Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Combining surveys and on-line searching volumes to analyze public awareness about invasive alien species: a case study with the invasive Asian yellow-legged hornet (Vespa velutina) in Italy
Published: 2020-11-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Life Sciences
The Asian yellow-legged hornet (Vespa velutina) has been invading Italy since 2013, and it was subjected to management projects aimed at counteracting its spread and raising awareness about its impacts. In autumn 2019, we administered an on-line questionnaire to a convenience sample of 358 beekeepers in Italy. The questionnaire asked them about their sources of information about V. velutina, [...]
SVD entropy reveals the high complexity of ecological networks
Published: 2020-11-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Quantifying the complexity of ecological networks has remained elusive. Primarily, complexity has been defined on the basis of the structural (or behavioural) complexity of the system. These definitions ignore the notion of physical complexity, which can measure the amount of information contained in an ecological network, and how difficult it would be to compress. We present relative rank [...]
Introduced Vespa velutina does not replace native Vespa crabro and Vespula species
Published: 2020-11-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Alien species invasion could lead to the replacement of native species with similar ecological requirements. Vespa velutina is an invasive hornet recently established in Europe, that is raising concern due to the associated economic and ecological impacts toward managed and wild pollinators besides to the potential competition and replacement of native wasp species. This led to the inclusion of [...]
Shifts between cooperation and antagonism driven by individual variation: A systematic synthesis review
Published: 2020-10-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The outcomes of interspecific and intraspecific ecological interactions can be considered to fall along continua from cooperative (mutually beneficial) to antagonistic (detrimental to one or both parties). Furthermore, the position of an interaction outcome along the continuum, for example whether a symbiont provides net costs or benefits to its host, or whether two conspecifics cooperatively [...]
Urban biodiversity and the importance of scale
Published: 2020-09-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Many ecological and evolutionary processes are affected by urbanization, but cities vary by orders of magnitude in their human population size and areal extent. To quantify and manage urban biodiversity we must understand both how biodiversity scales with city size, and how ecological, evolutionary, and socioeconomic drivers of biodiversity scale with city size. We show how environmental abiotic [...]
Filling the Information Gap in Meta-Ecosystem Ecology
Published: 2020-08-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Fluxes of matter, energy, and information over space and time contribute to ecosystems’ functioning. The meta-ecosystem framework addresses the dynamics of ecosystems linked by these fluxes, however, to date, meta-ecosystem research focused solely on fluxes of energy and matter, neglecting information. This is problematic due to organisms’ varied responses to information, which influence local [...]
Range-wide factors shaping space use and movements by the Neotropic’s flagship predator: the jaguar
Published: 2020-08-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The range-wide management of the jaguar (Panthera onca) depends upon maintaining core populations connected through multi-national, transboundary cooperation, which is dependent upon understanding the movement ecology and space use of jaguars throughout their range. Using 117 telemetry trajectories from 12 ecoregions, we examined the landscape-level environmental and anthropogenic factors related [...]
VIRUS-HOST RELATIONSHIPS: AN OVERVIEW
Published: 2020-08-30
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Virology
In order to survive in nature, different pathogens follow different procedures to manipulate their host plants for the pathogen favor. Plant viruses are not an exception of this rule. They are often found to alter the host plant traits in the way that affects the community of organisms in the host plant as well as the vectoring insects. It has been indicated that virus-infected plants are more [...]
Misunderstanding mismatch
Published: 2020-07-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
This is a reponse to Kharouba and Wolkovichs (2020) review of consumer-resource phenological synchrony. They provide a valuable review and cogent advocacy for future work. However, they misunderstand and misinterpret examples from plant-insect interactions. Their detailed case study involves phenological synchrony/ asynchrony between spring hatching of Winter Moth eggs and budburst of their oak [...]
Regional variation in green-up timing along a caribou migratory corridor: spatial associations with snowmelt and temperature
Published: 2020-07-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Spring green-up in Arctic and alpine systems is predominantly controlled by temperature and snowmelt timing preceding and during the growing season. Variation in the timing of green-up across space is an important aspect of resource variability with which mobile herbivores must contend. Here, we measure the explanatory power of abiotic drivers of green-up in a Low Arctic region of west Greenland, [...]
Telomere heritability and parental age at conception effects in a wild avian population
Published: 2020-07-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Individual variation in telomere length is predictive of health and mortality risk across a range of species. However, the relative influence of environmental and genetic variation on individual telomere length in wild populations remains poorly understood. In previous studies, heritability of telomere length has primarily been calculated using parent-offspring regression, but shared environments [...]
Simulation-based study design accuracy weights are not generalisable and can still lead to biased meta-analytic inference: Comments on Christie et al. 2019
Published: 2020-07-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Variable study quality is a challenge for all the empirical sciences, but perhaps particularly for disciplines such as ecology where experimentation is frequently hampered by system complexity, scale, and resourcing. The resulting heterogeneity, and the necessity of subsequently combining the results of different study designs, is a fundamental issue for evidence synthesis. We welcome the [...]
Life in fluctuating environments
Published: 2020-07-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Variability in the environment defines the structure and dynamics of all living systems. Organisms have evolved traits and strategies that allow them to detect, exploit and predict the changing environment. Organisms maintain steady internal conditions required for physiological functioning through feedback mechanisms that allow internal conditions to remain at or near a set point despite a [...]
A review of contemporary Indigenous cultural fire management literature in southeast Australia
Published: 2020-07-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Indigenous cultural fire management is being recognised and revived across Australia, primarily in the centre and across the north. To explore the benefits of contemporary cultural fire management in southeast Australia and barriers to its revival, we undertook a systematic analysis of the literature. Seventy documented applications of cultural fire management projects were found with the [...]
Timing and intensity of weather events shape nestling development strategies in three alpine breeding songbirds
Published: 2020-06-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Across taxa, offspring size traits are linked to survival, and life-time fitness. Inclement weather can be a major constraint on offspring growth and parental care. Despite the adaptive benefits of larger offspring, we have a limited understanding of the effects of severe environmental conditions across developmental stages and how coping strategies differ among species. We assessed the influence [...]