Filtering by Subject: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Published: 2022-11-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Many countries have responded to the current global biodiversity crisis by committing to protect 30% of the Earth by 2030, a goal known as “30 x 30”. However, an excessive emphasis on megafauna to the exclusion of other species weakens our current protected area (PA) network. This limited perspective overvalues large, connected PAs, while disregarding the potential impacts of small PAs in [...]
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. [...]
Published: 2022-09-29
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Since its discovery in Lake Mead in 2007, the invasive quagga mussel (Dreissena rostriformis bugensis) has rapidly spread throughout the lower Colorado River drainage. However, the invasion in California remained confined to the Colorado and water systems throughout southern California that receive water from the Colorado River until December 2013, when quagga mussels were first observed in Lake [...]
Published: 2022-09-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Successful fundamental theories are built on verifiable principles that include measurable variables. This paper shows that Darwin’s inclusive theory is built on such principles and follows their rocky road into modern operational theories. Besides reproduction, variation, and heredity, Darwin’s conditions of diversification also include the potential for exponential (geometric) population growth [...]
Published: 2022-09-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Genetic research is a key component to modern wildlife conservation, but it is contingent on the collection of reliable and high-quality genetic samples. Invasive genetic sampling techniques have potential to negatively impact individuals, which may be prohibitive when working with threatened and endangered species. Prior to sample collection, project managers must try to balance the negative [...]
Published: 2022-09-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Important biochemical traits may be robustly mapped by optical spectroscopy, allowing inferences about phylogenetic conservation in plant species. However, distinct types of data processing might lead to distinct patterns of phylogenetic signal in the foliar spectra. Thus, investigate the standard analytical approaches in order to understand their influence over the phylogenetic signal is [...]
Published: 2022-09-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Environmental monitoring is increasingly shifting towards a set of systems that describe changes in real-time. In ecology specifically, a series of challenges have prevented the roll-out of real-time monitoring for features such as biodiversity change or ecosystem service provision. Conservation culturomics, a field concerned with interactions between people and nature, is well-placed to [...]
Published: 2022-08-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Life Sciences, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
The urgent need for medical treatments of alcohol use disorders has motivated the search for novel molecular targets of alcohol response. Most studies exploit the strengths of lab animals without considering how these and other species may have adapted to respond to alcohol in an ecological context. Here, we provide an evolutionary perspective on the molecular and genetic underpinnings of alcohol [...]
Published: 2022-08-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Abstract Aim: Ecological niche model (ENM) or species distribution model is a modeling technique broadly used in ecology and biogeography and is increasingly used in decision-making regarding land use and biodiversity conservation. The methodology behind ENM applications is critical for model accuracy. One critical question that every ENM study faces is how to define a model training area. [...]
Published: 2022-07-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Helicopter skiing is a popular adventure tourism activity that occurs within the range of mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) and/or woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) in British Columbia and, to a lesser extent in adjacent jurisdictions. Both are species of concern, with known or suspected population declines occurring in substantial portions of their respective ranges. Whether [...]
Published: 2022-07-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Woodland caribou are considered to preferentially use older forests that provide abundant terrestrial lichen forage and refuge from predators. However, structural characteristics vary widely, differing in terms of forage availability but also, perhaps, in the ability of caribou to move freely through forests to access the available forage or to escape predation. We examined the effect of forest [...]
Published: 2022-07-18
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
1. Functional diversity is widely used and widespread. However, the main package used to compute functional diversity indices FD is not flexible and not adapted to the volume of data used in modern ecological analyses. 2. We here present fundiversity, an R package that eases the computation of classical functional diversity indices. It leverages parallelization and memoization (caching results [...]
Published: 2022-07-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aim: Historical processes like speciation, extinction, and historical dispersal are the ultimate factors generating and maintaining biodiversity in space and time. While detecting the effect of those processes on the distribution of biodiversity has great relevance by itself, how to measure them is critical to interpreting the underlying causes of biological patterns. However, metrics of [...]
Published: 2022-07-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biology, Biotechnology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Life Sciences
Pathogen evolution is one of the least predictable components of disease emergence, particularly in nature. Here, building on principles established by the geographic mosaic theory of coevolution, we develop a quantitative, spatially-explicit framework for mapping the evolutionary risk of viral emergence. Driven by interest in diseases like SARS, MERS, and COVID-19, we examine the global [...]
Published: 2022-06-13
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology
Until recently, bat phylogeny separated megabats (laryngeally non-echolocators) and microbats (all laryngeal echolocators) into two distinct clades. This segregation was consistent with the assumption that laryngeal echolocation was acquired by a common ancestor and inherited by all microchiropterans. Thus, laryngeal echolocation was regarded to have evolved once. Recent advances in bat genome [...]