Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity
Urban tolerance of birds changes throughout the full annual cycle
Published: 2021-02-08
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aim: Our objective was to quantify urban tolerance for North American birds across the full annual cycle. We tested (1) whether intra-annual variability of urban tolerance differed between migrants and residents and (2) whether intra-annual variability of urban tolerance was phylogenetically conserved. We then assessed how the relationship between ecological and life history traits and urban [...]
Corrections to Phytologia,vol. 102 (3) – Rumicastrum dielsii (Poelln.) Carolin is an “alien,” R. cylindricum (Poelln.) Carolin is Elatinaceae, R. monogynum (Poelln.) Carolin is incertae sedis, and the combination in Rumicastrum for Talinum nanum Nees was neglected
Published: 2021-02-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
In Phytologia 102 (4): 116–123, Hershkovitz recombined into Rumicastrum Ulbrich 65 Australian Montiaceae species originally classified in Calandrinia Kunth. Three of these species, all described by Karl von Poellnitz, do not pertain to Rumicastrum. The type specimen of Rumicastrum dielsii (Poelln.) Carolin is Calandrinia menziesii (Hook.) Torr. & A.Gray, a western North American species [...]
Reptile smuggling is predicted by trends in the legal exotic pet trade
Published: 2021-01-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Western countries are less frequently implicated in illegal wildlife trade (IWT), contrasted with other transnational consumers, yet substantial evidence suggests that they contribute prominently. Live animal smuggling presents a suite of biosecurity concerns, including invasive species and disease risks. Here, we compared the live alien reptile species smuggled to Australia (75 species) to the [...]
Soil fungal diversity and community assembly: Affected by island size or type?
Published: 2021-01-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Fungi have huge biodiversity and play important roles in soil biogeochemical cycling and ecosystem services in island ecosystems. Although island biogeography has been widely studied in macroorganisms, the relationship between soil fungal diversity and area in islands is less documented. Here, we examine soil fungal communities of 18 oceanic islands belonged to two types of islands (8 general [...]
Set theory and types of groups in phylogenetics
Published: 2021-01-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Mathematically, it is possible to be a subset (⊂) of a set and not to be its member (∈)—e.g. the empty set. Here, I highlight that a similar principle applies to undiscovered objects in sets of real objects. The current definitions of holophyly (monophyly sensu stricto) and paraphyly suggest a direct membership (∈) of ancestors in taxa. These ancestors are almost always unknown (undiscovered) in [...]
Consistent replacement of small- by large-ranged plant species across habitats
Published: 2021-01-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
The direction and magnitude of long-term changes in local plant species richness are highly variable among studies, while species turnover is ubiquitous. However, it is unknown whether the nature of species turnover is idiosyncratic or whether certain types of species are consistently gained or lost across different habitats. To address this question, we analyzed the trajectories of 1,827 [...]
Assembly processes lead to divergent soil fungal communities within and among twelve forest ecosystems along a latitudinal gradient
Published: 2021-01-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
- Latitudinal gradients provide opportunities to better understand soil fungal community assembly and its relationship with vegetation, climate, soil and ecosystem function. Understanding the mechanisms underlying community assembly is essential for predicting compositional responses to changing environments. - We quantified the relative importance of stochastic and deterministic processes in [...]
Evolutionary Insights from DNA Sequences from Chaetanthera Ruiz & Pav. and Oriastrum Poepp. & Endl. (Asteraceae; Mutisieae). I. Of Molecules and Systematics
Published: 2021-01-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Phylogenetic analysis of combined ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and chloroplast DNA rpl32-trnL intergenic spacer sequences greatly improves phylogenetic resolution of Chaetanthera Ruiz & Pav. and Oriastrum Poepp. & Endl. (Asteraceae; Mutisieae) over a previously published phylogeny based on ITS alone. The results support segregation of Chaetanthera subg. Liniphyllum [...]
Challenges and opportunities of species distribution modelling of terrestrial arthropod predators
Published: 2020-12-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Species distribution models (SDMs) are emerging as essential tools in the equipment of many ecologists; they are useful in exploring species distributions in space and time and in answering an assortment of questions related to historical biogeography, climate change biology and conservation biology. Given that arthropod distributions are strongly influenced by microclimatic conditions and [...]
Beta and phylogenetic diversities tell complementary stories about ecological networks biogeography
Published: 2020-12-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The beta-diversity of interactions between communities does not necessarily correspond to the differences related to their species composition because interactions show greater variability than species co-occurrence. Additionally, the structure of species interaction networks can itself vary over spatial gradients, thereby adding constraints on the dissimilarity of communities in space. We used [...]
Ecological Countermeasures for Pandemic Prevention: When Ecological Restoration is a Human Health Imperative
Published: 2020-12-06
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Bacteriology, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, Immunopathology, Integrative Biology, International Public Health, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Parasitology, Pathogenic Microbiology, Population Biology, Public Health, Systems Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Microbiology and Immunobiology, Veterinary Pathology and Pathobiology, Zoology
Ecological restoration should be regarded as a public health service. Unfortunately, the lack of quantitative linkages between environmental and human health has limited recognition of these principle. Advent of COVID-19 pandemic provides the impetus for the further discussion. We propose ecological countermeasures as highly targeted, landscape-based interventions to arrest the drivers of land [...]
Experimentally testing the response of feral cats and their prey to poison baiting
Published: 2020-12-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Feral cats Felis catus have caused the decline and extinction of many species worldwide, particularly on islands and in Australia where native species are generally naïve to the threat of this introduced predator. Effectively reducing cat populations to protect wildlife is challenging because cats have a cryptic nature, high reproductive rate and strong reinvasion ability. We experimentally [...]
All together now: Limitations and recommendations for the simultaneous analysis of all eukaryotic soil sequences
Published: 2020-12-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The soil environment contains a large, but historically underexplored reservoir of biodiversity. While sequencing of prokaryotic marker genes has become commonplace for the discovery and characterization of soil bacteria and archaea, this approach has been increasingly applied to sequencing eukaryotic marker genes to characterize the diversity of soil eukaryotes. However, understanding the [...]
Qualitative and quantitative methods show stability in patterns of Cepaea nemoralis shell polymorphism in the Pyrenees over five decades
Published: 2020-12-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
One of the emerging strengths of working with the land snail genus Cepaea is that historical collections can be compared against modern day samples, for instance to understand the impact of changing climate and habitat upon shell morph frequencies. However, one potential limitation is that prior studies scored shell ground colour by eye, usually in the field, into three discrete colours yellow, [...]
Mobilising molluscan models and genomes in biology
Published: 2020-11-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Laboratory and Basic Science Research Life Sciences, Life Sciences
Molluscs are amongst the most ancient, diverse, and important of all animal taxa. Even so, no individual mollusc species has emerged as a broadly applied model system in biology. We here make the case that both perceptual and methodological barriers have played a role in the relative neglect of molluscs as research organisms. We then summarize the current application and potential of molluscs and [...]