Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
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 [...]
Candy Darter: Background, Threats, and Conservation for an Endangered Fish
Published: 2023-09-20
Subjects: Environmental Policy, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Candy darters, once abundant in the West Virginia and Virginia water basins, now require substantial conservation efforts due to habitat destruction and hybridization with the variegate darter species. Direct human effects have also escalated the destruction of candy darter habitats, making the protection of this important species and what remains of their habitat of utmost importance. With the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Extinction drives recent thermophilization but does not trigger homogenization in forest understory
Published: 2023-07-04
Subjects: Botany, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The ongoing climate change is triggering plant community thermophilization. This selection process is ought to shift community composition toward species adapted to warmer climates but may also lead to biotic homogenization. The link between thermophilization and homogenization, and the community dynamics that drive them (colonization and extinction) remain unknow, but is critical for [...]
Heterogeneous dispersal networks to improve biodiversity science
Published: 2023-06-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Dispersal plays a key role in shaping spatial patterns of biodiversity, yet its spatial heterogeneity is often overlooked in biodiversity analyses and management strategies. Properly parametrized heterogeneous dispersal networks capture the complex interplay between landscape structure and species-specific dispersal capacities. This heterogeneity, however, is recurrently neglected when studying [...]
Landscape changes in the “valli da pesca” of the Venice lagoon and possible effects on the Ecosystem Services supply
Published: 2023-06-21
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources and Conservation, Nature and Society Relations, Other Environmental Sciences, Remote Sensing, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Coastal lagoons have long been subject to continuous changes caused by mutual interactions with human activities. Monitoring such changes becomes critical, particularly when modifications in landscape and land cover classes can affect their capacity to ensure Ecosystem Services (ESs). In the Venice lagoon, some confined areas called “valli da pesca” supply provisioning ESs, namely aquaculture and [...]
Plant diversity dynamics over space and time in a warming Arctic
Published: 2023-06-19
Subjects: Biodiversity, Plant Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average, and plant communities are responding through shifts in species abundance, composition and distribution. However, the direction and magnitude of local plant diversity changes have not been quantified thus far at sites across the Arctic. Using a compilation of 42,234 records of 490 vascular plant species from 2,174 plots at 45 study [...]
Predation and biophysical context control long-term carcass nutrient inputs in an Andean ecosystem
Published: 2023-05-30
Subjects: Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Animal carcass decomposition is an often-overlooked component of nutrient cycles. The importance of carcass decomposition for increasing nutrient availability has been demonstrated in several ecosystems, but impacts in arid lands are poorly understood. In a protected high desert landscape in Argentina, puma predation of vicuñas is a main driver of carcass distribution. Here, we sampled puma kill [...]
Interspecific behavioural interference and range dynamics: current insights and future directions
Published: 2023-04-24
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Other Animal Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Novel biotic interactions in shifting communities play a key role in determining the ability of species’ ranges to track suitable habitat. To date, the impact of biotic interactions on range dynamics have predominantly been studied in the context of interactions between different trophic levels or, to a lesser extent, exploitative competition between species of the same trophic level. Yet, both [...]
Phenological sensitivity of climate across taxa and local habitats in a high-Arctic arthropod community
Published: 2023-04-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Arthropods respond to climate change by shifting their phenology in the spring and summer seasons. These phenological shifts are rarely uniform, and taxa show distinct variation in the direction and magnitude of phenological responses to climate drivers. To gain insights into the most climate-sensitive taxa and forecast the implications of climate change on community-wide activity and biotic [...]
Spatial factors overcome seasonality in increasing the consumption of allochthonous food resources by fishes from tropical lotic ecosystems
Published: 2023-03-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. In lotic ecosystems, it is expected higher availability of allochthonous food resources during floods and rainfall events, which may yield a higher consumption of these resources by consumers. However, both the allochthonous input in aquatic ecosystems and seasonality in environmental conditions are locally dependent, thus dietary responses of freshwater consumers to seasonality should also be [...]
A diversity of fungal pathways contribute to improved soil carbon stability and storage
Published: 2023-03-03
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
While various fungi could facilitate soil C storage and climate change mitigation via carbon (C) cycling, standard soil C tests that measure only bulk soil C cannot disentangle mechanisms underpinning fungal influences and so far research has largely focused on mycorrhizal fungi. Here, we assessed the soil C storage potential of 12 non-mycorrhizal fungi, selected from a wide pool based on traits [...]
Solar radiation drives potential demographic collapse in a perennial bunchgrass via dramatically reduced seedling establishment
Published: 2023-02-20
Subjects: Biology, Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Plant Sciences, Plant Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Many perennial plants in semi-arid rangelands have experienced population declines, and understanding the ecological and demographic processes behind these declines is important to slowing or reversing them. Although anthropogenic disturbances drive many declines, other sorts of environmental variability, such as the differences in solar radiation with aspect, may impact population success [...]
Like little lagoons: the contribution of valli da pesca to the Ecosystem Services supply of the Venice Lagoon
Published: 2022-12-23
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The Venice lagoon social-ecological system is characterized by a strong relationship between the natural environment and human activities. This is especially noticeable in the aquaculture and hunting reserves of the lagoon, locally known as valli da pesca. Previous works about Ecosystem Services (ESs) in the Venice lagoon focused on the so-called “open lagoon”, overlooking the role of the valli [...]