Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
FIRED (Fire Events Delineation): An open, flexible algorithm & database of US fire events derived from the MODIS burned area product (2001-19)
Published: 2020-06-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Harnessing the fire data revolution, i.e., the abundance of information from satellites, government records, social media, and human health sources, now requires complex and challenging data integration approaches. Defining fire events is key to that effort. In order to understand the spatial and temporal characteristics of fire, or the classic fire regime concept, we need to critically define [...]
Variation in regrowth ability in relation to land use intensity and predictability in three common grassland herbs
Published: 2020-06-25
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aims Plant populations in managed grasslands are subject to strong selection exerted by grazing, mowing and fertilization. Many previous studies showed that this can cause evolutionary changes in mean trait values, but little is known about the evolution of adaptive plant phenotypic plasticity in response to grassland management. Methods We conducted an outdoor common garden experiment to test [...]
Online conferences for better learning
Published: 2020-06-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Conferences provide an invaluable set of opportunities for professional development. Online, virtual, and distributed conferences do not necessarily mean less opportunity for growth and innovation in science but varied and novel options for communicating the scientific process. Open science and many existing tools and structures are in place in the practice of contemporary ecology and evolution [...]
PRIORITY EFFECTS AND ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION
Published: 2020-06-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Priority effects refer to the order or timing of species arrival, including how species that arrive early to a site either positively or negatively affect establishment, growth, or reproduction of species that arrive later. Despite clear implications of priority effects on ecological restoration, to date there are no reviews of how and where priority effects have been studied and the extent to [...]
Phylogeny can Inform Animal Model Development for Both Inherited and Induced Conditions: Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD)
Published: 2020-06-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The use of animal models in research on human and veterinary diseases and disorders is retracting, though it is likely to remain critical for decades. In light of increasing regulation and expectations of judicious use of animal subjects, we examine the idea that the use of animal models can be guided by phylogenetic relationships and modern evolutionary and cladistic analyses. Given that [...]
A guide to using the Internet to monitor and quantify the wildlife trade
Published: 2020-05-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Life Sciences
The unrivalled growth in e-commerce of animals and plants presents an unprecedented opportunity to monitor wildlife trade to inform conservation, biosecurity, and law enforcement. Using the Internet to quantify the scale of the wildlife trade (volume, frequency) is a relatively recent and rapidly developing approach, which currently lacks an accessible framework for locating relevant websites and [...]
Crowdsourcing global perspectives in ecology using social media
Published: 2020-05-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Transparent, open, and reproducible research is still far from routine, and the full potential of open science has not yet been realized. Crowdsourcing––defined as the usage of a flexible open call to a heterogeneous group of individuals to recruit volunteers for a task ––is an emerging scientific model that encourages larger and more outwardly transparent collaborations. While crowdsourcing, [...]
Assessing Raspberry Shake and Boom sensors for recording African elephant acoustic vocalizations
Published: 2020-05-06
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Animal Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
In this work we assess the performance of the Raspberry Shake and Boom (RS&B) sensor package for detecting and monitoring African elephants (Loxodonta africana). This is the first documented test of this particular unit for recording animal behaviour; the unit was originally designed for detecting tectonic earthquakes and low frequency (<50 Hz) atmospheric acoustics. During a four day [...]
Predicting tropical tree mortality with leaf spectroscopy
Published: 2020-04-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Plant Sciences, Plant Sciences
Do tropical trees close to death have a distinct leaf spectral signature? Tree mortality rates have been increasing in tropical forests globally which is reducing the global carbon sink. Upcoming hyperspectral satellites could be used to predict regions close to experiencing extensive tree mortality during periods of stress like drought. Here we show how imminent tropical tree mortality in [...]
Rapidly mapping fire effects on biodiversity at a large-scale using citizen science
Published: 2020-04-16
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The unprecedented scale of the 2019-2020 eastern Australian bushfires exemplifies the challenges that scientists and conservation biologists face monitoring the effects of biodiversity in the aftermath of large-scale environmental disturbances. After a large-scale disturbance there are conservation policy and management actions that need to be both timely and informed by data. By working with the [...]
On the inadequacy of species distribution models for modelling the spread of SARS-CoV-2: response to Araújo and Naimi
Published: 2020-03-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Medicine and Health Sciences
The ongoing pandemic of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is causing significant damage to public health and economic livelihoods, and is putting significant strains on healthcare services globally. This unfolding emergency has prompted the preparation and dissemination of the article “Spread of SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus likely to be constrained by climate” by Araújo [...]
Pre-maturation social experience affects female reproductive strategies and offspring fitness in a highly polyandrous insect
Published: 2020-03-17
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The pre-maturation social environment experienced by females may affect their post-maturation reproductive strategies, including mating preferences and investment in offspring. Whether the pre-maturation social environment also affects other aspects of females’ reproductive strategies, such as the degree of polyandry and post-copulatory decisions, is still an open question. To address this [...]
Estimation of environmental and genetic contributions to telomere length variation in a wild mammal
Published: 2020-03-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Understanding individual variation in fitness-related traits requires separating the environmental and genetic determinants. Telomeres are protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that are thought to be a biomarker of senescence as their length predicts mortality risk and reflect the physiological consequences of environmental conditions. The relative contribution of genetic and environmental [...]
StableClim, continuous projections of climate stability from 21000 BP to 2100 CE at multiple spatial scales
Published: 2020-02-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Paleoclimatic data are used in eco-evolutionary models to improve knowledge of biogeographical processes that drive patterns of biodiversity through time, opening windows into past climate–biodiversity dynamics. Applying these models to harmonised simulations of past and future climatic change can strengthen forecasts of biodiversity change. StableClim provides continuous estimates of climate [...]
The Evolutionary Ecology of Age at Natural Menopause: Implications for Public Health
Published: 2020-02-11
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences, Physiology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Evolutionary perspectives on menopause have focused on explaining why early reproductive cessation in females has emerged and why it is rare throughout the animal kingdom, but less attention has been given to exploring patterns of diversity in age at natural menopause. In this paper, we aim to generate new hypotheses for understanding human patterns of diversity in this trait, defined as age at [...]