Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Research Methods in Life Sciences
COVID-19 has led to a global increase in web searches for bats: a risk for conservation ?
Published: 2020-04-30
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 [...]
[Final version available] Explainable Artificial Intelligence enhances the ecological interpretability of black-box species distribution models
Published: 2020-04-17
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Computer Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used in ecology, biogeography and conservation biology to estimate relationships between environmental variables and species occurrence data and make predictions of how their distributions vary in space and time. During the past two decades, the field has increasingly made use of machine learning approaches for constructing and validating SDMs. Model [...]
Measurement and analysis of interspecific spatial associations as a facet of biodiversity
Published: 2019-12-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Interspecific spatial associations (ISA), which include co-occurrences, segregations, or attractions among two or more species, can provide important insights into the spatial structuring of communities. However, ISA has primarily been examined in the context of understanding interspecific interactions, while other aspects of ISA, including its relations to other biodiversity facets and how it [...]
Experimenting with the past to improve environmental monitoring programs
Published: 2019-10-14
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Long-term monitoring programs are a fundamental part of both understanding system dynamics and informing management decisions. However, monitoring programs not always designed to consider statistical power, site selection, or the full costs and benefits of monitoring. Further, data from monitoring programs with different goals and protocols are now being combined for comparative analyses. Key [...]
The role of replication studies in ecology
Published: 2019-10-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Recent large-scale projects in other disciplines have shown that results often fail to replicate when studies are repeated. The conditions contributing to this problem are also present in ecology but there have not been any equivalent replication projects. Here we examine ecologists’ understanding of and opinions about replication studies. When asked what percentage of ecological studies are [...]
Evidence synthesis for tackling research waste
Published: 2019-09-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
There is an urgent need for a change in research workflows so that pre-existing knowledge is better utilised in designing new research. A formal assessment of the accumulated knowledge prior to research approval would reduce the waste of already limited resources caused by asking low priority questions.
A protocol for using drones to assist monitoring of large breeding bird colonies
Published: 2019-04-29
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Zoology
Drones are rapidly becoming part of environmental monitoring and management applications. They provide an opportunity to improve a number of activities related to monitoring population dynamics of aggregations of wildlife. Bird surveys using drones have attracted particular attention, with a range of potential metrics able to be derived from high resolution drone imagery. Whilst a number of [...]
Monitoring large and complex wildlife aggregations with drones
Published: 2019-01-02
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
• Recent advances in drone technology have rapidly led to their use for monitoring and managing wildlife populations but a broad and generalised framework for their application to complex wildlife aggregations is still lacking • We present a generalised semi-automated approach where machine learning can map targets of interest in drone imagery, supported by predictive modelling for estimating [...]
Slicing: a sustainable approach to the analysis of long-term biobanks
Published: 2018-12-19
Subjects: Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
The longitudinal study of populations is a core tool for understanding ecological and evolutionary processes. These studies typically collect samples over individual lifetimes and across multiple generations, building up a continuously growing biobank from which samples are then analysed in clusters over time in the laboratory. To ensure data are comparable among clusters we need to account for [...]
Research Weaving: Visualizing the Future of Research Synthesis
Published: 2018-11-10
Subjects: Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
We propose, and formalize, a new framework for research synthesis of both evidence and influence, named ‘research weaving’. It summarizes and visualizes information content, history, and networks among a collection of diverse publication types on any given topic. Research weaving achieves this feat by combining the power of two methodologies: systematic mapping and bibliometrics. Systematic [...]