Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity
Crumbling Island Keystones: Threat Diversity and Intensification on Islands Push Large Island Fruit Bats to the Brink
Published: 2021-07-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Large island fruit bats (LIFB), species of Pteropus, Acerodon, and related genera in the pteropodid subfamily Pteropodinae, are keystone species for island conservation in the Palaeotropics, playing critical roles as agents of dispersal and pollination of native island plant communities. This keystone role is crumbling because LIFB are collectively the most threatened group of bats in the world. [...]
Day and night camera trap video is effective for identifying wild Asian elephants
Published: 2021-07-24
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Comparative Psychology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Camera traps provide a virtual window into the natural world of wild animals, as they provide a noninvasive way to capture anatomical and behavioral information. Regular monitoring of wild populations through the collection of behavioral and demographic data is critical for the conservation of endangered species like the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). Identifying individual elephants can [...]
Existing indicators do not adequately monitor progress towards meeting invasive alien species targets
Published: 2021-07-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Monitoring the progress parties have made toward meeting global biodiversity targets requires appropriate indicators. The recognition of Invasive alien species (IAS) as a biodiversity threat has led to the development of specific targets aiming at reducing their prevalence and impact. However, indicators for adequately monitoring and reporting on the status of biological invasions have been slow [...]
Dataset of seized wildlife and their intended uses
Published: 2021-07-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
The illegal wildlife trade (IWT) threatens conservation and biosecurity efforts. The Internet has greatly facilitated the trade of wildlife, and researchers have increasingly examined the Internet to uncover illegal trade. However, most efforts to locate illegal trade on the Internet are targeted to one or few taxa or products. Large-scale efforts to find illegal wildlife on the Internet [...]
Plant herbivore protection by arbuscular mycorrhizas: A role for fungal diversity?
Published: 2021-07-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences
The symbiotic association between arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi and terrestrial plants can enhance plant defences against insect herbivores. Despite advances in our understanding of how AM fungi affect plant tolerance and resistance based defence mechanisms, we contend that the role of fungal diversity in these interactions continues to be largely overlooked. This is problematic considering [...]
Developing a Nature Recovery Network using systematic conservation planning
Published: 2021-06-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Conservation area networks in most countries are fragmented and inadequate. To tackle this in England, government policies are encouraging stakeholders to create local-level Nature Recovery Networks. Here we describe work led by a wildlife organisation that used the systematic conservation planning approach to identify a Nature Recovery Network for three English counties and select focal areas [...]
Disentangling food-web environment relationships: a review with guidelines
Published: 2021-06-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Food webs represent energy fluxes and nutrient cycling between interacting species, underpinning ecosystem functioning. Whether and how interactions vary over environmental gradients is still largely unknown. We reviewed the literature searching for systematic relationships between structural food-web properties and environmental gradients. Temperature and biotic factors are amongst the most [...]
Analysing the distance decay of community similarity in river networks using Bayesian methods
Published: 2021-06-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Life Sciences
The distance decay of community similarity (DDCS) is a pattern that is widely observed in terrestrial and aquatic environments. Niche-based theories argue that species are sorted in space according to their ability to adapt to new environmental conditions. The ecological neutral theory argues that community similarity decays due to ecological drift. The continuum hypothesis provides an [...]
Evidence-based guidelines for automated conservation assessments of plant species
Published: 2021-06-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Assessing species’ extinction risk is vital to setting conservation priorities. However, assessment endeavours like the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species have significant gaps in coverage of some taxonomic groups. Automated assessment (AA) methods are gaining popularity to fill these gaps, leveraging improvements in computing and digitally-available information. Choices made in developing, [...]
Urbanization negatively impacts frog diversity at continental, regional, and local scales
Published: 2021-05-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Urban environments are novel ecosystems, with increased chemical, sound, and light pollution differentially impacting many animals. Understanding the impacts of urban environments on biodiversity is the first step to understanding how to best mitigate biodiversity losses in an increasingly urbanizing world. Analyses with broad geographic and taxonomic coverage can offer critical context for [...]
Understanding plant microbiomes requires a G x E framework
Published: 2021-05-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Plant Breeding and Genetics Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Plant microbiomes have become one of the hottest topics in plant biology. Driven by the increased availability of metagenome sequencing methods, analyses of plant-associated microbiomes have been skyrocketing during the last decade. They have generally taken one of two main perspectives: (1) a focus on the microbiome itself, where researchers describe microbiome diversity and attempt to [...]
Species’ traits drive amphibian tolerance to anthropogenic habitat modification
Published: 2021-05-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Anthropogenic habitat modification is accelerating, threatening the world’s biodiversity. Understanding species’ responses to anthropogenic modification is vital for halting species’ declines. However, this information is lacking for globally threatened amphibians, informed primarily by small community-level studies. We integrated >126,000 verified citizen science observations of frogs, with a [...]
Quantifying the checks and balances of decentralised governance systems for adaptive carnivore management
Published: 2021-05-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
1. Recovering or threatened carnivore populations are often harvested to minimise their impact on human activities, such as livestock farming or game hunting. Increasingly, harvest quota decisions involve a set of scientific, administrative and political institutions operating at national and sub-national levels whose interactions and collective decision-making aim to increase the legitimacy of [...]
The economic value of fisheries, blue carbon, and nutrient cycling in global marine forests
Published: 2021-04-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Underwater kelp forests have provided valuable ecosystem services for millennia. However, the global economic value of those services is largely unresolved. Kelp forests are also diminishing globally and efforts to manage these valuable resources are hindered without accurate estimates of the services kelp forests provide to society. We present the first global economic estimation of services - [...]
Spillback in the Anthropocene: the risk of human-to-wildlife pathogen transmission for conservation and public health
Published: 2021-04-12
Subjects: Bacteriology, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Public Health, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Microbiology and Immunobiology, Veterinary Preventive Medicine, Epidemiology, and Public Health, Virology
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has led to increased concern over transmission of pathogens from humans to animals (“spillback”) and its potential to threaten conservation and public health. To assess this threat, we reviewed published evidence of spillback events, including instances where spillback could threaten conservation and human health. We identified 97 verified examples of spillback, involving [...]