Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Other Life Sciences
Testing character-evolution models in phylogenetic paleobiology: a case study with Cambrian echinoderms
Published: 2020-08-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
Macroevolutionary inference has historically been treated as a two-step process, involving the inference of a phylogenetic tree, and then inference of a macroevolutionary model using that tree. Newer models, such as the fossilized birth-death model, blend the two steps. These methods make more complete use of fossils than the previous generation of Bayesian phylogenetic models. They also involve [...]
Online conferences for better learning
Published: 2020-06-22
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
Conferences provide an invaluable set of opportunities for professional development. Online, virtual, and distributed conferences do not necessarily mean less opportunity for growth and innovation in science but varied and novel options for communicating the scientific process. Open science and many existing tools and structures are in place in the practice of contemporary ecology and evolution [...]
A guide to using the Internet to monitor and quantify the wildlife trade
Published: 2020-05-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Life Sciences
The unrivalled growth in e-commerce of animals and plants presents an unprecedented opportunity to monitor wildlife trade to inform conservation, biosecurity, and law enforcement. Using the Internet to quantify the scale of the wildlife trade (volume, frequency) is a relatively recent and rapidly developing approach, which currently lacks an accessible framework for locating relevant websites and [...]
COVID-19 has led to a global increase in web searches for bats: a risk for conservation ?
Published: 2020-04-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused COVID-19 pandemic, is genomically similar to a SARS-like beta-coronavirus found in Chinese rhinolophids. This evolutionary relationship impressed global media, which emphasized bats as key actors in the spillover during the pandemic outbreak. In this study we highlight qualitative and quantitative changes about bats in the media coverage, and Internet search [...]
Behavioral Modification of Eastern Hoolock Gibbon in Non-Protected Fragmented Rainforest Patches of North Eastern Himalayas
Published: 2019-12-06
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Zoology
Presence of Eastern Hoolock Gibbon (Hoolock leuconydes) was confirmed recently in and around Mehao Wildlife Sanctuary, Arunachal Pradesh, where the last remnant rainforest region of Eastern Himalaya still exists. A total of 13 groups of Eastern Hoolock Gibbon were located in this Lower Dibang valley in the outskirts and periferi of Mehao WLS where they coexist with humans at the non-protected [...]
Assessing symbiont extinction risk using cophylogenetic data
Published: 2019-09-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Parasitology
Symbionts have a unique mode of life that has attracted the attention of ecologists and evolutionary biologists for centuries. As a result of this attention, these disciplines have produced a mature body of literature on host-symbiont interactions. In contrast, the discipline of symbiont conservation is still in a foundational stage. Here, we aim to integrate methodologies on symbiont [...]
Complexity revealed in the greening of the Arctic
Published: 2019-02-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
As the Arctic warms, vegetation is responding and satellite measures indicate widespread greening at high latitudes. This ‘greening of the Arctic’ is among the world’s most significant large-scale ecological responses to global climate change. However, a consensus is emerging that the underlying causes and future dynamics of so-called Arctic greening and browning trends are more complex, [...]