Preprints
There are 2712 Preprints listed.
Extinction drives recent thermophilization but does not trigger homogenization in forest understory
Published: 2023-07-05
Subjects: Botany, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The ongoing climate change is triggering plant community thermophilization. This selection process is ought to shift community composition toward species adapted to warmer climates but may also lead to biotic homogenization. The link between thermophilization and homogenization, and the community dynamics that drive them (colonization and extinction) remain unknow, but is critical for [...]
Measuring historical pollution: natural history collections as tools for public health and environmental justice research
Published: 2023-07-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Health Life Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Policy, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Studies, Health Policy, Inequality and Stratification, Nature and Society Relations, Public Policy, Urban Studies and Planning
Background: Through the industrial era, environmental pollution has been unevenly distributed in the environment, disproportionately impacting disenfranchised communities. The distribution of pollution is thus a question of environmental justice and public health that requires policy solutions. However, we lack robust quantitative data on pollutants for many locations and time periods because [...]
Prevalence and Potential Evolutionary Significance of Color Mutations in Freshwater Crayfish (Decapoda: Astacidea)
Published: 2023-07-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Color mutations may lead to the evolution and diversification of color phenotypes in animals. However, much of the research on this topic has been conducted on vertebrates. Here, I compile records of color mutations in freshwater crayfish (Decapoda: Astacidea). I found color mutations to be surprisingly common, with 103 documented occurrences. The overwhelming majority of these mutations resulted [...]
Biogeographical distributions of trickster animals
Published: 2023-07-04
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Human language encompasses almost endless potential for meaning and folklore can theoretically incorporate themes beyond time and space. However, actual distributions of the themes are not always universal and their constraints remain unclear. Here, we specifically focused on zoological folklore and aimed to reveal what restricts the distribution of trickster animals in folklore. We applied the [...]
Measuring the 3-30-300 Rule to Help Cities Meet Nature Access Thresholds
Published: 2023-07-03
Subjects: Environmental Public Health, Environmental Studies, Epidemiology, Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The 3-30-300 rule offers benchmarks for cities to promote equitable nature access. It dictates that individuals should see three trees from their dwelling, have 30% tree canopy in their neighborhood, and live within 300 meters of a high-quality green space. Implementing this demands thorough measurement, monitoring, and evaluation methods. Seven data and processes exist to assess these [...]
HeliCat Canada’s Wildlife Observations Program: Trends and Findings 2012-2022
Published: 2023-07-01
Subjects: Natural Resources and Conservation
HeliCat Canada members operating in mountain caribou range have been collecting and reporting wildlife sightings data since 2010, resulting in more than 3,750 spatially referenced sightings of animals and tracks by the end of the 2022 operating season. Mountain caribou, mountain goats, and wolverine have been the most commonly recorded species, with caribou observations generally declining over [...]
Lipid Metabolism in Parasitoids and Parasitized Hosts
Published: 2023-07-01
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 [...]
A call to expand global change research in LTER coastal wetlands
Published: 2023-07-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Global change stressors are altering the structure of ecological communities with significant implications for the functions and services that ecosystems provide. Coastal zones are particularly susceptible to such stressors, yet our collective understanding of the long-term effects of global change on these systems and, in particular, the consumer species found within them, is limited. The US [...]
Shall we all adopt, with no worries, the ‘within a configuration’ approach in geometric morphometrics? A comment on claims that the effect of the superimposition and sliding on shape data is “not an obstacle to analyses of integration and modularity”
Published: 2023-07-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
The study of modularity and integration using Procrustes geometric morphometrics has become a prominent approach in evolutionary developmental biology. A most popular method is the ‘within a configuration’ approach, often used in combination with ‘high density’ morphometric data (i.e., large numbers of landmarks and semilandmarks). In 2019, I realized that this approach violates a basic [...]
Camtrap DP: An open standard for the FAIR exchange and archiving of camera trap data
Published: 2023-06-30
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Population Biology
Camera trapping has revolutionized wildlife ecology and conservation by providing automated data acquisition, leading to the accumulation of massive amounts of camera trap data worldwide. Although management and processing of camera trap-derived Big Data are becoming increasingly solvable with the help of scalable cyber-infrastructures, harmonization and exchange of the data remain limited, [...]
Establishing complexity targets to enhance artificial reef designs
Published: 2023-06-30
Subjects: Engineering
(published and peer-reviewed version, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-72227-z) Artificial reefs (AR), which are integral tools for fish management, ecological reconciliation and restoration efforts, require non-polluting materials and intricate designs that mimic natural habitats. Despite their three-dimensional complexity, current designs nowadays rely on empirical methods that lack [...]
Evolutionary parsimony: an equilibrium refinement that sharply constrains the space of outcomes in games with multiple equilibria
Published: 2023-06-30
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Evolutionary game theory loses much of its predictive power in games with multiple equilibria. For such games, this paper introduces a simple and general refinement principle, grounded in evolutionary dynamics, that sharply narrows the set of possible outcomes. Rather than designing strategies from scratch, evolution shapes them gradually through the accumulation of adaptive mutations, the vast [...]
Seascape genomics: assisting marine biodiversity management by combining genetic knowledge with environmental and ecological information
Published: 2023-06-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
Biodiversity, including genetic diversity, is the foundation of ecosystems and the well-being of all organisms, including humans. Determining how the marine environment shapes genetic diversity and developing best practices to conserve it requires a multi-disciplinary approach incorporating genomic and environmental information. Seascape genetics and genomics combine spatially resolved [...]
Too simple, too complex, or just right? Advantages, challenges and resolutions for indicators of genetic diversity
Published: 2023-06-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Policy, Genetics, Life Sciences
Measuring genetic diversity of wild species using DNA-based data remains resource intensive and time-consuming for nearly all species. Yet, genetic assessments are needed for global conservation commitments including the Convention on Biological Diversity and for governments and managers to evaluate conservation progress and to prioritize species and populations to preserve and recover genetic [...]
Designing a collective prototype of future (sub)tropical science
Published: 2023-06-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Higher Education