Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Plant Sciences

Earlier and increased growth of tundra willows after a decade of growth in a warmer common garden environment

Madelaine Jean Robertson Anderson, Isla H Myers-Smith, Erica Zaja, et al.

Published: 2024-11-08
Subjects: Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

1. The expansion of woody shrubs, known as shrubification, is one of the most widely observed patterns of vegetation change in the tundra. Yet, we do not know the relative importance of plant plasticity and genetic change in determining shrub responses to warming. Plastic responses to the environment can be rapid, while genetic differentiation is much slower. 2. We established a common garden [...]

Niche dynamics of alien plant species in Mediterranean Europe

Luigi Cao Pinna, Laure Gallien, Tommaso Jucker, et al.

Published: 2024-11-03
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences

Aim Humans have spread plants globally for millennia, inadvertently causing ecological disruptions. However, biological invasions also provide a unique opportunity to study the process of niche dynamics, through which species adapt their niche when confronted with novel environments. Focusing on the Mediterranean Basin, we assessed 1) which traits favour niche dynamics, and 2) whether niche [...]

BON in a Box: An Open and Collaborative Platform for Biodiversity Monitoring, Indicator Calculation, and Reporting

Jory Griffith, Jean-Michel Lord, Michael D. Catchen, et al.

Published: 2024-10-28
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Plant Sciences

Biodiversity loss is a critical global challenge. The Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) sets ambitious goals to protect ecosystems, halt species loss, and enhance biodiversity. The GBF’s Monitoring Framework requires countries to track progress toward biodiversity targets using a standardized set of indicators that summarize complex trends in biodiversity. However, the [...]

Patterns of fruit production in tropical forests are shifting with negative outnumbering positive trends

Andrew Hacket-Pain, Asenath Adienge, Michał Bogdziewicz, et al.

Published: 2024-10-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences

The impacts of climate change and anthropogenic disturbance are increasingly evident in the structure and demographics of tropical forests, yet the response of tree reproduction remains poorly understood. As fruit and seed production is the first step in forest recruitment, this gap is critical to understanding tropical forest resilience. Tropical fruits are important in diets of numerous [...]

Leveraging ResNet-50 for Precision Toxicity Classification in Plants: A Vision-Based Approach to Safeguard Public Health

Aria Makhija

Published: 2024-10-04
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Plant Sciences

The classification of toxic and non-toxic plants plays an important role in ensuring public safety, especially in agriculture, food safety, and health. Correct identification of these plants can prevent accidental poisoning and promote ecological protection. In this paper, we investigate the application of the ResNet-50 model for the classification of toxic and non-toxic plants. Leveraging the [...]

Collapse and recovery of livestock systems shape fire regimes on the Eurasian steppe: a review of ecosystem and biodiversity implications

Johannes Kamp, Tejas Bhagwat, Norbert Hölzel, et al.

Published: 2024-09-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany, Natural Resources and Conservation, Plant Sciences, Sustainability

Shifts in fire regimes can trigger rapid changes in ecosystem functioning and biodiversity. We synthesize evidence for patterns, causes and consequences of recent change in fire regimes across the Eurasian steppes, a neglected global fire hotspot. Political and economic turmoil following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 triggered abrupt land abandonment over millions of hectares and a [...]

Phenological Patterns of Woody Plant Species in a Tropical Dry Forest, Bannerghatta National Park, Bengaluru

Balasubramanya Sharma, Akshay Kumar V G, Poorvashree P, et al.

Published: 2024-06-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences

Phenology is the study of the timing of recurring natural stages in the life cycle of an organism. These natural stages, such as the plant's reproductive cycles, are being affected by the changing climate. The current study aims to understand the effect of weather parameters on the phenology of dry forests in Bannerghatta National Park. Two transects with 504 reproductively mature individuals [...]

Tundra vegetation community, not microclimate, controls asynchrony of above and belowground phenology

Elise Gallois, Isla H. Myers-Smith, Colleen M. Iversen, et al.

