Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Best practices for LGBTQ+ inclusion during ecological fieldwork: Considering safety, cis/heteronormativity, and structural barriers
Published: 2022-05-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and other marginalized gender and sexual identities (LGBTQ+) face unique barriers to participation in applied ecology. Such barriers are particularly relevant during fieldwork, including physical and discriminatory risks, increased isolation, and non-inclusive infrastructure.To be more inclusive, fieldwork should address LGBTQ+ safety and survival needs. [...]
A robust and readily implementable method for the meta-analysis of response ratios with and without missing standard deviations
Published: 2022-05-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The log response ratio, lnRR, is the most frequently used effect size statistic for meta-analysis in ecology. However, often missing standard deviations (SDs) prevent estimation of the sampling variance of lnRR. We propose new methods to deal with missing SDs via a weighted average coefficient of variation (CV) estimated from studies in the dataset that do report SDs. Across a suite of simulated [...]
Within-colony segregation of foraging areas: from patterns to processes
Published: 2022-05-18
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Spatial segregation of foraging areas among conspecifics breeding in different colonies has been observed in several colonial vertebrates and is assumed to originate from competition and information use. Segregation between sub-groups of foraging animals from the same colony (hereafter sub-colonies) has comparatively received limited attention, even though it may have strong impacts on colony [...]
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 [...]
Community-sourced sightings of atypical birds can be used to understand the evolution of plumage color and pattern
Published: 2022-05-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Birds are known for their brilliant colors and extraordinary patterns. Sightings of individuals with atypical plumage often cause considerable excitement in the birding public, but receive little attention beyond reporting one-off sightings by the scientific community. In this perspective, we argue that sightings of individuals with atypical plumage submitted to community science platforms hold [...]
Are we underestimating the ecological and evolutionary effects of warming? Interactions with other environmental drivers may increase species vulnerability to high temperatures
Published: 2022-04-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Warming, the most prominent aspect of global environmental change, already affects most ecosystems on Earth. In recent years, biologists have increasingly integrated the effects of warming into their models by capturing how temperature shapes their physiology, ecology, behavior, evolutionary adaptation, and probability of extirpation/extinction. The more physiologically-grounded approaches to [...]
Surprising Abundant Mussel Beds in the Center of Boston Harbor in the Midst of a Regional Die-Back
Published: 2022-04-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Mussel beds in the rocky intertidal of New England have long been a paradigmatic example of how physical forces – wave action – reduces predator abundance and enables a distinct ecological community. These beds, however, have witnessed a precipitous >60% decline since the 1970s for currently unknown reasons. Here we report on the surprising persistence of large dense mussel beds in the middle [...]
Reducing the biases in false correlations between discrete characters
Published: 2022-04-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The correlation between two characters is often interpreted as evidence that there exists a significant and biologically important relationship between them. However, Maddison and FitzJohn (2015) recently pointed out that in certain situations find evidence of correlated evolution between two categorical characters is often spurious, particularly, when the dependent relationship stems from a [...]
Urban food forestry transforms fine-scale soil function for rapid and uniform carbon sequestration
Published: 2022-03-21
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Urbanization displaces agriculture and natural ecosystems, constraining food security and carbon (C) sinks. A proposed solution, Urban Food Forestry (UFF), promises local food from trees that can sequester C faster than other land cover types as long as soil function improves. We compared fine-scale variation in soil physical, chemical and biological properties within and between UFF and [...]
Summer temperature – but not growing season length – influences radial growth of Salix arctica in coastal Arctic tundra
Published: 2022-03-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Arctic climate change is leading to an advance of plant phenology (the timing of life history events) with uncertain impacts on tundra ecosystems. Although the lengthening of the growing season is thought to lead to increased plant growth, we have few studies of how plant phenology change is altering tundra plant productivity. Here, we test the correspondence between 14 years of Salix arctica [...]
Blood parasite infection causes marginal temporary costs in juvenile birds of prey
Published: 2022-02-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Parasitology
Physiological costs from parasites arise from host colonization and defence activation and can vary according to the interactions of host and parasite traits and states. Parasite-induced costs crucially differ between stages of infection, but this is difficult to assess in wild vertebrates. To evaluate the effects of blood parasite infection in juvenile birds, we compared physiological measures [...]
Systemic racism alters wildlife genetic diversity
Published: 2022-02-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Humans are the defining feature of urban ecosystems. In the United States, systemic racism has had lasting effects on the structure of cities, specifically due to government-mandated “redlining” policies that produced racially segregated neighborhoods that persist today. However, it is not known whether varying habitat structure and natural resource availability associated with racial segregation [...]
Density dependence and disease dynamics: moving towards a predictive framework
Published: 2022-02-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
High population density is thought to exacerbate parasite exposure rates, leading to increased transmission and greater disease burdens. Different types of interactions exhibit different relationships with density, and therefore so do parasites that are spread by these interactions. Epidemiological models often assume a given density-transmission relationship, and the validity of this assumption [...]
Mismatch between IUCN range maps and species interactions data illustrated using the Serengeti food web
Published: 2022-02-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Background. Range maps are a useful tool to describe the spatial distribution of species. However, they need to be used with caution, as they essentially represent a rough approximation of a species’ suitable habitats. When stacked together, the resulting communities in each grid cell may not always be realistic, especially when species interactions are taken into account. Here we show the extent [...]
Inferring trends in pollinator distributions across the Neotropics from publicly available data remains challenging despite mobilisation efforts
Published: 2022-01-24
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aim: Aggregated species occurrence data are increasingly accessible through public databases for the analysis of temporal trends in species’ distributions. However, biases in these data present challenges for robust statistical inference. We assessed potential biases in data available through GBIF on the occurrences of four flower-visiting taxa: bees (Anthophila), hoverflies (Syrphidae), [...]