Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biology
Transgenerational effects of obesogenic diets in rodents: a meta-analysis
Published: 2021-08-03
Subjects: Biology, Diseases, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Nutrition
Obesity is a major health condition that affects millions worldwide. There is an increased interest in understanding the adverse outcomes associated with obesogenic diets. A multitude of studies have investigated the transgenerational impacts of maternal and parental obesogenic diets on subsequent generations of offspring, but results have largely been mixed. We conducted a systematic review [...]
Day and night camera trap video is effective for identifying wild Asian elephants
Published: 2021-07-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Comparative Psychology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Camera traps provide a virtual window into the natural world of wild animals, as they provide a noninvasive way to capture anatomical and behavioral information. Regular monitoring of wild populations through the collection of behavioral and demographic data is critical for the conservation of endangered species like the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). Identifying individual elephants can [...]
Quantifying the dynamics of nearly 100 years of dominance hierarchy research
Published: 2021-07-20
Subjects: Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
Dominance hierarchies have been studied for almost 100 years. A science of science approach can help provide high-level insight into how the dynamics of dominance hierarchy research have shifted or been maintained over this long timescale. To summarize these general patterns, I extracted publication metadata using a Google Scholar search of "dominance hierarchy, resulting in over 26,000 [...]
The ecology of wealth inequality in animal societies
Published: 2021-07-15
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
Individuals vary in their access to resources, social connections, and phenotypic traits, and a central goal of evolutionary biology is to understand how this variation arises and influences fitness. Parallel research on humans has focused on the causes and consequences of variation in material possessions, opportunity, and health. Central to both fields of study is that unequal distribution of [...]
Explaining preemptive acclimation by linking information to plant phenotype
Published: 2021-07-07
Subjects: Agriculture, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
We review mechanisms for preemptive acclimation in plants and propose a conceptual model linking developmental and evolutionary ecology with the acquisition of information through sensing of cues and signals. The idea is that plants acquire much of the information in the environment not from individual cues and signals but instead from their joint multivariate properties such as correlations. If [...]
Impact of Developmental Temperatures On The Repeatability of Thermal Plasticity in Metabolic Rate
Published: 2021-07-05
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Phenotypic plasticity is an important mechanism that allows populations to adjust to changing environments. Plastic responses induced by early life experiences can have lasting impacts on how individuals respond to environmental variation later in life (i.e., reversible plasticity). Developmental environments can also influence repeatability of plastic responses thereby altering the capacity for [...]
Invasive goby larvae: First evidence as stowaways in small watercraft motors.
Published: 2021-07-02
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences
Aquatic invasive species (AIS) are a major threat to freshwater and marine ecosystems worldwide. Despite management efforts, human assisted dispersal continues to distribute AIS within and across waterbodies. An understudied translocation vector for AIS, especially for invasive fish, are the cooling systems of small watercraft motors. Here, we investigate the contents of boat motor cooling [...]
The dynamics of dominance: open questions, challenges, and solutions
Published: 2021-07-02
Subjects: Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
Although social hierarchies are recognized as dynamic systems, they are typically treated as static entities for practical reasons. Here, we ask what we can learn from a dynamical view of dominance, and provide a research agenda for the next decades. We identify five broad questions at the individual, dyadic, and group levels, exploring the causes and consequences of individual changes in rank, [...]
Analysing the distance decay of community similarity in river networks using Bayesian methods
Published: 2021-06-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Life Sciences
The distance decay of community similarity (DDCS) is a pattern that is widely observed in terrestrial and aquatic environments. Niche-based theories argue that species are sorted in space according to their ability to adapt to new environmental conditions. The ecological neutral theory argues that community similarity decays due to ecological drift. The continuum hypothesis provides an [...]
On the Multifunctionality of Feathers and the Evolution of BIrds
Published: 2021-05-28
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
Abstract The ability feathers have to perform many functions simultaneously and at different times is integral to the evolutionary history of all birds. Many studies focus on single functions of feathers; but any given feather performs many functions over its lifetime. Here, we review the known functions of feathers and discuss the interactions of these functions with avian evolution. Recent [...]
Slow improvement to the archiving quality of open datasets shared by researchers in ecology and evolution
Published: 2021-05-19
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Many leading journals in evolution and ecology now mandate open data upon publication. Yet, there is very little oversight to ensure the completeness and reusability of archived datasets, and we currently have a poor understanding of the factors associated with high quality (FAIR) data-sharing. We assessed 362 open datasets linked to first- or senior-authored papers published by 100 principal [...]
Global Kelp Forest Restoration: Past lessons, status, and future goals
Published: 2021-05-18
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Kelp forest ecosystems and their associated ecosystem services are declining around the world. In response, marine managers are working to restore and counteract these declines. Kelp restoration first started in the 1700s in Japan and since then has spread across the globe. Restoration efforts, however, have been largely disconnected, with varying methodologies trialled by different actors in [...]
Utilizing Principles of Biodiversity Science to Guide Soil Microbial Communities for Sustainable Agriculture
Published: 2021-05-11
Subjects: Agriculture, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
While the positive relationship between plant biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) is relatively well-established, far less in known about the extent to which this relationship is mediated via below-ground microbial responses to plant diversity. Limited evidence suggests that the diversity of soil microbial communities is sensitive to plant community structure, and that diverse soil [...]
Implementing network approaches to understand the socioecology of human-wildlife interactions
Published: 2021-05-06
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Anthropology, Behavior and Ethology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Human population expansion into wildlife habitats has increased interest in the behavioral ecology of human-wildlife interactions. To date, however, the socio-ecological factors that determine whether, when or where wild animals take risks by interacting with humans and anthropogenic factors still remains unclear. We adopt a comparative approach to address this gap, using social network analysis [...]
Drivers and Consequences of Partial Migration in an Alpine Bird Species
Published: 2021-04-20
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
1. Partial migration, where a portion of the population migrates between winter and summer (breeding) areas and the rest remains year-round resident, is a common phenomenon across several taxonomic groups. Several hypotheses have been put forward to explain why some individuals migrate while others stay resident, as well as the fitness consequences of the different strategies. Yet, the drivers [...]