Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Bird species’ centrality in seed-dispersal networks varies within climatic niches

Gabriel M. Moulatlet, Wesley Dáttilo, Daniel Kissling, et al.

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

Understanding how the functional role of species within seed-dispersal networks varies across geographical and climatic gradients can reveal the mechanisms driving network organization. Using data for 157 bird species from all continents, we evaluated the variation of species’ centrality within local networks across species’ climatic niches (occupied climatic conditions) and in response to [...]

A user-friendly AI workflow for customised wildlife-image classification

Barry W. Brook, Jessie C. Buettel, Zach Aandahl

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

Monitoring wildlife is crucial for making informed conservation and land-management decisions. Remotely triggered cameras are widely used for this, but the resulting 'big data' are laborious to process. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers a solution to this bottleneck, but it has been challenging for ecologists and practitioners to tailor current approaches to their specific use cases. Generic, [...]

Urbanization alters sandy beach scavenging assemblages but not ecosystem function

Francis David Gerraty, Ann Gobei-Bacaylan, Kaia Diel

Published: 2023-12-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Urbanization is rapidly transforming coastal landscapes around the world, altering the structure and function of marine, intertidal, and terrestrial ecosystems. In this study, we explore the impact of urbanization on the structure of vertebrate scavenging assemblages and the ecosystem functions they provide in sandy beach ecosystems across 40km of the central California coast, USA. We surveyed [...]

Quantifying clearance rates of restored shellfish reefs using modular baskets

Maja Paulina Andersson, Karen L Cheney, Robbie Porter, et al.

Published: 2023-12-08
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management, Zoology

Shellfish reefs are among the most degraded ecosystems globally, prompting substantial efforts to restore them. While biodiversity gains of restored reefs are well documented, other ecosystem services such as water filtration remain poorly quantified. We present a novel way of measuring water filtration by restored reefs using modular restoration structures called Robust Oyster Baskets (ROB 400). [...]

Linking biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people (NCP): a macroecological energy flux perspective

Ana Carolina Antunes, Emilio Berti, Ulrich Brose, et al.

Published: 2023-12-08
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Linking biodiversity and the provision of nature’s contribution to people (NCP) remains a challenge. This hinders our ability to properly cope with the decline in biodiversity and the provision of NCP under global climate and land use changes. Here, we propose a framework that combines biodiversity models with food web energy flux approaches to evaluate and map NCP at large spatio-temporal [...]

Towards the next generation of species delimitation methods: an overview of Machine Learning applications

Matheus Salles, Fabricius Domingos

Published: 2023-12-07
Subjects: Biology, Computational Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics

Species delimitation is the process of distinguishing between populations of the same species and distinct species of a particular group of organisms. Various methods exist for inferring species limits, with most of them being rooted in Coalescent Theory. Their primary goal is to identify independently evolving lineages that should represent separate species. Coalescent models have improved [...]

Historical redlining impacts wildlife biodiversity across California

Cesar Omar Estien, Mason Fidino, Christine E. Wilkinson, et al.

Published: 2023-12-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Legacy effects describe the persistent, long-term impacts on an ecosystem following the removal of an abiotic or biotic feature. Redlining, a policy that codified racial segregation and disinvestment in minoritized neighborhoods, has produced legacy effects with profound impacts on urban ecosystem structure and health. These legacies have detrimentally impacted public health outcomes, [...]

Detecting context-dependence in the expression of life history tradeoffs

Louis Bliard, Jordan Scott Martin, Maria Paniw, et al.

Published: 2023-12-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Population Biology

Life history tradeoffs are one of the central tenets of evolutionary demography. Tradeoffs, depicting negative covariances between individuals’ life history traits, can arise from genetic constraints, or from a finite amount of resources that each individual has to allocate in a zero-sum game between somatic and reproductive functions. While theory predicts that tradeoffs are ubiquitous, [...]

Natural selection is less efficient at species range edges

Chloé Schmidt, Jussi Mäkinen, Jean-Philippe Lessard, et al.

Published: 2023-12-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences

Changing species distributions due to global change underscore a pressing need to better understand range limits. However, our knowledge of general determinants of range limits remains poor despite over a century of work. Theoretical models demonstrate that genetic drift should strengthen across environmental gradients. This can limit natural selection to the point where populations can no longer [...]

Escape tendency and the mobility behavior of four alpine rodents do not change with altitude

Jacopo Cerri, Ilaria Melcore, Noemi Gargano, et al.

Published: 2023-12-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Zoology

Behavioural responses are particularly important to quantify species-specific habitat influences on natural selection. Mountains, with their wide range of habitats, can be regarded as a valuable context where the environmental conditions influence animal behaviour. We studied the inter-specific variation in the escape tendency and the mobility behaviour in four alpine rodents’ species, a bank [...]

Functional coherence among miRNA targets: a potential metric for assessing biological signal among target prediction methods in non-model species

Christopher Wheat, Rachel A. Steward, Yu Okamura, et al.

Published: 2023-11-30
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Although miRNA regulation of protein production is a likely target of adaptive evolution, high false-positive rates in the identification of mRNAs targeted by miRNAs in non-model species’ complicates interpretation of recent advances. Here we document the challenges and then outline steps for the community to address these challenges.

Vocal Dimorphism in Anna’s Hummingbirds

Sierra Ru-Yi Glassman, Adi Domer, Adi Domer

Published: 2023-11-28
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Zoology

Whereas vocal sexual dimorphism is widespread amongst birds, it has been historically overlooked in non-passerines such as hummingbirds. By evaluating correlations among sex, behaviors, and vocalizations, the meaning and utility of intentional sound production may be inferred. Anna's Hummingbirds (Calypte anna) exhibit pronounced sexual dimorphism, with males being larger and having more vibrant [...]

this version should be deleted, it is duplicated

Leandro Do Nascimento, Cristian Pérez-Granados, Janderson B. Rodrigues Alencar, et al.

Published: 2023-11-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

this version should be deleted it is duplicated with the ID 6292 which is the correct version. Please delete this entry. I don't know why you guys have created two entries and this one with a wrong file that reads for review only.

Opinion: Missing half the picture, focus on stony corals during bleaching events has left critical knowledge gaps in our understanding of reef-scale bleaching and recovery

Rosemary Kate Steinberg

Published: 2023-11-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Honest Signalling Made Simple

Jacob Chisausky, Carl Bergstrom, Kevin Zollman, et al.

Published: 2023-11-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences

Honest communication is a common phenomenon in animal behaviour, and is frequently explained by appeal to the so-called handicap hypothesis by which signal costs deter dishonesty. However, the handicap models commonly used to explain honest signalling have has been subject to several lines of criticism in recent literature. This trend may have led researchers outside of the field of animal [...]

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