Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Integrative Biology
The ecology of wealth inequality in animal societies
Published: 2021-07-14
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 [...]
The dynamics of dominance: open questions, challenges, and solutions
Published: 2021-07-01
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, [...]
On the Multifunctionality of Feathers and the Evolution of BIrds
Published: 2021-05-27
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 [...]
Effects of wave-driven water flow on the fast-start escape response of juvenile coral reef damselfishes
Published: 2021-03-25
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
Fish often evade predators with a fast-start escape response. Studies typically examine this behaviour in still water despite water motion being an inherent feature of aquatic ecosystems. In shallow habitats, waves create complex flows that likely influence escape performance, particularly in small fishes with low absolute swimming speeds relative to environmental flows. I examined how [...]
Guidelines for reporting methods to estimate metabolic rates by aquatic intermittent-flow respirometry
Published: 2021-02-22
Subjects: Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
Interest in the measurement of metabolic rates is growing rapidly, due to the relevance of metabolism in understanding organismal physiology, behaviour, evolution and responses to environmental change. The study of metabolism in aquatic animals is undergoing an especially pronounced expansion, with more researchers utilising intermittent-flow respirometry as a research tool than ever before. [...]
Ecological Countermeasures for Pandemic Prevention: When Ecological Restoration is a Human Health Imperative
Published: 2020-12-06
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Bacteriology, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, Immunopathology, Integrative Biology, International Public Health, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Parasitology, Pathogenic Microbiology, Population Biology, Public Health, Systems Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Microbiology and Immunobiology, Veterinary Pathology and Pathobiology, Zoology
Ecological restoration should be regarded as a public health service. Unfortunately, the lack of quantitative linkages between environmental and human health has limited recognition of these principle. Advent of COVID-19 pandemic provides the impetus for the further discussion. We propose ecological countermeasures as highly targeted, landscape-based interventions to arrest the drivers of land [...]
Ten considerations for conservation policy makers for the post-COVID-19 transition
Published: 2020-11-27
Subjects: Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
Public health and safety concerns around the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have greatly changed human behaviour. Such shifts in behaviours including travel patterns, consumerism, and energy use, are variously impacting biodiversity during the human-dominated geological epoch known as the Anthropocene. Indeed, the dramatic reduction in human mobility and activity has been [...]
Communicative roots of complex sociality and cognition
Published: 2019-06-21
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Mammals living in more complex social groups typically have large brains for their body size and many researchers have proposed that the primary driver of the increase in brain size through primate and hominin evolution are the selection pressures associated with sociality. Many mammals, and especially primates, use flexible signals that show a high degree of voluntary control and these signals [...]
New research frameworks in the study of chimpanzee and gorilla sociality and communication
Published: 2019-06-19
Subjects: Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
Group size in primates is strongly correlated with brain size, but exactly what makes larger groups more ‘socially complex’ than smaller groups is still poorly understood. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) are among our closest living relatives and are excellent model species to investigate patterns of sociality and social complexity in primates, and to inform models of [...]