Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Nonlinear ecosystem responses to leaf litter subsidies in experimental ponds
Published: 2021-03-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Subsidies of matter between ecosystems can strongly affect trophic interactions in food webs, yet most experiments apply a binary (i.e., subsidy vs. no subsidy) approach. This emphasis on extremes implicitly assumes linear relationships and fails to capture potential nonlinear effects in ecosystem responses along gradients of subsidy amount seen in real systems. To examine the effects of such [...]
Towards monitoring ecosystem integrity within the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework
Published: 2021-03-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Signatory countries to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are formulating indicators through 2030 under the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). These goals include increasing the integrity of natural ecosystems. However, the definition of integrity and methods for measuring it remain unspecified. Moreover, nations did not achieve their 2011-2020 CBD targets, partly due to [...]
Ecological stoichiometry as a foundation for omics-enabled biogeochemical models of soil organic matter decomposition
Published: 2021-02-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Coupled biogeochemical cycles drive ecosystem ecology by influencing individual-to-community scale behaviors; yet the development of process-based models that accurately capture these dynamics remains elusive. Soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition in particular is influenced by resource stoichiometry that dictates microbial nutrient acquisition (‘ecological stoichiometry’). Despite its basis in [...]
Thermal flexibility and a generalist life history promote urban tolerance in butterflies
Published: 2021-02-08
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Urban expansion poses a serious threat to biodiversity. Given that the expected area of urban land cover is predicted to increase by 2-3 million km2 by 2050, urban environments are one of the most widespread human-dominated land-uses affecting biodiversity. Responses to urbanization differ greatly among species. Some species are unable to tolerate urban environments (i.e., urban avoiders), others [...]
Systematic review protocol to guide the delineation of critical habitat in the riparian zone for listed freshwater fishes and mussels
Published: 2021-01-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Background Habitat that is necessary for the survival and recovery of a species listed as threatened, endangered, or extirpated (i.e., Critical Habitat) is protected in Canada. For aquatic species, Critical Habitat may include riparian habitat, however it is unclear how much of this riparian habitat needs to be protected to support the survival and recovery of a listed species (primary question). [...]
Soil fungal diversity and community assembly: Affected by island size or type?
Published: 2021-01-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Fungi have huge biodiversity and play important roles in soil biogeochemical cycling and ecosystem services in island ecosystems. Although island biogeography has been widely studied in macroorganisms, the relationship between soil fungal diversity and area in islands is less documented. Here, we examine soil fungal communities of 18 oceanic islands belonged to two types of islands (8 general [...]
Raczka et al. Interactions between microbial diversity and substrate chemistry determine the fate of carbon in soil.
Published: 2021-01-20
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Microbial decomposition drives the transformation of plant-derived substrates into microbial products that form stable soil organic matter (SOM). Recent theories have posited that decomposition depends on an interaction between SOM chemistry with microbial diversity and resulting function. Here, we explicitly test these theories by coupling quantitative stable isotope probing and metabolomics to [...]
Assembly processes lead to divergent soil fungal communities within and among twelve forest ecosystems along a latitudinal gradient
Published: 2021-01-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
- Latitudinal gradients provide opportunities to better understand soil fungal community assembly and its relationship with vegetation, climate, soil and ecosystem function. Understanding the mechanisms underlying community assembly is essential for predicting compositional responses to changing environments. - We quantified the relative importance of stochastic and deterministic processes in [...]
Population divergence in aggregation and sheltering behaviour in surface and cave-adapted Asellus aquaticus (Crustacea: Isopoda)
Published: 2020-12-20
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Aggregation (gathering together) and sheltering (hiding in cover) are basic behaviours that might reduce the risk of predation. However, both behaviours have costs, like increased competition over resources and high prevalence of contact-spread parasites (aggregation) or lost opportunities for foraging and mating (sheltering). Therefore, adaptive variation in these behaviours is expected between [...]
Large contribution of recent photosynthate to soil respiration in Dipterocarpaceae-dominated tropical forest revealed by girdling
Published: 2020-12-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
• Tropical forests are the most productive terrestrial ecosystem, fixing around 41 Pg of carbon from the atmosphere each year. A substantial portion of this carbon is allocated belowground to roots and root-associated microorganisms. However, there have been very few empirical studies on the dynamics of this transfer, especially in tropical forests where the response is mediated by high plant [...]
Ecological Countermeasures for Pandemic Prevention: When Ecological Restoration is a Human Health Imperative
Published: 2020-12-06
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Bacteriology, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, Immunopathology, Integrative Biology, International Public Health, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Parasitology, Pathogenic Microbiology, Population Biology, Public Health, Systems Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Microbiology and Immunobiology, Veterinary Pathology and Pathobiology, Zoology
Ecological restoration should be regarded as a public health service. Unfortunately, the lack of quantitative linkages between environmental and human health has limited recognition of these principle. Advent of COVID-19 pandemic provides the impetus for the further discussion. We propose ecological countermeasures as highly targeted, landscape-based interventions to arrest the drivers of land [...]
All together now: Limitations and recommendations for the simultaneous analysis of all eukaryotic soil sequences
Published: 2020-12-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The soil environment contains a large, but historically underexplored reservoir of biodiversity. While sequencing of prokaryotic marker genes has become commonplace for the discovery and characterization of soil bacteria and archaea, this approach has been increasingly applied to sequencing eukaryotic marker genes to characterize the diversity of soil eukaryotes. However, understanding the [...]
Land use-induced spillover: priority actions for protected and conserved area managers
Published: 2020-11-24
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Biodiversity, Communication, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies, Geography, Health Policy, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, International and Area Studies, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Immunology and Infectious Disease, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation, Population Biology, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Public Health, Public Policy, Recreation, Parks and Tourism Administration, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Veterinary Medicine
Earth systems are under ever greater pressure from human population expansion and intensifying natural resource use. Consequently, novel micro-organisms that cause disease are emerging, dynamics of pathogens in wildlife are altered by land use change bringing wildlife and people in closer contact. We provide a brief overview of the processes governing ‘land use-induced spillover’, emphasising [...]
When bigger isn’t better – implications of large high-severity wildfire patches for avian diversity and community composition
Published: 2020-11-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Aim: Modern wildfires increasingly create large high-severity patches with interior areas far from less disturbed habitats. We evaluated how these trends impact montane bird communities by investigating the effect of internal distance to lower severity areas, high-severity patch size, and years since fire on avian alpha and beta diversity. Location: Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, [...]
Using citizen science to measure recolonisation of birds after the Australian 2019-20 mega-fires
Published: 2020-11-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Large and severe fires (“mega-fires”) are increasing in frequency across the globe, often pushing into ecosystems that have previously had very long fire return intervals. The 2019-20 Australian bushfire season was one of the most catastrophic fire events on record. Almost 19 million hectares were burnt across the continent displacing and killing unprecedented numbers of native fauna, including [...]