamie Dunning, Terry Burke, et al.

Published: 2024-01-12
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology

The interconnecting links (edges) between individuals (nodes) in an animal social network are often defined by discrete, directed behaviours (interactions). However, where interactions are difficult to observe, a network edge is instead defined as individuals sharing space or overlapping in time (an association). Despite an increasingly accessible toolkit to assemble and analyse animal social [...]

Vulnerability of amphibians to global warming

Patrice Pottier, Michael R. Kearney, Nicholas C. Wu, et al.

Published: 2024-01-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Amphibians are the most threatened vertebrates, yet their resilience to rising temperatures remains poorly understood. This is primarily because knowledge of thermal tolerance is taxonomically and geographically biased, compromising global climate vulnerability assessments. Here, we employed a phylogenetically-informed data imputation approach to predict the heat tolerance of 60% of amphibian [...]

Meta-analysis reveals that the effects of precipitation change on soil and litter fauna in forests depend on body size

Philip Martin, Leonora Fisher, Leticia Pérez-Izquierdo, et al.

Published: 2024-01-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Anthropogenic climate change is altering precipitation regimes at a global scale. While precipitation changes have been linked to changes in the abundance and diversity of soil and litter invertebrate fauna in forests, general trends have remained elusive due to mixed results from primary studies. We used a meta-analysis based on 352 comparisons from 30 primary studies to address associated [...]

The role of deadwood in the carbon cycle: Implications for models, forest management, and future climates

Baptiste Joseph Wijas, Steven D Allison, Amy T Austin, et al.

Published: 2024-01-10
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Deadwood represents a significant carbon pool in forests and savannas. Although previous research has focused mainly on forests, we synthesise deadwood studies across all ecosystems with woody vegetation. Storage and release of carbon from deadwood is controlled by interacting decomposition drivers including biotic consumers (animals, microbes) and abiotic factors (water, fire, sunlight, [...]

An integrated open population distance sampling approach for modelling age-structured populations

Erlend Birkeland Nilsen, Chloé R. Nater

Published: 2024-01-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology

Estimation of abundance and demographic rates for populations of wild species is a challenging but fundamental issue for both management and research into ecology and evolution. One set of approaches that has been used extensively to estimate abundance of wildlife populations is Distance Sampling (DS) methods for line or point transect survey data. Historically, DS models were only available as [...]

Solving the “small outbreak problem” in climate epidemiology

Colin J Carlson

Published: 2024-01-04
Subjects: Climate, Diseases, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Parasitic Diseases, Public Health, Virus Diseases

Climate change can cause outbreaks of infectious diseases in unfamiliar locations — but how do we know which unusual outbreaks are the result of climate change? Scientists often hesitate to guess, leaving the task to journalists or the public. All of these audiences would benefit from a clear and consistent framework for thinking about causality, especially in situations where outbreaks are too [...]

Quantifying heritability of the environment using animal models: a case study

Gabriel Munar-Delgado, Marion Nicolaus, Christiaan Both, et al.

Published: 2024-01-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Evolutionary ecology has traditionally studied how natural selection shapes the phenotypes of individuals in response to their environment, which increases population fitness. It is also well known how habitat choice can affect individual local adaptation. However, recent work has highlighted the incompleteness of the link between habitat choice and its evolutionary consequences. By treating the [...]

Biogeographical diet variation within and between the rabbitfishes Siganus corallinus, Siganus virgatus, Siganus doliatus and Siganus trispilos

Salvador Zarco-Perello, Andrew Hoey, Storm Martin

Published: 2023-12-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Feeding habits of herbivorous fish play an important role in the form and function of coastal marine ecosystems. Rabbitfishes (Siganidae) have been recognized as important consumers of macroalgae in the coral reefs of the Indo-Pacific region. However, it is unclear how their diet varies among and within species at biogeographical scales. The present study assessed the inter- and intra-specific [...]

Untangling the complex food webs of tropical rainforest streams

Victor Satoru Saito, Pavel Kratina, Gedimar Barbosa, et al.

Published: 2023-12-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

1- Food webs depict the tangled web of trophic interactions associated with the functioning of an ecosystem. Understanding the mechanisms providing stability to these food webs is therefore vital for conservation efforts and management of natural systems.2- Here, we first characterised a tropical stream meta food web and five individual food webs using a Bayesian Hierarchical approach unifying [...]

A structured approach for building multi-community state-and-transition models to support conservation planning

Megan Kate Good, Libby Rumpff, Hannah S. Fraser, et al.

Published: 2023-12-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Global declines in ecosystem extent and condition mean there is an increasing demand for recovery and conservation plans. Conservation plans for ecological communities require a management framework with measurable, time-bound objectives. Efficient and structured processes that facilitate timely and comparable conservation plans are essential, especially where resources are constrained.  We [...]

Ecosystem functions and services provided by dung beetles: a global meta-analysis

Fevziye Hasan, Louis A Schipper, Kiri Joy Wallace, et al.

Published: 2023-12-19
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences

Dung beetles are known to carry out a range of ecosystem functions such as secondary seed dispersal, bioturbation, nutrient cycling, plant growth, pest and parasite control, and trophic regulation, many of which support key ecosystem services. Despite the globally purported significance of this group of insects for ecosystem functioning, there has been no quantitative synthesis to establish the [...]

Developmental axioms in life history evolution

Liam U Taylor, Richard Prum

Published: 2023-12-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution

Life history theory is often invoked to make universal predictions about phenotypic evolution. For example, it is conventional wisdom that organisms should evolve older ages at first reproduction if they have longer lifespans. We clarify that life history theory does not currently provide such universal predictions about phenotypic diversity. Using the classic Euler-Lotka model of adaptive life [...]

Shrinking body size may not provide meaningful thermoregulatory benefits in a warmer world

Andreas Nord, Elin Persson, Joshua Kenneth Robertson Tabh, et al.

Published: 2023-12-13
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physiology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology

In a recent and impressive analysis of avian morphological data (covering >250 000 male birds from 105 species), Youngflesh et al.1 report that birds breeding in North America have become significantly lighter over the last three decades, coincident with rising breeding season temperatures. Because these observations recapitulate predictions under Bergmann’s Rule (i.e., that the body size of [...]

Complementando inventarios biológicos con datos abiertos a través de un método semiautomatizado

Sergio A. Cabrera-Cruz, José Luis Aguilar López, Rafael Villegas Patraca

Published: 2023-12-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Introducción: Los muestreos directos constituyen la mejor manera de documentar la riqueza biológica de un lugar, pero pueden verse limitados por diversas circunstancias. Nos preguntamos si la riqueza de especies documentada en campo puede ser complementada con datos de plataformas digitales de biodiversidad. Objetivo: Analizar si los datos de ocurrencia de especies disponibles en la Global [...]

Divergent responses between lineages of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi to soil phosphorus and nitrogen availability

Brendan Delroy, Hai-Yang Zhang, Andrew Bissett, et al.

Published: 2023-12-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Soil Science

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) associations are multifunctional. Two important functions they perform are facilitating nutrient uptake in host plants and protecting plants from biotic stress, among other functions. AM fungal taxa vary in how capably they perform these functions and can also respond differently to environmental selection. Therefore, there is a need to better understand how particular [...]

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