Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity
Accounting for year effects and sampling error in temporal analyses of population and biodiversity change - Response to Seibold et al. 2019 “Arthropod decline in grasslands and forests is associated with landscape-level drivers”
Published: 2020-10-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
An accumulating number of studies are reporting severe biomass, abundance and/or species richness declines of insects (Hallmann et al., 2017; Lister & Garcia, 2018; Seibold et al., 2019; Sánchez-Bayo & Wyckhuys, 2019). Collectively these studies aim to quantify the net change in invertebrate populations and/or community composition over time and to establish whether such changes can be [...]
Understanding biological resilience, from genes to ecosystems
Published: 2020-10-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The natural world is under unprecedented and accelerating pressure. Much work on understanding resilience to local and global environmental change has, so far, focussed on ecosystems. However, understanding a system’s behaviour requires knowledge of its component parts and their interactions. Here we present a framework for understanding ‘biological resilience’, or the processes that enable [...]
Synergistic impacts of anthropogenic fires and aridity on plant diversity in the Western Ghats: Implications for management of ancient social-ecological systems
Published: 2020-10-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Identifying the impacts of anthropogenic fires on biodiversity is imperative for human-influenced tropical rainforests because: i) these ecosystems have been transformed by human-induced fires for millennia; and ii) their effective management is essential for protecting the world’s terrestrial biodiversity in the face of global environmental change. While several short-term studies elucidate the [...]
A call to action: Understanding land use-induced zoonotic spillover to protect environmental, animal, and human health
Published: 2020-09-26
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Biodiversity, Biology, Diseases, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Parasitic Diseases, Public Health, Systems Biology, Veterinary Medicine
The rapid, global spread and human health impacts of SARS-CoV-2, the agent of COVID-19 disease, demonstrates humanity’s vulnerability to zoonotic disease pandemics. Although anthropogenic land use change is known to be the major driver of zoonotic pathogen spillover from wildlife to human populations, the scientific underpinnings of land use-induced zoonotic spillover have rarely been [...]
Cushion plants act as facilitators for soil microarthropods in high alpine Sweden
Published: 2020-09-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Cushion plants can have positive impacts on plant richness in severe environments and possibly across trophic levels on arthropods, an under-studied topic. 2. This study examined whether soil communities under cushions of Silene acaulis and Diapensia lapponica have higher richness and abundance of soil microarthropods (Acari, Collembola) than adjacent non-cushion vegetation; and whether [...]
Pathways linking biodiversity to human health: A conceptual framework
Published: 2020-09-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Geography, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Other Psychology, Psychology, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Biodiversity is a cornerstone of human health and well-being. However, while evidence of the contributions of nature to human health is rapidly building, research into how biodiversity relates to human health remains limited in important respects. In particular, a better mechanistic understanding of the range of pathways through which biodiversity can influence human health is needed. These [...]
Rumicastrum Ulbrich (Montiaceae): a beautiful name for the Australian calandrinias
Published: 2020-09-19
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
For more than 30 years, Montiaceae specialists have agreed that Australian species classified in Calandrinia Kunth pertain to a distinct and divergent lineage whose oldest validly published name is Rumicastrum Ulbrich. In 1998, more than half of accepted species were transferred erroneously to a new genus, Parakeelya Hershk. However, taxonomists and databases have continued to classify the [...]
Püllomen: an ethnoecological perspective of the Mapuche protector spirit insect
Published: 2020-09-18
Subjects: Anthropology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Anthropology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Biodiversity plays an important role in cultural worldviews, influencing myths, stories, and spiritual beliefs of indigenous peoples. This short review explores an ecological phenomenon that may have influenced and contributed to the development of the Mapuche good spirit insect (Püllomen), which represents the spirit of someone who passed away and comes back to the world of the living providing [...]
BERTERO’S GHOST REVISITED: NEW TYPIFICATIONS OF TALINUM LINARIA COLLA AND CALANDRINIA GAUDICHAUDII BARNÉOUD (= CALANDRINIA PILOSIUSCULA DC; MONTIACEAE)
Published: 2020-09-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
In a revision of the systematics of Calandrinia pilosiuscula DC (including Calandrinia compressa Schrad. ex DC; Montiaceae), Hershkovitz recognized a total of ten validly named synonyms, including Calandrinia gaudichaudii Barnéoud and Talinum linaria Colla. He concluded that these two names were homotypic, both protologs citing a Bertero collection from Valparaiso, which Hershkovitz inferred to [...]
Recent advances of quantitative modeling to support invasive species eradication on islands
Published: 2020-09-08
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The eradication of invasive species from islands is an important part of managing these ecologically unique and at-risk regions. Island eradications are complex projects and mathematical models play an important role in supporting efficient and transparent decision-making. In this review we cover the past applications of modelling to island eradications, which range from large-scale [...]
How microbes can, and cannot, be used to assess soil health
Published: 2020-09-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Healthy soils are critical to the health of ecosystems, economies, and human populations. Thus, it is widely acknowledged that soil health is important to quantify, both for assessment and as a tool to help guide management strategies. What is less clear is how soil health should actually be measured, especially considering that soil health is not exclusively a product of soil physical and [...]
Coexistence of large mammals and humans is possible in Europe’s anthropogenic landscapes
Published: 2020-08-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
A critical question in the conservation of both large carnivores and wild ungulates is where they are able to live. In Europe, large mammals have persisted, and recently expanded, alongside humans for millennia, but surprisingly little quantitative data is available about large scale effects of human disturbance on their broad scale distribution. In this study, we quantify the relative importance [...]
Testing character-evolution models in phylogenetic paleobiology: a case study with Cambrian echinoderms
Published: 2020-08-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
Macroevolutionary inference has historically been treated as a two-step process, involving the inference of a phylogenetic tree, and then inference of a macroevolutionary model using that tree. Newer models, such as the fossilized birth-death model, blend the two steps. These methods make more complete use of fossils than the previous generation of Bayesian phylogenetic models. They also involve [...]
Climate change prompts monitoring and systematic utilization of honey bee diversity in Turkey
Published: 2020-07-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Apiculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
Quantitative studies concerning the impact of climate change on pollinators are generally lacking. Relationship between honey bee diversity, present local adaptations and adaptive capacity of subspecies and ecotypes in the face of climate change is an urgent but rather poorly studied topic worldwide. Actually, such an effort lies at the crossroads of various fields of inquiry. Those include [...]
Calandrinia jompomae (MONTIACEAE), another overlooked species in the Chilean flora
Published: 2020-06-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Calandrinia jompomae Hershk. is described as a distinct species of C. sect. Calandrinia from south-central Chile. The species was described by Barnéoud, but he erroneously identified it as C. glauca Schrad. ex DC. Calandrinia jompomae is similar to C. bonariensis Hauman endemic to Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, here recognized as distinct from C. ciliata (Ruiz & Pavon) DC. But the [...]