Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Physical Sciences and Mathematics

A systematic evidence map and bibliometric analysis of the behavioural impacts of pesticide exposure on zebrafish

Kyle Morrison, Yefeng Yang, Manuela Santos Santana, et al.

Published: 2023-10-27
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Pesticides are indispensable in agriculture and have become ubiquitous in aquatic environments. Pesticides in natural environments can cause many negative impacts on aquatic species, ranging from mortality to sub-lethal physiological and behavioural changes. The complex sub-lethal impacts of pesticides are routinely tested on model species, with zebrafish (Danio rerio) being regularly used as a [...]

A Perspective on How Glyphosate and 2,4-D May Impact Climate Change

Christine M Cornish, Jon Sweetman

Published: 2023-08-26
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

An increase in herbicide use is occurring due to a growing population and herbicide-resistant crops in agriculture, which has resulted in more herbicide tolerant target species. Glyphosate and 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) are two of the most commonly used herbicides worldwide and are more recently being used in combination in pre-mixed commercial formulas. Subsequently, herbicide [...]

Sea otter recovery buffers century-scale declines in California kelp forests

Teri E. Nicholson, Loren McClenachan, Kisei R. Tanaka, et al.

Published: 2023-08-26
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

The status of kelp forests and their vulnerability to climate change are of global significance. As the foundation for productive and extensive ecosystems, understanding the long-term trends in kelp is critical to coastal ecosystem management, climate resiliency, and restoration programs. In this study, we curate historical US government kelp inventories, develop methods to compare them with [...]

On the trade-off between accuracy and spatial resolution when estimating species occupancy from biased samples

Rob James Boyd, Diana E. Bowler, Nick J. B. Isaac, et al.

Published: 2023-08-23
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Species occupancy is often defined as the proportion of areal units (sites) in a landscape that the focal species occupies, but it is usually estimated as the proportion of sampled sites in which the species has been observed. Assuming perfect detection (i.e. no false absences), we show that three quantities–the degree of sampling bias (in terms of site selection), the proportion of sites that [...]

Cross-modal constraints in multimodal vocalizations in Siamang (Symphalangus syndactylus)

Wim Pouw, Mounia Kehy, Marco Gamba, et al.

Published: 2023-07-15
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Gibbons (Hylobatidae) sing loudly, reaching over a hundred Decibels - about the sound level of a rock concert. Qualitative observations report that, during song climaxes, individuals move in a coordinated way with their singing. We hypothesize that vigorous thorax-loading movements such as brachiation induce physical constraints on the respiratory-vocal system. This coordination and possibly [...]

The March of the Human Footprint

Eric Wayne Sanderson, Kim Fisher, Nathaniel Robinson, et al.

Published: 2022-09-29
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Life Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Human influence is driving planetary change, often in undesirable and unsustainable ways. Recent advances enabled us to measure changes in humanity’s footprint on Earth annually from 2000 – 2019 with a nine-fold improvement in spatial resolution over previous efforts. We found that earlier studies seriously under-estimated the magnitude, extent, and rate of change in the human footprint. [...]

Publication bias impacts on effect size, statistical power, and magnitude (Type M) and sign (Type S) errors in ecology and evolutionary biology

Yefeng Yang, Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar, Rose E O'Dea, et al.

Published: 2022-09-12
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistics and Probability

Collaborative assessments of direct replicability of empirical studies in the medical and social sciences have exposed alarmingly low rates of replicability, a phenomenon dubbed the ‘replication crisis’. Poor replicability has spurred cultural changes targeted at improving reliability in these disciplines. Given the absence of equivalent replication projects in ecology and evolutionary biology, [...]

Scientific maps should reach everyone: a straightforward approach to let colour blind people visualise spatial patterns

Duccio Rocchini, Jakub Nowosad, Rossella D'Introno, et al.

