Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity
Beyond the concrete jungle: The value of urban biodiversity for regional conservation efforts
Published: 2024-11-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Urbanization deletes and degrades natural ecosystems, contributing to the ongoing biodiversity crisis. Yet, on the local scale, well-managed cities can host significant biodiversity, including endemic and threatened species. Understanding the trade-off between local and regional biodiversity outcomes is limited, primarily due to the lack of comprehensive sampling across heterogeneous urban areas [...]
BON in a Box: An Open and Collaborative Platform for Biodiversity Monitoring, Indicator Calculation, and Reporting
Published: 2024-10-28
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Plant Sciences
This paper has been accepted for publication in BioScience. The Convention on Biological Diversity’s Kunming-Montreal Global BiodiversityFramework (GBF) sets ambitious goals to protect and restore biodiversity. It includes a Monitoring Framework that mandates countries to track progress toward these goals using indicators that summarize biodiversity trends. Calculating indicators is challenging [...]
Beyond single invaders: Disentangling the effects of co-invading alien forbs on sandy old-fields
Published: 2024-10-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aims Invasive alien plants can severely impact ecosystem diversity and function. While individual species’ effects are often studied, the interaction between multiple invasive species is less understood. This study examines how Asclepias syriaca and Solidago spp. (including Solidago gigantea and S. canadensis) influence taxonomic and functional diversity in sandy old-fields. The aims are to: (1) [...]
Patterns of fruit production in tropical forests are shifting with negative outnumbering positive trends
Published: 2024-10-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
The impacts of climate change and anthropogenic disturbance are increasingly evident in the structure and demographics of tropical forests, yet the response of tree reproduction remains poorly understood. As fruit and seed production is a key step in forest recruitment, this gap is critical to understanding tropical forest resilience. Tropical fruits are important in diets of numerous frugivores [...]
Language barriers in conservation science citation networks
Published: 2024-10-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Using relevant scientific evidence is crucial to effectively conserve species and ecosystems worldwide. Currently, evidence that is available only in non-English languages is severely underutilized. We examined many underutilized non-English languages in the conservation evidence literature and factors that facilitate the use of non-English-language evidence based on citation patterns of articles [...]
Twenty years of dynamic occupancy models: a review of applications and look to the future
Published: 2024-10-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Natural Resources and Conservation
Understanding patterns of species occupancy across landscapes and throughout time is a long-standing objective of ecological research that has inspired the development of numerous quantitative modelling approaches. However, estimating occupancy can be a challenge, particularly when contending with issues like imperfect detection and shifting distributions. Dynamic occupancy models (DOMs) offer a [...]
Gaps in global alien plant trait data and how to fill them
Published: 2024-10-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Aim Functional traits help to understand the ecological processes underlying biological invasions. The extent to which trait data are available for alien plants at the global scale is unknown. In this study, we assess the availability of trait data and identify global gaps and biases Location Global Time Period Present Major taxa studied Vascular plants Methods We used the GloNAF database to get [...]
Urban bumblebees diversify their foraging strategy to maintain nutrient intake
Published: 2024-10-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Anthropogenic ecosystems can alter individual functions and ecological processes such as resource use and species interactions. While variability on morphological traits involved in diet and resource use has been observed between urban and non-urban populations of pollinators, the consequences on the dietary and pollen transportation patterns remain poorly understood. Here, we investigate the [...]
Pathways for transforming biodiversity governance: An examination of the Global Biodiversity Framework’s Considerations
Published: 2024-10-01
Subjects: Biodiversity
With less than five years remaining to meet global commitments outlined in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)—to stem biodiversity loss—systemic and radical changes in biodiversity governance and management are needed. Addressing these challenges requires a fundamental and transformative shift in the way nature is valued across political, economic, and social spheres. We [...]
Copy-paste augmentation improves automatic species identification in camera trap images
Published: 2024-09-24
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
1. Effective conservation requires effective biodiversity monitoring. The pace of global biodiversity change far outstrips the ability of manual fieldwork to monitor it. Therefore, technological solutions, like camera traps, have emerged as a crucial way to meet biodiversity monitoring needs. Camera traps produce vast amounts of data and so AI is increasingly used to label images with species [...]
Phylogenetic Diversity vs H-Index – does genetics or culture lead conservation research?
Published: 2024-09-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
With so many species in decline it is difficult to know where conservation effort and funding should be dedicated. A common prioritization argument is species uniqueness and phylogenetic diversity, where those with unique evolutionary history are thought to be especially valuable. However, despite frequent calls for better prioritization, research interest is often idiosyncratic, pragmatic, and [...]
Wild vs. domestic ungulate ecosystem impacts: understanding functional differences requires greater focus on mechanisms
Published: 2024-09-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Ungulates play vital roles in ecological systems, shaping plant biomass and diversity via herbivory and impacting soil properties through trampling and nutrient deposition. As ungulate communities fluctuate across the globe, the extent to which wild ungulates and domestic livestock can play similar ecological roles is an increasingly vital - and fraught - question. Here, we synthesized the [...]
Reassessing a Holocene extinction: multiple lines of evidence do not support the historical presence and recent extirpation of a protected anole on the island of Anguilla
Published: 2024-09-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Genomics, Integrative Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology
Accurate assessment of historical species ranges is important for conservation science and management. Inaccurate historical species ranges can lead to incorrect assumptions about local extinctions, population trends, and potential sites for reintroductions. Yet, historical knowledge is often lacking for many species. Here, we examine the case of the bearded anole, Anolis pogus, which is long [...]
Demographic expansion and panmixia in a St. Martin endemic, Anolis pogus, coincides with the decline of a competitor
Published: 2024-09-19
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genomics, Population Biology, Zoology
Understanding patterns of differentiation at microgeographic scales can enhance our understanding of evolutionary dynamics and lead to the development of effective conservation strategies. In particular, high levels of landscape heterogeneity can strongly influence species abundances, genetic structure, and demographic trends. The bearded anole, Anolis pogus, is endemic to the topographically [...]
Widespread decline of ground beetles in Germany
Published: 2024-09-18
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Many insect species are facing existential crises, primarily due to diverse human-induced activities. Most insect assessments, however, are based on short-term data or some iconic species. Here, in close collaboration with taxonomic experts from natural history societies, we compiled the best available occurrence data for ground beetles in Germany, estimated the changes in species occupancy over [...]