Preprints
There are 3010 Preprints listed.
The fecundity costs of building complex nests in birds
Published: 2024-03-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Animal nests provide a beneficial environment for offspring development and as such contribute to fitness. Gathering and transporting materials to construct nests is energetically costly, but the life history trade-offs associated with the complexity of nests built are largely unknown. Who contributes to building the nest could also mediate these trade-offs, as building a nest as a couple is [...]
Desafíos y barreras para la disponibilización de datos abiertos de biodiversidad en Uruguay
Published: 2024-03-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Public Policy
Los nuevos desafíos que plantea el cambio global tornan urgente contar con datos de calidad que nos permitan monitorear la biodiversidad y frenar su pérdida. Sin embargo, en la actualidad, el Estado Uruguayo y sus diferentes Ministerios no disponibilizan datos primarios; tampoco existe información abierta disponible sobre los ejemplares de las colecciones nacionales, ni existen políticas [...]
Social cues and habitat structure influence the behavior of a non-social insect
Published: 2024-03-05
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Entomology, Life Sciences
Habitat fragmentation and loss is a known threat to biodiversity. Their combined effect leaves organisms in small isolated patches of habitat, contributing to the current biodiversity crisis. The first response of animals to environmental change is typically behavioral. Beyond the physical elements of the environment, the "social landscape" shapes the spatial distribution of the habitats [...]
Rainfall is associated with divorce in the socially monogamous Seychelles warbler
Published: 2024-03-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Divorce – terminating a pair bond while both members are alive – is a mating strategy observed in many socially monogamous species often linked to poor reproductive success. As environmental factors directly affect individual condition and reproductive performance, they can indirectly influence divorce. Given current climate change, understanding how environmental fluctuations affect [...]
Fisheries shocks provide an opportunity to reveal multiple recruitment sources of sardine in the Sea of Japan
Published: 2024-03-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Understanding the sources of recruits is essential for stock assessments of marine fish populations. In 2014 and 2019, schools of Japanese sardine in the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea (SJ-ECS), which arrive in Japanese coastal areas for spawning each spring were shockingly sparse. Abundances of eggs and juveniles also showed abrupt declines, suggesting that sardine reproduction in the [...]
Nest-site selection and nest predation in a tropical passerine in relation to food, friends and foes
Published: 2024-03-04
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ornithology, Zoology
Nest-site selection is an important determinant of avian reproductive success, mainly through its effect on predation risk. However, how environmental and social factors affect nest-site selection and predation risk remains less well understood. Optimal nest positioning may depend on the balance of many distinct factors such as nest predation, food availability, extra-pair mating opportunities, [...]
Studying the genetic basis of ecological interactions with intergenomic epistasis
Published: 2024-03-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
In a community, the phenotype or fitness of genotypes of a focal species can depend on the genotypes of other species. Such between-species genetic interactions are increasingly referred to as intergenomic epistasis, analogous to the classical definition of (intragenomic) epistasis in genetics. Here, we propose the first mathematical definition of intergenomic epistasis, which formalises the [...]
Running a queer- and trans-inclusive faculty hiring process
Published: 2024-03-02
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Microbiology
Queer and transgender scientists face documented systemic challenges across the sciences, and as a result have a higher attrition rate than their peers. Recent calls for change within science have emphasized the importance of addressing barriers to the success and retention of queer and trans scientists to create a more inclusive, equitable, and just scientific establishment. Crucially, we note [...]
Pursuit and escape drive fine-scale movement variation during migration in a temperate alpine ungulate
Published: 2024-03-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate change reduces snowpack, advances snowmelt phenology, drives summer warming, alters growing season precipitation regimes, and consequently modifies vegetation phenology in mountain systems. Altitudinal migrants cope with seasonal variation in such conditions by moving between seasonal ranges at different elevations, but vertical movements may be complex and are often not unidirectional [...]
Are microbes colimited by multiple resources?
Published: 2024-03-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Systems Biology
Resource colimitation --- the dependence of growth on multiple resources simultaneously --- has become an important topic in microbiology due both to the development of systems approaches to cell physiology and ecology, and to the relevance of colimitation to environmental science, biotechnology, and human health. Empirical tests of colimitation in microbes suggest that it may be common in [...]
Agency in the Evolutionary Transition to Multicellularity
Published: 2024-03-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
This review explores agency, behavior intrinsic to an organism and initiated by it, as it relates to the development of multicellular organisms and its evolution. We ask how agential behaviors contribute to and change concomitantly with evolutionary transitions from unicellularity to multicellularity, including evolution of animals from their closest unicellular antecedents. We consider the [...]
Behavioral plasticity shapes population aging patterns in a long-lived avian scavenger
Published: 2024-02-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Studying the mechanisms shaping age-related changes in behavior (“behavioral aging”) is important for understanding population dynamics in our changing world. Yet, studies that capture within-individual behavioral changes in wild populations of long-lived animals are still scarce. Here, we used a 15-y GPS-tracking dataset of a social obligate scavenger, the griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus), to [...]
Evaluating Compatibility between the Key Biodiversity Area Proposal Process and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Environmental Priorities with evidence from Canada and Mi'kma'ki (Nova Scotia)
Published: 2024-02-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Social and Behavioral Sciences
This report will demonstrate that no meaningful (non-random) compatibility exists between the Key Biodiversity Area proposal process – as it now exists and is being implemented globally and in Canada – and the biocultural priorities of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IP&LC’s)*. It is precisely because it is a global standard that no claim that KBA proposal meaningfully (non-randomly) [...]
Minimum reporting standards can promote animal welfare and data quality in biologging research
Published: 2024-02-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
1. Over the last six decades, the biologging research community has reduced instrument impacts on study animals by miniaturizing devices, employing sophisticated release mechanisms, and developing other novel technological advancements. However, biologging devices can still impact animal physiology, behavior, and demography - the very biological metrics the instruments are meant to measure. [...]
The metabolite transporters of C4 photosynthesis.
Published: 2024-02-28
Subjects: Plant Biology
C4 photosynthesis is a highly efficient form of photosynthesis that utilises a biochemical pump to concentrate CO2 around rubisco. Although variation in the implementation of this biochemical pump exists between species, each variant of the C4 pathway is critically dependent on metabolite transport between organelles and between cells. Here we review our understanding of metabolite transport in [...]