Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Population Biology
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 [...]
Hybridization boosters diversification in a Neotropical orchid group
Published: 2022-12-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Genomics, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Plant Biology, Population Biology
Genetic data shows that cryptic hybrids are more common than previously thought and that hybridization and introgression are widespread processes in nature. Regardless of this, studies on hybridization are scarce for the highly speciose Bulbophyllum. The genus presents more than 2,200 species and many examples of recent radiations, in which hybridization is expected to be frequent. Currently, [...]
Using integrated multispecies occupancy models to map co-occurrence between bottlenose dolphins and fisheries in the Gulf of Lion, French Mediterranean Sea
Published: 2022-09-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
In the Mediterranean Sea, interactions between marine species and human activities are prevalent. The coastal distribution of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and the predation pressure they put on fishing stocks lead to regular interactions with fisheries. Multispecies occupancy models are a relevant framework to estimate co-occurrence between two (or more) species while accounting for [...]
New Global Species Biodiversity: Soil soars, Ocean flounders
Published: 2022-09-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Based on topographic field data, an argument is advanced that Soil houses ~2.1 x 10^24 taxa and supports >99.9% of global species biodiversity, mostly Bacteria or other microbes. Contradictory claims that Soil is home to only a quarter of biota while Ocean harbours 80-99% of Life on Earth are both dismissed. Earlier guesstimates of ~8.8 million taxa (~2.2 million or 25% marine), of 1-6 [...]
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 [...]
Dog days are over: climate change is predicted to cause population collapse in a cooperative breeder
Published: 2022-08-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
It has been suggested that animals may have evolved co-operative breeding strategies in response to extreme climatic conditions. Climate change, however, may push species beyond their ability to cope with extreme climates, and reduce the group sizes in co-operatively breeding species to a point where populations are no longer viable. Predicting the impact of future climates on these species is [...]
European light skin may have evolved as an adaptation to the Neolithic sedentary lifestyle
Published: 2022-07-27
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Light skin facilitates the penetration of ultraviolet light (UV) radiation through the skin, increasing the synthesis of vitamin D that in turn stimulates bone formation. It has been suggested that light skin appeared in the ancestors of modern Europeans as an adaptation to the conditions of low UV radiation in high latitudes; however, paleogenetic studies have recently shown it did not evolve [...]
Generation and applications of simulated datasets to integrate social network and demographic analyses
Published: 2022-07-27
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Social networks are tied to population dynamics; interactions are driven by population density and demographic structure, while social relationships can be key determinants of survival and reproductive success. However, difficulties integrating models used in demography and network analysis have limited research at this interface. We introduce the R package genNetDem for simulating integrated [...]
The community-function landscape of microbial consortia
Published: 2022-06-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Quantitatively and predictively linking the composition and function of microbial communities is a major aspiration of microbial ecology. It is also a critical step in the path toward engineering synthetic consortia and manipulating natural microbiomes. The functions of microbial communities are collective properties that emerge from a complex web of molecular interactions between individual [...]
Synchrony in adult survival is remarkably strong among common temperate songbirds across France
Published: 2022-05-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Synchronous variation in demographic parameters across species destabilizes populations, metapopulations and metacommunities and increases extinction risks. Revealing the processes that synchronize population dynamics across species allows to identify trans-specific demographic processes that are subject to environmental forcing of overarching importance. Using a Bayesian, hierarchical [...]
Intra-individual variation in Galium odoratum is partly genetically based and is affected by experimental drought and shading
Published: 2022-04-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Background and aims: Climate-change induced warmer spring temperatures advance tree leaf-out and result in earlier shading of the forest floor. Climate change also leads to more frequent droughts. Forest understorey herbs may respond to these environmental changes by varying functional traits at different hierarchical levels of organisation. While trait variation at the intra-specific level is [...]
Multi-population analysis reveals spatial consistency in drivers of population dynamics of a declining migratory bird
Published: 2022-04-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Population Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Survival Analysis, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Many migratory species are in decline across their geographical ranges. Single-population studies can provide important insights into drivers at a local scale, but effective conservation requires multi-population perspectives. This is challenging because relevant data are often hard to consolidate, and state-of-the-art analytical tools are typically tailored to specific datasets. We capitalized [...]
Are we underestimating the ecological and evolutionary effects of warming? Interactions with other environmental drivers may increase species vulnerability to high temperatures
Published: 2022-04-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Warming, the most prominent aspect of global environmental change, already affects most ecosystems on Earth. In recent years, biologists have increasingly integrated the effects of warming into their models by capturing how temperature shapes their physiology, ecology, behavior, evolutionary adaptation, and probability of extirpation/extinction. The more physiologically-grounded approaches to [...]
Long-term trends in seasonality and abundance of three key zooplankters in the upper San Francisco Estuary
Published: 2022-03-01
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Zooplankton provide critical food for threatened and endangered fish species in the San Francisco Estuary (estuary). Reduced food supply has been implicated in the Pelagic Organism Decline of the early 2000s and further changes in zooplankton abundance, seasonality, and distribution may continue to threaten declining fishes. While we have a wealth of monitoring data, we know little about the [...]
Microclimate shifts in nest-boxes and natural cavities before, during and after nesting
Published: 2022-01-17
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Physiology, Population Biology
Animals breeding in anthropogenic shelters such as nest-boxes experience nesting environment in which they did not originally evolve. Over the past decades, they are additionally challenged by climate change – a major environmental force influencing their reproductive ecology. Despite the central importance of nesting microclimate for offspring development and fitness, very little is known about [...]