Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity
Navigating the science policy interface: A co-created mind-map for early career researchers
Published: 2023-04-24
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Education, Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies, Other Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Sustainability
The science-policy interface (SPI) is a complex space, in theory and practice, that sees the interaction of various actors and perspectives coming together to enable scientific knowledge to support decision-making. Early Career Researchers (ECRs) are increasingly interested in engaging with SPI, with the number of opportunities to do so increasing at national and international levels. However, [...]
Phenological sensitivity of climate across taxa and local habitats in a high-Arctic arthropod community
Published: 2023-04-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Arthropods respond to climate change by shifting their phenology in the spring and summer seasons. These phenological shifts are rarely uniform, and taxa show distinct variation in the direction and magnitude of phenological responses to climate drivers. To gain insights into the most climate-sensitive taxa and forecast the implications of climate change on community-wide activity and biotic [...]
Spatial factors overcome seasonality in increasing the consumption of allochthonous food resources by fishes from tropical lotic ecosystems
Published: 2023-03-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. In lotic ecosystems, it is expected higher availability of allochthonous food resources during floods and rainfall events, which may yield a higher consumption of these resources by consumers. However, both the allochthonous input in aquatic ecosystems and seasonality in environmental conditions are locally dependent, thus dietary responses of freshwater consumers to seasonality should also be [...]
A probabilistic approach to estimating timber harvest location
Published: 2023-02-22
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biostatistics, Forest Management, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
Determining the harvest location of timber is crucial to enforcing international regulations designed to protect natural resources and to tackle illegal logging and associated trade in forest products. Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis (SIRA) can be used to verify claims of timber harvest location by matching levels of naturally-occurring stable isotopes within wood tissue to location-specific ratios [...]
How to do biodiversity-related science communication
Published: 2023-02-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Communication, International and Intercultural Communication
Biodiversity is the foundation of our lives. Yet we destroy ecosystems and drive species to extinction. Human-induced biodiversity loss does not yet receive sufficient public attention, although biodiversity is fundamental for dealing with global environmental crises. Effective communication of biodiversity-related knowledge is challenging but crucial and should contribute to evidence-based [...]
The missing link: discerning true from false negatives when sampling species interaction networks
Published: 2023-01-18
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring
Ecosystems are composed of networks of interacting species. These interactions allow communities of species to persist through time through both neutral and adaptive processes. Despite their importance, a robust understanding of (and ability to predict and forecast) interactions among species remains elusive. This knowledge-gap is largely driven by a shortfall of data—although species occurrence [...]
Habitat destruction threatens jaguars in a mixed land use region of eastern Bolivia
Published: 2022-12-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Large carnivores such as the jaguar (Panthera onca) are particularly susceptible to population decline and local extinction as a result of habitat loss. Here, we report on the long-term monitoring of a local jaguar population in a mixed land use area in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia from March 2017 to December 2019. We recorded 15 jaguar individuals and four reproduction events (five offspring [...]
Advances in the reconstruction of the Spider Tree of Life: a roadmap for spider systematics and comparative studies
Published: 2022-12-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Genomics, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
In the last decade and a half, advances in genetic sequencing technologies have revolutionized systematics, transforming the field as studying morphological characters; a few genetic markers have given way to genomic data sets in the phylogenomic era. A plethora of molecular phylogenetic studies on many taxonomic groups have come about, converging on, or refuting prevailing morphology or [...]
Hybridization boosters diversification in a Neotropical orchid group
Published: 2022-12-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Genomics, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Plant Biology, Population Biology
Genetic data shows that cryptic hybrids are more common than previously thought and that hybridization and introgression are widespread processes in nature. Regardless of this, studies on hybridization are scarce for the highly speciose Bulbophyllum. The genus presents more than 2,200 species and many examples of recent radiations, in which hybridization is expected to be frequent. Currently, [...]
Understanding local plant extinctions before it’s too late: bridging evolutionary genomics with global ecology.
Published: 2022-12-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Understanding evolutionary genomic and population processes within a species range is key to anticipating the extinction of plant species before it is too late. However, most models of biodiversity risk projections under global change do not account for the genetic variation and local adaptation of different populations. Population diversity is critical to understanding extinction because [...]
Plant traits poorly predict winner and loser shrub species in a warming tundra biome
Published: 2022-11-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Plant Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Climate change is leading to a species redistributions. In the tundra biome, many shrub species are expanding into new areas, a process known as shrubification. However, not all tundra shrub species will benefit from warming. Winner and loser species (those projected to expand and contract their ranges, and/or those that have increased or decreased in cover over time), and the characteristics [...]
Accounting for cloud cover and circannual variation puts the effect of lunar phase on deer-vehicle collisions into perspective
Published: 2022-11-22
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Although several studies have focused on the influence of moonlight over deer-vehicle collisions, findings have been inconsistent. This may be due to neglecting the effects of cloud cover, a major impediment to moon illumination, and circannual variation in both deer and human activity. We modeled how median cloud cover interacted with the illuminated fraction of the moon in affecting daily roe [...]
Typification of plants illustrated by Feuillée: a reply to Zanotti et al.
Published: 2022-11-18
Subjects: Biodiversity
ABSTRACT: Zanotti et al. (2022a) lectotypified Gnaphalium viravira Feuillée ex Molina with its illustration in Feuillée (1725). They concluded that this illustration qualified as original material seen by Molina (1782). However, Hershkovitz (2020a, b) had concluded that Molina had not seen any of the illustrations in Feuillée (1725), thus none qualify as original material for taxa he validly [...]
The cost of being a non-native English speaker in science
Published: 2022-11-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, International and Intercultural Communication, Publishing, Scholarly Publishing
The use of English as the common language of science represents a major impediment to maximising the contribution of non-native English speakers to science. Yet few studies have quantified the consequences of language barriers on the career development of researchers who are non-native English speakers. Our survey demonstrates that non-native English speakers, especially early in their careers, [...]
Evolutionary origins of the Mesoamerican-eastern United States floristic disjunction: current status and future prospects
Published: 2022-11-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Biogeographic disjunction patterns, where multiple taxonomic groups are shared between isolated geographic areas, represent excellent systems for investigating the historical assembly of modern biotas as well as fundamental biological processes such as speciation, diversification, niche evolution, and evolutionary responses to climate change. Studies on plant genera disjunct across the Northern [...]