Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity

Typification of plants illustrated by Feuillée: a reply to Zanotti et al.

Mark Alan Hershkovitz

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

Tatsuya Amano, Valeria Ramírez-Castañeda, Violeta Berdejo-Espinola, et al.

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

Gregory W Stull

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 [...]

CONFOUND IT! The taxonomy of plants mistaken for Cistanthe arenaria (Cham.) Carolin ex Hershk. [MONTIACEAE, Cistanthe sect. Rosulatae (Reiche) Hershk.]

Mark Alan Hershkovitz

Published: 2022-11-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences

Cistanthe arenaria (Cham.) Carolin ex Hershk. is a species of Montiaceae distributed from Chile’s Maule to Araucanía Regions. But the name historically and currently has been applied also to readily distinct species distributed from the Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins to Coquimbo Regions: C. chamissoi (Barnéoud) Carolin ex Hershk., C. trigona (Bertero ex Colla) Carolin ex Hershk, C. [...]

Assessing the aesthetic attractivity of European butterflies: a web-based survey protocol

Elia van Tongeren, Ginevra Sistri, Vincenzo Zingaro, et al.

Published: 2022-11-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Entomology, Life Sciences, Zoology

Aesthetic attractivity stands as an underestimated yet fundamental feature of species in conservation biology, significantly driving disproportionate protection efforts towards charismatic species. Despite the evidence, few attempts sought to precisely quantify the impact of aesthetic attractivity in defining priority of species for conservation actions (e.g. inclusion in International Union for [...]

Unstratified forests dominate the tropics especially in regions with lower fertility or higher temperatures

Christopher Doughty, Camille Gaillard, Andrew Abraham, et al.

Published: 2022-11-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Forest Biology, Plant Biology

The stratified nature of tropical forest structure had been noted by early explorers, but until recent use of satellite-based LiDAR (GEDI, or Global Ecosystems Dynamics Investigation LiDAR), there has been no way to quantify stratification across all tropical forests. Understanding stratification is important because by some estimates, a majority of the world’s species inhabit tropical forest [...]

Small is big: A new conservation paradigm for amphibians

Emma Cathleen Steigerwald, Julianne Oshiro, Julia Chen, et al.

Published: 2022-11-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Many countries have responded to the current global biodiversity crisis by committing to protect 30% of the Earth by 2030, a goal known as “30 x 30”. However, an excessive emphasis on megafauna to the exclusion of other species weakens our current protected area (PA) network. This limited perspective overvalues large, connected PAs, while disregarding the potential impacts of small PAs in [...]

A globally integrated structure of taxonomy supporting biodiversity science and conservation

Emily L. Sandall, Aurore Maureaud, Robert Guralnick, et al.

Published: 2022-10-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

All aspects of biodiversity research, from taxonomy to conservation, rely on data associated with species names. Effective integration of names across multiple fields is paramount and depends on coordination and organization of taxonomic data. We assess current efforts and find that even key applications for well-studied taxa still lack commonality in taxonomic information required for [...]

Deep reticulation: the long legacy of hybridization in vascular plant evolution

Gregory W Stull, Kasey K Pham, Pamela S Soltis, et al.

Published: 2022-10-26
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences

Hybridization has long been recognized as a fundamental evolutionary process in plants, but our understanding of its phylogenetic distribution and biological significance across deep evolutionary scales has been largely obscure—until recently. Over the past decade, genomic and phylogenomic datasets have revealed, perhaps not surprisingly, that hybridization, often associated with polyploidy, has [...]

Discovering the rules of plant biogeography using a trait-based approach

Thais Vasconcelos

Published: 2022-09-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Lineage-specific traits determine how plants interact with their surrounding environment. As different species may find similar phenotypic solutions through evolution to tolerate, persist in and invade environments with certain characteristics, some traits may become more common in certain types of habitats. These general patterns of geographical trait distribution point towards the existence of [...]

Distribution and Variability of Cistanthe philhershkovitziana Hershk. (Cistanthe sect. Cistanthe; Montiaceae)

Mark Alan Hershkovitz

Published: 2022-09-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences

The present work exploits internet resources to update previously reported data for the distributional range and ecology of Cistanthe philhershkovitziana Hershk. (Cistanthe Spach sect. Cistanthe; Montiaceae), a conspicuous and not uncommon species of central and north-central Chile. The latitudinal range documented here is at least 4.8° greater than previously reported, extending from ca. 29°S [...]

Individual-based eco-evolutionary framework: towards unifying ecology and evolution

Jan Hrcek

Published: 2022-09-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Evolution is increasingly found to be rapid and entangled with ecological processes in complex eco-evolutionary dynamics, calling for a common conceptual framework. Yet, ecological and evolutionary theory remain largely separated, which constrains the development of integrative research. To overcome this separation, I argue for treating the entangled dynamics as a single eco-evolutionary process [...]

Stable laws in a changing world The structure of evolutionary theories over the centuries

Liz Pásztor, Géza Meszéna

Published: 2022-09-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Successful fundamental theories are built on verifiable principles that include measurable variables. This paper shows that Darwin’s inclusive theory is built on such principles and follows their rocky road into modern operational theories. Besides reproduction, variation, and heredity, Darwin’s conditions of diversification also include the potential for exponential (geometric) population growth [...]

Causal inference and large-scale expert validation shed light on the drivers of SDM accuracy and variance

Rob James Boyd, Martin Harvey, David Roy, et al.

Published: 2022-09-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences

1. The literature is awash with studies purporting to show how various species and data characteristics affect the performances of Species Distribution Models (SDMs). Many of these studies follow a similar template: they fit SDMs for several species, or the same species using different datasets; assess the accuracy of those SDMs using skill statistics; and then identify correlates thereof. [...]

New Global Species Biodiversity: Soil soars, Ocean flounders

Robert Blakemore

Published: 2022-09-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology

Based on topographic field data, an argument is advanced that Soil houses ~2.1 x 10^24 taxa and supports >99.9% of global species biodiversity, mostly Bacteria or other microbes. Contradictory claims that Soil is home to only a quarter of biota while Ocean harbours 80-99% of Life on Earth are both dismissed. Earlier guesstimates of ~8.8 million taxa (~2.2 million or 25% marine), of 1-6 [...]

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