Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Evaluating top-down, bottom-up, and environmental drivers of pelagic food web dynamics along an estuarine gradient
Published: 2022-12-15
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Identification of the key biotic and abiotic drivers within food webs is important for understanding species abundance changes in ecosystems, particularly across ecotones where there may be strong variation in interaction strengths. Using structural equation models and four decades of integrated data from the San Francisco Estuary, we investigated the relative effects of top-down, bottom-up, and [...]
Assessing species interactions using integrated predator-prey models
Published: 2022-12-15
Subjects: Biostatistics, Dynamic Systems, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Statistical Methodology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Inferring the strength of species interactions from demographic data is a challenging task. The Integrated Population Modelling (IPM) approach, bringing together population counts, capture-recapture, and individual-level fecundity data into a unified model framework, has been extended from single species to the community level. This allows to specify IPMs for multiple species with interactions [...]
Plant traits poorly predict winner and loser shrub species in a warming tundra biome
Published: 2022-11-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Plant Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Climate change is leading to a species redistributions. In the tundra biome, many shrub species are expanding into new areas, a process known as shrubification. However, not all tundra shrub species will benefit from warming. Winner and loser species (those projected to expand and contract their ranges, and/or those that have increased or decreased in cover over time), and the characteristics [...]
The March of the Human Footprint
Published: 2022-09-29
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Life Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Human influence is driving planetary change, often in undesirable and unsustainable ways. Recent advances enabled us to measure changes in humanity’s footprint on Earth annually from 2000 – 2019 with a nine-fold improvement in spatial resolution over previous efforts. We found that earlier studies seriously under-estimated the magnitude, extent, and rate of change in the human footprint. [...]
Invasion dynamics of quagga mussels (Dreissena rostriformis bugensis) within a reservoir and its spatially intermittent watershed: Lake Piru and the Santa Clara River, California, USA
Published: 2022-09-29
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Since its discovery in Lake Mead in 2007, the invasive quagga mussel (Dreissena rostriformis bugensis) has rapidly spread throughout the lower Colorado River drainage. However, the invasion in California remained confined to the Colorado and water systems throughout southern California that receive water from the Colorado River until December 2013, when quagga mussels were first observed in Lake [...]
Evaluation of DNA Extracted from Timber Rattlesnake (Cotalus horridus) Cloacal and Blood Swabs for Microsatellite Genotyping
Published: 2022-09-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Genetic research is a key component to modern wildlife conservation, but it is contingent on the collection of reliable and high-quality genetic samples. Invasive genetic sampling techniques have potential to negatively impact individuals, which may be prohibitive when working with threatened and endangered species. Prior to sample collection, project managers must try to balance the negative [...]
Socio-ecological factors shape the distribution of a cultural keystone species in Malaysian Borneo
Published: 2022-09-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Biophysical and socio-cultural factors have jointly shaped the distribution of global biodiversity, yet relatively few studies have quantitatively assessed the influence of social and ecological landscapes on wildlife distributions. We sought to determine whether social and ecological covariates shape the distribution of a cultural keystone species, the bearded pig (Sus barbatus). Drawing on a [...]
When and how does photoinhibition matter for plant fitness?
Published: 2022-09-13
Subjects: Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physiology, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The many biophysical factors that shape how plant species sort across environmental gradients may include photoinhibition, which I define broadly as oxidative damage that plants and other phototrophs risk incurring when they absorb excess light energy they cannot safely dissipate. Photoinhibition is seldom explicitly discussed as a potential driver of plant fitness and distributions. Here, I aim [...]
Spillover of human antivirals may promote resistant pathogens in animal reservoirs
Published: 2022-09-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Health Life Sciences, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Other Immunology and Infectious Disease, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Novel viral pathogens are causing diseases to emerge in humans, a challenge to which society has responded with technological innovations such as antiviral therapies. Antivirals can be rapidly deployed to mitigate severe disease, and with vaccines, save human lives and provide a long-term safety net against new viral diseases. Yet with these advances come unforeseen consequences when antivirals [...]
Metamicrobiome-driven homeostasis of nutrient recycling
Published: 2022-09-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Carbon and nutrient recycling by free-living microbial decomposers and fire - two key recycling pathways - are highly sensitive to climatic variation. However, mutualistic associations of microbiomes with plants and animals cause previously underestimated environmental buffering effects. This close cooperation between small and large organisms solves a fundamental allometric trade-off between [...]
Decoupled responses of biodiversity facets driven from anuran vulnerability to climate and land use changes
Published: 2022-08-30
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Anthropogenic climate and land use changes are the main drivers of biodiversity loss, promoting a major reorganization of the biota in all ecosystems. Biodiversity loss implies not only in the loss of species, but also entails losses in other dimensions of biodiversity, such as functional diversity, phylogenetic diversity and the diversity of ecological interactions.Yet, each of those facets of [...]
Methodological inconsistencies define thermal bottlenecks in fish life cycle: a comment on Dahlke et al. 2020
Published: 2022-07-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Comparative analyses require researchers to not only ensure data quality, but also to make prudent and justifiable assumptions about data comparability. A failure to do so can lead to unreliable conclusions. As a case in point, we comment on a study that estimated the vulnerability of the world’s fish species to climate change using comparison between life stages (Dahlke et al. 2020, Science 369: [...]
Ecological networks of an Antarctic ecosystem: a full description of non-trophic interactions
Published: 2022-06-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Interactions between organisms are very diverse and attend to multiple biological demands, hence understanding ecological communities requires considering different types of species interactions beyond predation. In this work, we assemble for the first time the non-trophic networks of an Antarctic ecosystem. We report mutualistic (+/+), competitive (-/-), commensalistic (+/0) and amensalistic [...]
Dispersal and space use of captive-reared and wild-rehabilitated Harpy Eagles released in Central American landscapes: Implications for reintroduction and reinforcement management
Published: 2022-06-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Understanding the spatial context of animal movements is fundamental for establishment and management of protected areas (PA). However, these data are not readily available for large raptors, particularly for tropical species. We telemetry-tracked 36 captive-reared and wild-rehabilitated Harpia harpyja and estimated dispersal and space use after release in Mesoamerica. We evaluated the [...]
Temporal variability declines with increasing trophic levels and spatial scales in freshwater ecosystems
Published: 2022-05-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The temporal variability of ecological properties tends to decrease with spatial scale and levels of biological organization, but how does it propagate across trophic levels? We compiled metacommunity time-series datasets spanning basal resources to top predators from 355 freshwater sites across three continents. Temporal variability in abundance decreased from producers to tertiary consumers [...]