Published: 2022-09-09
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Maps represent powerful tools to show the spatial variation of a variable in a straightforward manner. A crucial aspect in map rendering for its interpretation by users is the gamut of colours used for displaying data. One part of this problem is linked to the proportion of the human population that is colour blind and, therefore, highly sensitive to colour palette selection. The aim of this [...]

First recorded outbreak of Veronaea botryosa in North American amphibians: clinicopathologic features of a rare cause of phaeohyphomycosis in captive White’s tree frogs (Litoria caerulea)

Treana Mayer, Alex Moskaluk, Jonathan Kolby, et al.

Published: 2022-08-04
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine

We describe fatal phaeohyphomycosis due to Veronaea botryosa in captive White’s tree frogs (Litoria caerulea), the first confirmed report in amphibians in North America. Over 15 months, six frogs developed ulcerative dermatitis on distal extremities/ventrum, which in one animal progressed to vasculitis and necrotizing osteomyelitis. All six frogs died. Clinicopathologic findings, diagnostic [...]

Research protocol: The effectiveness of feed efficiency and husbandry in mitigating the enteric methane emissions of dairy and beef cattle in temperate farming systems; a rapid synthesis and network meta-analysis

Jodie Vaughan, Gavin Stewart

Published: 2022-07-11
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability

Beef and dairy cattle of temperate farming systems will be studied to investigate the relationships between their methane emissions as well as their efficiencies as milk and beef producers. The investigation will comprehensively utilise all research published on this topic to date via a formalised rapid review and analysing it together through a network meta-analysis. The use of organic versus [...]

Uneven biodiversity sampling across redlined urban areas in the United States

Diego Ellis-Soto, Melissa Chapman, Dexter H Locke

Published: 2022-06-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Demography, Population, and Ecology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Inequality and Stratification, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sociology, Urban Studies and Planning

Citizen science data has rapidly gained influence in urban ecology and conservation planning, but with limited understanding of how such data reflects social, economic, and political conditions and legacies. Understanding patterns of sampling bias across socioeconomic gradients is critical to accurately map and understand biodiversity patterns, and to generating representative and just [...]

Decline effects are rare in ecology: Comment

Yefeng Yang, Malgorzata Lagisz, Shinichi Nakagawa

Published: 2022-06-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability

Recently, Costello and Fox (2022) tested, with a large dataset, the hypothesis of whether there is a widespread decline effect in the discipline of ecology. In other words, the magnitude of the reported ecological effect sizes declines over time (Leimu and Koricheva 2004). Contrary to early results from much smaller datasets (Jennions and Møller 2002, Barto and Rillig 2012), Costello and Fox [...]

GridDER: Grid Detection and Evaluation in R

Xiao Feng, Tainá Rocha, Hanna T Thammavong, et al.

Published: 2022-05-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Observations and collections of organisms form the basis of our understanding of Earth’s biodiversity and are an indispensable resource for global change studies. Geographic information is key, serving as the link between organisms and the environments they reside in. However, the geographic information associated with these records is often inaccurate, thus limiting their efficacy for research. [...]

Multi-population analysis reveals spatial consistency in drivers of population dynamics of a declining migratory bird

Chloé Rebecca Nater, Malcolm D. Burgess, Peter Coffey, et al.

Published: 2022-04-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Population Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Survival Analysis, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Many migratory species are in decline across their geographical ranges. Single-population studies can provide important insights into drivers at a local scale, but effective conservation requires multi-population perspectives. This is challenging because relevant data are often hard to consolidate, and state-of-the-art analytical tools are typically tailored to specific datasets. We capitalized [...]

Interpolation of temporal biodiversity change, loss, and gain across scales: a machine learning approach

Petr Keil, Jonathan Chase

Published: 2022-03-15
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistics and Probability

1. Estimates of temporal change of biodiversity, and its components loss and gain, are needed at local and geographical scales. However, we lack them because of data in-completeness, heterogeneity, and lack of temporal replication. Hence, we need a tool to integrate heterogeneous data and to account for their incompleteness. 2. We introduce spatiotemporal machine learning interpolation that can [...]

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