Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Amplitude Increases of Vocalizations are Associated with Body Accelerations in Siamang (Symphalangus syndactylus)
Published: 2023-07-15
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Siamangs (Symphalangus syndactylus), one of the few singing apes, vocalize loudly, often while they move. We hypothesize that movement and vocalization coordinate, possibly due to vigorous thorax-loading movements such as brachiation affecting vocal-respiratory dynamics. To assess this vocal-motor coordination we recorded more than a hundred stereotypical vocalizations combined with movement from [...]
The March of the Human Footprint
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
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
Published: 2022-09-08
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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 [...]
Pattern-based identification and mapping of landscape types using multi-thematic data
Published: 2022-03-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Categorical maps of landscape types (LTs) are useful abstractions that simplify spatial and thematic complexity of natural landscapes, thus facilitating land resources management. A local landscape arises from a fusion of patterns of natural themes (such as land cover, landforms, etc.), which makes an unsupervised identification and mapping of LTs difficult. This paper introduces the integrated [...]
The costs of abating threats to Australias biodiversity
Published: 2022-02-03
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
1. Budgeting for biodiversity conservation requires realistic estimates of the costs of threat abatement. However, data on the costs of managing threats to biodiversity is often unavailable or unable to be extrapolated across relevant locations and scales due to a lack of transparency and consistency in how it was collated. Conservation expenditure largely occurs without a priori estimates costs [...]
Nutrient and phytoplankton dynamics of the Hunter River estuary
Published: 2021-12-27
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Observational studies and nutrient amendment experiments were conducted to better understand the nutrient and phytoplankton dynamics of the Hunter River estuary. Eutrophic conditions above ANZECC guidelines for estuaries dominate the Hunter River estuary. The upper Hunter estuary, upstream of its confluence with the Williams River, had the highest concentrations of nutrients and chlorophyll a. [...]
Anticipatory responses to drought by plants: What are the environmental cues?
Published: 2021-09-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Plant Sciences, Water Resource Management
This study is an attempt to reconcile the physics-driven variation in reference evapotranspiration (ET0) and possible sensory-driven anticipatory acclimation that contributes to tolerance of dry weather spells and drought by plants growing in open fields. We use an original data set measured at high temporal resolution. These data include the standard meteorological observations plus detailed [...]