Preprints

There are 1492 Preprints listed.

VectAbundance: a spatio-temporal database of vector observations

Daniele Da Re, Giovanni Marini, Carmelo Bonannella, et al.

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 [...]

Child and Adolescent Foraging: New Directions in Evolutionary Research

Ilaria Pretelli, Alyssa Crittenden, Edmond Dounias, et al.

Published: 2023-12-21
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences

Young children and adolescents in subsistence societies forage for a wide range of resources. They often target child-specific foods, they can be very successful foragers, and they share their produce widely within and outside of their nuclear family. At the same time, while foraging they face risky situations and are exposed to diseases that can influence their immune development. However, [...]

A structured approach for building multi-community state-and-transition models to support conservation planning

Megan Kate Good, Libby Rumpff, Hannah S. Fraser, et al.

Published: 2023-12-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

The global decline in the extent and condition of ecological communities has resulted in an increasing demand for recovery and conservation plans. Conservation plans for ecological communities require a management framework with measurable, time-bound objectives, a targeted management strategy, and indicators that enable actions to be evaluated in relation to objectives. Methods that allow for [...]

Ecosystem functions and services provided by dung beetles: a global meta-analysis

Fevziye Hasan, Louis A Schipper, Kiri Joy Wallace, et al.

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 [...]

The trade-offs of honest and dishonest signals

Szabolcs Számadó, István Zachar, Dustin J. Penn

Published: 2023-12-19
Subjects: Life Sciences

Explaining the evolution of honest versus dishonest signals under conflicts of interest has long posed a major challenge, but several recent developments should spur renewed interest in this problem. First, the Handicap Principle, which maintains that signals must be costly to be honest, has been refuted and the model that claimed to validate this idea has been shown to have been misinterpreted. [...]

Evolutionary Immunology to Explore Original Antiviral Strategies

Jean-Luc Imler, Hua Cai, Carine Meignin, et al.

Published: 2023-12-18
Subjects: Life Sciences

Over the past 25 years, the field of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) has used genomics and genetics to gain insight on the developmental mechanisms underlying the evolution of morphological diversity of animals. Evo-devo exploits the key insight that conserved toolkits of development (e.g., Hox genes) are used in animals to produce genetic novelties that provide adaptation to a new [...]

Developmental axioms in life history evolution

Liam U Taylor, Richard Prum

Published: 2023-12-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution

Life history theory is often invoked to make universal predictions about phenotypic evolution. For example, it is conventional wisdom that organisms should evolve older ages at first reproduction if they have longer lifespans. We clarify that life history theory does not currently provide such universal predictions about phenotypic diversity. Using the classic Euler-Lotka model of adaptive life [...]

The genetic basis for social network traits in the wild.

Jessica Kay Hunter, Julia Schroeder, Jamie Dunning, et al.

Published: 2023-12-14
Subjects: Life Sciences

Sociality is fundamental for many species, linked to an individual’s survival and reproductive success. The evolution of social behaviours has been studied, especially in complex social animals such as birds. However, discerning the genetic basis of these behaviours has been difficult due to the lack of ecological validity and life-history in controlled environments. In wild populations, however, [...]

Shrinking body size may not provide meaningful thermoregulatory benefits in a warmer world

Andreas Nord, Elin Persson, Joshua Kenneth Robertson Tabh, et al.

Published: 2023-12-13
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physiology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology

In a recent and impressive analysis of avian morphological data (covering >250 000 male birds from 105 species), Youngflesh et al.1 report that birds breeding in North America have become significantly lighter over the last three decades, coincident with rising breeding season temperatures. Because these observations recapitulate predictions under Bergmann’s Rule (i.e., that the body size of [...]

Complementando inventarios biológicos con datos abiertos a través de un método semiautomatizado

Sergio A. Cabrera-Cruz, José Luis Aguilar López, Rafael Villegas Patraca

Published: 2023-12-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Introducción: Los muestreos directos constituyen la mejor manera de documentar la riqueza biológica de un lugar, pero pueden verse limitados por diversas circunstancias. Nos preguntamos si la riqueza de especies documentada en campo puede ser complementada con datos de plataformas digitales de biodiversidad. Objetivo: Analizar si los datos de ocurrencia de especies disponibles en la Global [...]

Effects of dissolved organic matter and ecocorona formation on the toxicity of micro- and nanoplastic particles to Daphnia - A meta-analysis

Sophia A. Salomon, Eric Grubmüller, Philipp Kropf, et al.

Published: 2023-12-13
Subjects: Life Sciences

Significant quantities of micro- and nanoplastic particles (MNP) end up in the environment, either due to larger plastic debris breaking down or by entering directly as MNPs. Effects of MNPs on organisms have been increasingly reported in recent years, with a large number of studies conducted on water fleas of the genus Daphnia. Most of the available studies used pristine particles that have [...]

Population density affects whole brain and brain region volumes in a wrasse species Coris batuensis

Yasmin Emery, Letizia Pessina, Redouan Bshary

Published: 2023-12-13
Subjects: Life Sciences

The factors shaping brain evolution and cognition are broadly categorized as being either social or environmental. However, the relative importance of these factors is heavily debated, partly due to the limitations from the standard interspecific evolutionary comparative approach. Here, we adopt a complementary strategy leveraging the high degree of brain plasticity that evolved in fishes to ask [...]

Divergent responses between lineages of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi to soil phosphorus and nitrogen availability

Brendan Delroy, Hai-Yang Zhang, Andrew Bissett, et al.

Published: 2023-12-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Soil Science

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) associations are multifunctional. Two important functions they perform are facilitating nutrient uptake in host plants and protecting plants from biotic stress, among other functions. AM fungal taxa vary in how capably they perform these functions and can also respond differently to environmental selection. Therefore, there is a need to better understand how particular [...]

Elevated CO2 enhances decomposition and modifies litter-associated fungal assemblages in a natural Eucalyptus woodland

Uffe Nielsen, Dylan Bristol, Michaela Blyton, et al.

Published: 2023-12-13
Subjects: Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Litter decomposition is a key process governing carbon and nutrient cycles in forest ecosystems that is expected to be impacted by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations. We conducted two complementary field studies to assess the effects of elevated CO2 on Eucalyptus tereticornis litter decomposition processes. First, we used bags of two different mesh sizes to assess the [...]

Bird species’ centrality in seed-dispersal networks varies within climatic niches

Gabriel M. Moulatlet, Wesley Dáttilo, Daniel Kissling, et al.

Published: 2023-12-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Understanding how the functional role of species within seed-dispersal networks varies across geographical and climatic gradients can reveal the mechanisms driving network organization. Using data for 157 bird species from all continents, we evaluated the variation of species’ centrality within local networks across species’ climatic niches (occupied climatic conditions) and in response to [...]

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