Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Maternal investment and early thermal conditions affect performance and antipredator responses
Published: 2023-10-27
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Evolution, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Exposure to increased temperatures during early development can lead to phenotypic plasticity in morphology, physiology, and behaviour across a range of ectothermic animals. In addition, maternal effects are known to be important contributors to phenotypic variation in offspring. Whether the two factors interact to shape offspring morphology and behaviour has been barely explored. This is [...]
Functional trait dataset of benthic macroinvertebrates in South Korean streams
Published: 2023-09-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Functional traits are the result of evolution and adaptation, providing important ecological insights into how organisms interact with their environment. Benthic macroinvertebrates, in particular, have garnered attention as biomonitoring indicators for freshwater ecosystems. This study presents a functional trait dataset for benthic macroinvertebrates, comprising 447 taxa (393 at genus level, 53 [...]
Metaweb approaches for understanding complex ecological interactions: A Review
Published: 2023-09-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
A metaweb is the regional pool of potential interactions, capturing the gamma diversity of species and interactions. A metaweb enables the generation of local webs from species occurrence data by subsampling contained interactions, thereby allowing insights into alpha and beta diversities with minimal data requirements. Moreover, understanding ecological interactions is critical for a complete [...]
KF-metaweb: A trophic metaweb of freshwater ecosystems of South Korea
Published: 2023-09-20
Subjects: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Motivation: The metaweb is a dictionary of nodes and their potential interactions developed for a particular region, focusing on a particular type of ecosystem. Based on the local biodiversity information at different spatial and temporal scales, the regional metaweb can be easily decomposed into local webs. The generated local webs are useful for understanding spatiotemporal variations in [...]
Growth and opportunities for drone surveillance in pinniped research
Published: 2023-09-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Zoology
Pinniped species undergo uniquely amphibious life histories that make them valuable subjects for many domains of research. Pinniped research has often progressed hand-in-hand with technological frontiers of wildlife biology, and drones represent a leap forward for methods of aerial remote sensing, heralding data collection and integration at new scales of biological importance. Drone methods and [...]
Warming summer temperatures are rapidly restructuring North American bumble bee communities
Published: 2023-08-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
A rapidly warming climate is a primary force driving changes in biodiversity worldwide. The impact of warming temperatures on insect communities is of particular interest given their importance for ecosystem function and service provision and the uncertainty around whether insect communities can keep pace with the rate of increasing temperatures. We use a long-term dataset on bumble bee species [...]
The unfulfilled potential of dogs in studying behavioural ecology and evolution during the Anthropocene
Published: 2023-08-07
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology
Dogs are an exceptional resource for studying ecological, behavioural and evolutionary processes. However, several widespread misconceptions limit our understanding of dog behaviour and inhibit the use of dogs as model study systems in diverse areas of biological science. These include extensive anthropomorphisation of dog behaviour, a profound bias towards almost exclusively studying pet dogs, a [...]
STRyper: a macOS application for microsatellite genotyping and chromatogram management
Published: 2023-07-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Molecular Genetics, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Microsatellite markers analyzed by capillary sequencing remain useful tools for rapid genotyping and low-cost studies. This contrasts with the lack of a free application to analyze chromatograms for microsatellite genotyping that is not restricted to human genotyping. To fill this gap, I have developed STRyper, a macOS application whose source code is published under the General Public License. [...]
How does dispersal shape the genetic patterns of animal populations in European cities? A simulation approach
Published: 2023-07-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Genetics, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Context and objectives Although urbanization is a major driver of biodiversity erosion, it does not affect all species equally. The neutral genetic structure of populations in a given species is affected by both genetic drift and gene flow processes. In cities, the size of animal populations determines drift and can depend on multiple processes whereas gene flow essentially depends on the [...]
Recent human-bear conflicts in Northern Italy: a review, with considerations of future perspectives
Published: 2023-07-17
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Zoology
The killing of a runner in Northern Italy by a brown bear (Ursus arctos arctos) and the subsequent investigation of such matter highlighted a Human-Wildlife Conflict (HWC) that has been present in Trentino since the introduction of bears for conservation during the Life Ursus Project. Such conflict may be exacerbated as both human and bear populations get bigger. In this paper, I summarize the [...]
When to monitor or control; informed invasive species management using a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) framework
Published: 2023-07-10
Subjects: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Resource allocation for invasive species management requires information about the size of the invasive population, which may be expensive and time-consuming to obtain. The trade-off between investment in monitoring and control efforts is a challenging decision problem, and existing mathematical tools are often difficult to interpret, and / or limited to a specific case study. We propose a [...]
Regenerating tropical forests are consistently affected by biological invasions across spatial scales
Published: 2023-07-04
Subjects: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Biological invasions are complex scale-dependent processes. Metacommunity ecology provides the means to understand the effects of invasive non-native species (INNS) because it explicitly considers how local and regional processes interact to drive the three main components of bio-diversity: alpha, beta, and gamma. White-popinac (Leucaena leucocephala (Lam.) de Wit) is a widely distributed INNS in [...]
Language Inclusion in Ecological Systematic Reviews and Maps: Barriers and Perspectives
Published: 2023-06-09
Subjects: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Systematic reviews and systematic maps are considered the most reliable form of research evidence in science, but they often neglect non-English-language literature. Non-English-language literature can provide important evidence, especially in ecological studies, which may also influence findings and alter conclusions. To understand the barriers that might limit authors’ ability or intent to find [...]
The Importance of Representative Sampling for Home Range Estimation in Field Primatology
Published: 2023-05-04
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Understanding the amount of space required by animals to fulfill their biological needs is essential for comprehending their behavior, their ecological role within their community, and for effective conservation planning and resource management. Habituated primates are often studied using handheld GPS data, which provides detailed movement information that can link patterns of ranging and [...]
Improving ecological connectivity assessments with transfer learning and function approximation
Published: 2023-05-04
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Environmental Monitoring, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistical Models, Sustainability
This is a conference paper presented at the ICLR 2023 "Machine Learning for Remote Sensing" workshop. Protecting and restoring ecological connectivity is essential to climate change adaptation, and necessary if species are to shift their geographic distributions to track their suitable climatic conditions over the coming century. Despite the increasing availability of near real-time and high [...]