Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Orchid fruiting success is unrelated to surrounding floral resources in South Australian plant communities
Published: 2021-10-11
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
To maintain recruitment in orchid populations in an ecosystem setting, we must understand how surrounding floral resources affect fruiting success. We studied fruiting success in two endemic Australian species, Diruis pardina and Glossodia major, in relation to surrounding floral resources. Diuris pardina has a visually deceptive pollination strategy via mimicry of pea flowers, attracting [...]
Mitigating climate-driven animal mass mortality events with resilient native scavenger guilds.
Published: 2021-10-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Climate-driven animal mass mortality events (MMEs) will increase as the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather and climate events worsens due to climate change. Besides resulting in demographic catastrophes for affected species, MMEs adds further pressure to vulnerable ecosystems in several ways. We suggest the protection and restoration of resilient native scavenging guilds are key [...]
Matrix quality determines the strength of habitat loss filtering on bird communities at the landscape scale
Published: 2021-09-19
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Habitat loss represent a major threat to biodiversity, however, the modulation of their effects by the non-habitat matrix surrounding habitat patches is still undervalued. The landscape matrix might change community assembly in different ways. For example, low-quality matrices can accentuate environmental filtering by reducing resource availability and/or deteriorating abiotic conditions but they [...]
Recruitment facilitation in expanding forests of Mediterranean juniper is sex-biased
Published: 2021-09-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Despite noticeable concern about the deforestation rate worldwide, the forest surface in Europe has considerably expanded over the past centuries as a consequence of the rural exodus and abandonment of agrarian practices. Tree recruitment associated with forest regrowth is a multi-stage process influenced by several biotic and abiotic factors. Yet, it is uncertain whether their influence on [...]
Optimizing aerial imagery collection and processing parameters for drone-based individual tree mapping in structurally complex conifer forests
Published: 2021-09-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Recent advances in remotely piloted aerial systems (“drones”) and imagery processing enable individual tree mapping in forests across broad areas with low-cost equipment and minimal ground-based data collection. One such method involves collecting many partially overlapping aerial photos, processing them using “structure from motion” (SfM) photogrammetry to create a digital 3D representation, and [...]
Metapopulation-level associations in mutualistic stream fishes
Published: 2021-09-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Positive biotic interactions are recognized as important factors determining species distributions. Although effects of positive interactions have often been observed at local scales, much less is known about consequences at larger spatial scales such as metapopulation dynamics. Here, we study nest associations of stream fishes - widespread reproductive mutualism between host (nest-builder) and [...]
Simultaneous effect of habitat remnancy, exotic species and anthropogenic disturbance on orchid diversity and abundance
Published: 2021-08-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Orchids are potentially useful as ecological indicators because of their sensitivity to habitat fragmentation and anthropogenic disturbance. While many studies explore the effect of single factors on orchid diversity, few investigate how the extent, configuration and condition of surrounding habitat affect whole orchid communities. Here, we unravel the effect of biological invasions, [...]
Cryogenian glacial habitats as a plant terrestrialisation cradle – the origin of the anydrophytes and Zygnematophyceae split
Published: 2021-07-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
For tens of millions of years (Ma), the terrestrial habitats of Snowball Earth during the Cryogenian period (between 720 to 635 Ma before present – Neoproterozoic Era) were possibly dominated by global snow and ice cover up to the equatorial sublimative desert. The most recent time-calibrated phylogenies calibrated not only on plants but on a comprehensive set of eukaryotes indicate that within [...]
Autocorrelation-informed home range estimation: a review and practical guide
Published: 2021-07-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Modern tracking devices allow for the collection of high-volume animal tracking data at improved sampling rates over VHF radiotelemetry. Home range estimation is a key output from these tracking datasets, but the inherent properties of animal movement can lead traditional statistical methods to under- or overestimate home range areas. 2. The Autocorrelated Kernel Density Estimation (AKDE) [...]
Flotsam and jetsam: a global review of the role of inputs of marine organic matter in sandy beach ecosystems
Published: 2021-07-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Sandy beaches are iconic interfaces that functionally link the ocean with the land by the flow of marine organic matter. These cross-ecosystem fluxes often comprise uprooted seagrass and dislodged macroalgae that can form substantial accumulations of detritus, termed ‘wrack’, on sandy beaches. In addition, the tissue of the carcasses of marine animals that regularly wash up on beaches form a rich [...]
Restored off-channel pond habitats create thermal regime diversity and refuges within a Mediterranean-climate watershed
Published: 2021-07-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Cool-water habitats provide increasingly vital refuges for cold-water fish living on the margins of their historical ranges; consequently, efforts to enhance or create cool-water habitat are becoming a major focus of river restoration practices. However, the effectiveness of restoration projects for providing thermal refuge and creating diverse temperature regimes at the watershed scale remains [...]
Seasonally variable relationships between surface water temperature and inflow in the upper San Francisco Estuary
Published: 2021-06-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management
Water temperature and inflow are key environmental drivers in aquatic systems that are linked through a causal web of factors including climate, weather, water management, and their downstream linkages. However, we do not yet fully understand the relationship between inflow and water temperature, especially in complex managed systems such as estuaries. The San Francisco Estuary is the center of a [...]
Optimizing stable isotope sampling design in terrestrial movement ecology research
Published: 2021-06-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. The recognition of adequate sampling designs is an interdisciplinary topic that has gained popularity over the last decades. In ecology, many research questions involve sampling across extensive and complex environmental gradients. This is the case for stable isotope analyses, which are widely used to characterize large-scale movement patterns and dietary preferences of organisms across taxa. [...]
Impacts of the invasive round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) on benthic invertebrate fauna: a case study from the Baltic Sea
Published: 2021-06-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) was first observed in the Baltic Sea in 1990 and has since displayed substantial secondary dispersal, establishing numerous dense populations where they may outcompete native fish and negatively impact prey species. There have been multiple round goby diet studies from both the Baltic Sea and the North American Great Lakes where they are similarly invasive. [...]
An outline summary document of the current knowledge about prescribed vegetation burning impacts on ecosystem services compared to alternative mowing or no management
Published: 2021-06-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
A lay summary of our discussion paper: A critical review of the IUCN UK Peatland Programme’s “Burning and Peatlands” position statement (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13157-021-01400-1). In short, we discuss the prescribed burning on blanket bog evidence base and its interpretation within a UK context - specifically in relation to the International Union for Conservation of Nature UK [...]