Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Macroecological processes drive spiritual ecosystem services obtained from giant trees
Published: 2022-05-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sociology, Sociology of Religion
Giant trees that have come to have their own unique identities are often named by local people and can inspire a sense of awe and become objects of faith. Although these giant trees provide various kinds of spiritual ecosystem services that are beneficial to the spiritual well-being of the human society, the drivers of these services remain unclear. Using structural equation modeling with 38,994 [...]
The Global Forest Health Crisis: A Public Good Social Dilemma in Need of International Collective Action
Published: 2022-03-10
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Behavioral Economics, Biodiversity, Biology, Biosecurity, Botany, Economics, Entomology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Studies, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, International Relations, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Pathogenic Microbiology, Plant Biology, Plant Pathology, Plant Sciences, Political Science, Science and Technology Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Society is confronted by interconnected threats to ecological sustainability. Among these is the devastation of forests by destructive non-native pathogens and insects introduced through global trade, leading to the loss of critical ecosystem services and a global forest health crisis. We argue that the forest health crisis is a public good social dilemma and propose a response framework that [...]
Overcoming language barriers in academia: machine translation tools and a vision for a multilingual future
Published: 2022-03-06
Subjects: Communication, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Having a central scientific language remains crucial for the advancement and global sharing of science. Nevertheless, maintaining one dominant language also creates barriers to accessing scientific careers and knowledge. From an interdisciplinary perspective, we describe how, when, and why to more readily make scientific literature available in multiple languages through the practice of [...]
The Shadow of the Neolithic Revolution on Life Expectancy: A Double-Edged Sword
Published: 2022-03-01
Subjects: Analytical, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Techniques and Equipment, Anthropology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Congenital, Hereditary, and Neonatal Diseases and Abnormalities, Diseases, Economic History, Economics, Endocrine System Diseases, Growth and Development, Health Economics, Immune System Diseases, Labor Economics, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Economics, Public Health, Regional Economics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
This research explores the persistent effect of the Neolithic Revolution on the evolution of life expectancy in the course of human history. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that the onset of the Neolithic Revolution and the associated rise in infectious diseases triggered a process of adaptation reducing mortality from infectious diseases while increasing the propensity for [...]
Female bone physiology resilience in a past Polynesian Outlier community
Published: 2022-02-27
Subjects: Anthropology, Archaeological Anthropology, Arts and Humanities, Biological and Physical Anthropology, History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology, Other Arts and Humanities, Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures, Pacific Islands Languages and Societies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Remodelling is a fundamental biological process involved in the maintenance of bone physiology and function. We know that a range of health and lifestyle factors can impact this process in living and past societies, but there is a notable gap in bone remodelling data for populations from the Pacific Islands. We conducted the first examination of femoral cortical histology in 69 individuals from [...]
Survival of the luckiest
Published: 2022-02-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Opposite dynamics are behind natural selection and sexual selection. While the fittest survives in natural selection, the survivor will most likely be the luckiest when both dynamics are combined.
Portrayal of the nitrogen debate in Dutch newspapers
Published: 2022-02-21
Subjects: Communication, Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
How sustainability challenges are relayed to the public is paramount to tackling such issues timely. However, there is still a lot to learn about the communication system between sustainability experts and the public. We looked at how Dutch newspapers portrayed the Dutch nitrogen debate that has been going on since 2019. 160 articles from four Dutch national daily newspapers were analyzed for [...]
Evolution of social organization: phylogenetic analyses of ecology and sexual selection in weavers
Published: 2022-02-20
Subjects: Animal Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Crook published a landmark study on the social organization of weavers (or weaverbirds, family Ploceidae) that contributed to the emergence of sociobiology, behavioral ecology, and phylogenetic comparative methods. By comparing ecology, spatial distribution, and mating systems, Crook suggested that the spatial distribution of food resources and breeding habitats influence weaver aggregation, both [...]
A low-cost solution for documenting, tracking, and verifying cage-level animal husbandry tasks using wireless QR scanners and cloud-based spreadsheets
Published: 2022-02-03
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Animal Studies, Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Animal care is a critical component underlying successful behavioral and cognition experiments. Technological solutions for documentation and verification of care can aid in monitoring that activities are completed according to standard operating procedures and ensure that no individuals are overlooked. Here, I summarize a low-cost, flexible, and easy to use system that I developed to document [...]
The role of non-English-language science in informing national biodiversity assessments
Published: 2022-01-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Communication, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Library and Information Science, Life Sciences, Publishing, Scholarly Publishing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Consulting the best available evidence is key to successful conservation decision-making. While much scientific evidence on conservation continues to be published in non-English languages, a poor understanding of how non-English languages science contributes to conservation decision-making is causing global assessments and studies to practically ignore non-English-language literature. By [...]
For the few, not the many: local economic conditions constrain the large-scale management of invasive mosquitoes
Published: 2022-01-06
Subjects: Economics, Entomology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Public Economics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Systems Biology
Invasive mosquitoes are an emerging ecological and sanitary issue. Many factors have been suggested as drivers or barriers to their control, still no study quantified their influence over mosquito management by local authorities, nor their interplay with local economic conditions. We assessed how multiple environmental, sanitary, and socio-economic factors affected the engagement of [...]
Direct Economic Inputs from Internationally Funded Science Projects to the Abaco Islands, The Bahamas
Published: 2021-12-06
Subjects: Communication, Environmental Studies, International and Intercultural Communication, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
International expenditures for scientific research are important for small island developing nations, especially for those local communities that directly support research activities. We used the Abaco Islands, The Bahamas, as a case study to quantify the direct monetary inputs to a local economy via internationally-funded scientific research. We found that over two years the external monetary [...]
Estimating the societal benefits from wildfire mitigation activities in a payments for watershed services program in Colorado
Published: 2021-11-24
Subjects: Economics, Other Economics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Payments for watershed services (PWS) programs are becoming a popular governance approach in the western United States (US) to fund forest management aimed at source water protection. In this paper we conduct a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of one of the first collaboratively funded PWS programs in the US, located in the municipal watersheds servicing Denver, Colorado. We combine wildfire modeling, [...]
The Emergence and Persistence of Payments for Watershed Services Programs in Mexico
Published: 2021-11-18
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Payments for watershed services programs (PWS) have become a prominent tool to protect ecosystems and hydrological services but little is known about where these innovative financing tools and governance systems emerge and persist. In 2008, the Mexican government started a program where they match funding from local partners to establish user-financed PWS programs, leading to the creation of 145 [...]
Perceived impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on protected area management and conservation outcomes in Mexico
Published: 2021-11-02
Subjects: Geography, Human Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Protected areas (PAs) are under immense pressure to safeguard much of the world’s remaining biodiversity and can be strained by unpredicted events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the extent of the pandemic’s effect on PA management, activities, and conservation outcomes is critical for recovery and future planning to buffer against these types of events. We use survey and focus group [...]