Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Entomology
Inferring the seasonal dynamics and abundance of an invasive species using a spatio-temporal stacked machine learning model
Published: 2023-12-22
Subjects: Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Public Health, Virus Diseases
Various modelling techniques are available to understand the temporal and spatial variations of the phenology of species. Scientists often rely on correlative models, which establish a statistical relationship between a response variable (such as species abundance or presence-absence) and a set of predominantly abiotic covariates. The modelling approach choice, i.e. the algorithm, is a crucial [...]
VectAbundance: a spatio-temporal database of vector observations
Published: 2023-12-22
Subjects: Entomology, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Modelling approaches play a crucial role in supporting local public health agencies by estimating and forecasting vector abundance and seasonality. However, the reliability of these models is contingent on the availability of standardized, high-quality data. Addressing this need, our study focuses on collecting and harmonizing egg count observations of Aedes albopictus, obtained through ovitraps [...]
Ecosystem functions and services provided by dung beetles: a global meta-analysis
Published: 2023-12-19
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Dung beetles are known to carry out a range of ecosystem functions such as secondary seed dispersal, bioturbation, nutrient cycling, plant growth, pest and parasite control, and trophic regulation, many of which support key ecosystem services. Despite the globally purported significance of this group of insects for ecosystem functioning, there has been no quantitative synthesis to establish the [...]
How does vector diversity influence the transmission efficiency of barley yellow dwarf virus? Perspectives from a review
Published: 2023-12-06
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Entomology, Plant Pathology
Cereals are some of the most important global crops that contribute directly and indirectly to the production of food for human consumption. Cereal aphids can cause significant damage to wheat, barley, and oats, particularly via the transmission of plant viruses that cause devastating plant diseases, such as yellow dwarf disease. Yellow dwarf disease is caused by two related viruses within the [...]
Forecasting insect dynamics in a changing world
Published: 2023-11-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology
Predicting how insects will respond to stressors through time is difficult because of the diversity of insects, environments, and approaches used to monitor and model. Forecasting models take correlative/statistical, mechanistic models, and integrated forms; in some cases, temporal processes can be inferred from spatial models. Because of heterogeneity associated with broad community [...]
Sharing the burden: Cabbage stem flea beetle pest pressure and crop damage are lower in rapeseed fields surrounded by other rapeseed crops
Published: 2023-11-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The cabbage stem flea beetle (Psylliodes chrysocephala) is a significant pest of rapeseed (Brassica napus). Feeding by adult P. chrysocephala can cause severe leaf damage and larval infestation can reduce stem strength, both of which impact crop growth and development, causing substantial yield losses and economic damage. The structure of the agricultural landscape can regulate herbivorous pest [...]
Warming summer temperatures are rapidly restructuring North American bumble bee communities
Published: 2023-08-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
A rapidly warming climate is a primary force driving changes in biodiversity worldwide. The impact of warming temperatures on insect communities is of particular interest given their importance for ecosystem function and service provision and the uncertainty around whether insect communities can keep pace with the rate of increasing temperatures. We use a long-term dataset on bumble bee species [...]
Lipid Metabolism in Parasitoids and Parasitized Hosts
Published: 2023-06-30
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Physiology
Parasitoids have an exceptional lifestyle where juvenile development is spent on or in a single host insect, but the adults are free-living. Unlike parasites, parasitoids kill the host. How parasitoids use such a limiting resource, particularly lipids, can affect chances to survive and reproduce. In part 1, we describe the parasitoid lifestyle, including typical developmental strategies. Lipid [...]
Repeated evolution of extreme locomotor performance independent of changes in extended phenotype use in spiders
Published: 2023-04-24
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Biology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Many animals utilize self-built structures – so-called extended phenotypes – to enhance body functions, such as thermoregulation, prey capture or defence. Yet, it is unclear whether the evolution of animal constructions supplements or substitutes body functions. Here, using Austral brown spiders, we explored if the evolutionary loss and gain of silken webs as extended prey capture devices [...]
Lipid Metabolism in Response to Cold
Published: 2023-03-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology
Temperature directly shapes insect physiology and has a preponderant effect on life history traits. Winter conditions in temperate and polar regions are especially challenging for insects. Extremely low temperatures can indeed compromise insect survival by promoting freezing of body fluids, but mild cold temperatures above 0 °C (i.e. chilling) can also lead to complex and severe physiological [...]
Advances in the reconstruction of the Spider Tree of Life: a roadmap for spider systematics and comparative studies
Published: 2022-12-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Genomics, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
In the last decade and a half, advances in genetic sequencing technologies have revolutionized systematics, transforming the field as studying morphological characters; a few genetic markers have given way to genomic data sets in the phylogenomic era. A plethora of molecular phylogenetic studies on many taxonomic groups have come about, converging on, or refuting prevailing morphology or [...]
Assessing the aesthetic attractivity of European butterflies: a web-based survey protocol
Published: 2022-11-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Entomology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Aesthetic attractivity stands as an underestimated yet fundamental feature of species in conservation biology, significantly driving disproportionate protection efforts towards charismatic species. Despite the evidence, few attempts sought to precisely quantify the impact of aesthetic attractivity in defining priority of species for conservation actions (e.g. inclusion in International Union for [...]
Characterizing the Vector Data Ecosystem
Published: 2022-08-05
Subjects: Entomology, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
A growing body of information on vector-borne diseases has arisen as increasing research focus has been directed towards the need for anticipating risk, optimizing surveillance, and understanding the fundamental biology of vector-borne diseases to direct efforts to control and mitigation. The scope and scale of this information, in the form of data, comprising database efforts, data storage, and [...]
A minimum data standard for vector competence experiments
Published: 2022-06-14
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Entomology, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Virology
The growing threat of vector-borne diseases, highlighted by recent epidemics, has prompted increased focus on the fundamental biology of vector-virus interactions. To this end, experiments are often the most reliable way to measure vector competence (the potential for arthropod vectors to transmit certain pathogens). Data from these experiments are critical to understand outbreak risk, but – [...]
Brood thermoregulation effectiveness is positively linked to the amount of brood but not to the number of bees in honeybee colonies
Published: 2022-05-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
To ensure the optimal development of brood, a honeybee colony needs to regulate its temperature within a certain range of values (thermoregulation), regardless of environmental changes in biotic and abiotic factors. While the set of behavioural and physiological responses implemented by honeybees to regulate the brood temperature has been well studied, less is known about the factors that may [...]