Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity
The costs and benefits of publicising species discoveries.
Published: 2024-02-10
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Biodiversity, Biology
Public information about where species are found can influence what happens to them – from building support to protect their habitat, to telling poachers where to find a target. Recent heated scientific debate about whether to release information about species’ locations when new species or populations are found have highlighted the trade-off between the risk of damage or loss versus the benefits [...]
Leveraging Biodiversity Net Gain to address invertebrate declines in England
Published: 2024-02-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Entomology
Meeting ambitions such as the Global Biodiversity Framework 2030 targets will require multiple conservation mechanisms that benefit the widest possible range of habitats and species. Here, we evaluate the likely impact of a novel and ambitious ecological compensation policy, Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) in England, on terrestrial insects, spiders, and other arthropods (‘invertebrates’), a [...]
Comparing conservation land acquisition strategies using agent-based models
Published: 2024-01-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Most unprotected biodiversity is found outside state-owned protected areas, so developing effective conservation initiatives on privately and communally-owned land is critical. Conservationists have a long history of working with these landowners and their actions can be divided into two broad categories. The first is where they agree to take over responsibility for management, either by buying [...]
Hybridization potential of brown trout, with particular reference to invaded environments
Published: 2024-01-25
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Population Biology
Hybridization is a complex process beginning with the mating of two species. However, hybrid offspring frequency does not predict hetero-specific mating frequency, as post-mating, both pre-zygotic and post-zygotic barriers influence their occurrence. Post-zygotic outbreeding depression usually results in poor embryo-juvenile survival or the production of sterile hybrid offspring. Females have [...]
Puma space use and dispersal in tropical biodiversity hotspots: bridging a gap to connect individuals to populations
Published: 2024-01-25
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology
Assessing residency and dispersal behavior of apex predators and its consequences for landscape connectivity is of paramount importance for understanding population- and ecosystem- effects of anthropogenic land use change. However, basic information on animal space use is still lacking, particularly in the Tropics. Here we synthesize ranging and dispersal ecological information on pumas (Puma [...]
Distribution, Abundance and Status of At-Risk Birds at a Six-Acre Site Within the Upper Boileau Biodiversity Reserve, Québec: A Year-Long Research Study
Published: 2024-01-22
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Understanding the distribution, abundance and status of at-risk birds in any area where human impact is low is an imperative in understanding the larger ecological situation. Birds have been widely seen as reliable indicators of ecological health and there have been significant population declines in North America, especially among migratory aerial insectivores, and are escalading rapidly. As a [...]
Opportunity Begets Opportunity to Drive Macroevolutionary Dynamics of a Diverse Lizard Radiation
Published: 2024-01-18
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Evolution proceeds unevenly across the tree of life, with some lineages accumulating diversity more rapidly than others. Explaining this disparity is challenging as similar evolutionary triggers often do not result in analogous shifts across the tree, and similar shifts may reflect different evolutionary triggers. We used a combination of approaches to directly consider such context-dependency [...]
A big data and machine learning approach for monitoring the condition of ecosystems
Published: 2024-01-16
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ecosystems are highly valuable as a source of goods and services and as a heritage for future generations. Knowing their condition is extremely important for all management and conservation activities and public policies. Until now, the evaluation of ecosystem condition has been unsatisfactory and thus lacks practical implementation for most countries. We propose that ecosystem integrity is a [...]
Meta-analysis reveals that the effects of precipitation change on soil and litter fauna in forests depend on body size
Published: 2024-01-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Anthropogenic climate change is altering precipitation regimes at a global scale. While precipitation changes have been linked to changes in the abundance and diversity of soil and litter invertebrate fauna in forests, general trends have remained elusive due to mixed results from primary studies. We used a meta-analysis based on 352 comparisons from 30 primary studies to address associated [...]
Smart Solutions, Big Returns: Closing Biodiversity Knowledge Gaps with Digital Agriculture
Published: 2023-12-23
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity
The global expansion and intensification of food production threaten biodiversity, vital for ecosystem services and food security. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) advocates drastic changes in agricultural management, yet translating recommendations into local action is challenging. Biodiversity-friendly practices carry highly uncertain benefits, dissuading their adoption. [...]
A structured approach for building multi-community state-and-transition models to support conservation planning
Published: 2023-12-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Global declines in ecosystem extent and condition mean there is an increasing demand for recovery and conservation plans. Conservation plans for ecological communities require a management framework with measurable, time-bound objectives. Efficient and structured processes that facilitate timely and comparable conservation plans are essential, especially where resources are constrained. We [...]
Ecosystem functions and services provided by dung beetles: a global meta-analysis
Published: 2023-12-19
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Dung beetles are known to carry out a range of ecosystem functions such as secondary seed dispersal, bioturbation, nutrient cycling, plant growth, pest and parasite control, and trophic regulation, many of which support key ecosystem services. Despite the globally purported significance of this group of insects for ecosystem functioning, there has been no quantitative synthesis to establish the [...]
Complementando inventarios biológicos con datos abiertos a través de un método semiautomatizado
Published: 2023-12-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Introducción: Los muestreos directos constituyen la mejor manera de documentar la riqueza biológica de un lugar, pero pueden verse limitados por diversas circunstancias. Nos preguntamos si la riqueza de especies documentada en campo puede ser complementada con datos de plataformas digitales de biodiversidad. Objetivo: Analizar si los datos de ocurrencia de especies disponibles en la Global [...]
Bird species’ centrality in seed-dispersal networks varies within climatic niches
Published: 2023-12-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Understanding how the functional role of species within seed-dispersal networks varies across geographical and climatic gradients can reveal the mechanisms driving network organization. Using data for 157 bird species from all continents, we evaluated the variation of species’ centrality within local networks across species’ climatic niches (occupied climatic conditions) and in response to [...]
MEWC: A user-friendly AI workflow for customised wildlife-image classification
Published: 2023-12-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Monitoring wildlife is crucial for making informed conservation and land-management decisions. Remotely triggered cameras are widely used for this purpose, but the resulting 'big data' are laborious to process. Although artificial intelligence (AI) offers a powerful solution to this bottleneck, it has been challenging for ecologists and practitioners without substantial technical expertise to [...]