Published: 2024-06-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

The below-ground growing season often extends beyond the above-ground growing season in tundra ecosystems. However, we do not yet know where and when this occurs and whether these phenological asynchronies are driven by variation in local vegetation communities or by spatial variation in microclimate. Here, we combined above- and below-ground plant phenology metrics to compare the relative [...]

Asian Hornbill Bibliography: a dynamic, online, open-access reference database for use in manuscript citations and hornbill research

T. R. Shankar Raman, Maitreyi Hegde, Pooja Y. Pawar, et al.

Published: 2024-06-18
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Library and Information Science, Nature and Society Relations, Ornithology, Plant Sciences, Publishing, Scholarly Publishing

Bibliographic databases and citation tools are integral aids to research. The Asian Hornbill Bibliography presents a compendium of research on Asian hornbills by combining an open access bibliographic database with the free and open source reference manager, Zotero. The bibliography, also hosted and made accessible from the IUCN Hornbill Specialist Group website, includes 725 publications, [...]

Navigating phylogenetic conflict and evolutionary inference in plants with target capture data

Elizabeth M Joyce, Alexander N Schmidt-Lebuhn, Harvey K Orel, et al.

Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences

Target capture has quickly become a preferred approach for plant systematic and evolutionary research, marking a step-change in the generation of data for phylogenetic inference. While this advancement has facilitated the resolution of many phylogenetic relationships, phylogenetic conflict continues to be reported, and often attributed to genome duplication, reticulation, deep coalescence or [...]

Multiple Disturbances, Multiple Legacies: Fire, Canopy Gaps, and Deer Jointly Change the Forest Seed Bank

Samuel Powers Reed, Alejandro A Royo, Walter P Carson, et al.

Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences

The manipulation of pre-colonial disturbances in U.S. forests can play a critical role in determining ecological composition, structure, and function. However, our understanding of how concurrent disturbances influence non-tree species is extremely limited in forests. To this end, we used a long-term, multi-disturbance experiment in an oak dominated forest in West Virginia, U.S.A. that [...]

Ten golden rules for restoration to secure resilient and just seagrass social-ecological systems

Richard Kazimierz Frank Unsworth, Benjamin Lawrence Hopper Jones, Chiara Bertelli, et al.

Published: 2024-05-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology, Plant Sciences

It is unequivocal that the world has lost a significant proportion of its seagrass, and although glimmers of hope exist, losses continue with many ongoing negative trajectories. First and foremost, we need to put the world on a global pathway to seagrass net gain. Conservation of what remains must be a priority, but we need to increase coverage at rates unlikely to be achieved naturally; [...]

Lianas, to cut or not to cut to conserve forest biodiversity?

Ricardo A. Moreno, Gabriel Ortega-Solis, Javier Godoy, et al.

Published: 2024-03-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences

Although lianas play an important role in forest composition, structure, and functions, they are considered structural parasites of trees. Both contrasting ideas on the role of lianas in forests challenge practitioners during restoration activities and management decisions might be taken without specific information. Here we evaluated the effects of lianas on their host-trees in a small [...]

Sexual system variation in legumes (Leguminosae): underpinning genomic study with new tools to describe inflorescence morphology

Quentin Cronk, Leonardo M Borges

Published: 2024-02-01
Subjects: Biology, Botany, Plant Biology, Plant Breeding and Genetics Life Sciences, Plant Sciences

Although the great majority of legume species are cosexual with hermaphrodite flowers, a variety of sexual systems are observed in the family, including monoecy, andromonoecy, androdioecy and dioecy. Such broad terms conceal much variation, details that may be of importance in understanding the evolutionary and ecological basis of reproductive systems. This variation is often inadequately [...]

The role of deadwood in the carbon cycle: Implications for models, forest management, and future climates

Baptiste Joseph Wijas, Steven D Allison, Amy T Austin, et al.

Published: 2024-01-10
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Deadwood represents a significant carbon pool in forests and savannas. Although previous research has focused mainly on forests, we synthesise deadwood studies across all ecosystems with woody vegetation. Storage and release of carbon from deadwood is controlled by interacting decomposition drivers including biotic consumers (animals, microbes) and abiotic factors (water, fire, sunlight, [...]

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