Preprints
There are 1657 Preprints listed.
Little difference in average fish growth and maximum size across temperatures
Published: 2019-06-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ectotherms typically increase growth and reduce body size when temperature increases. This physiological response to temperature, termed the temperature-size rule (TSR), is often used to predict how rising temperatures with climate change will affect higher levels of organization, i.e. guilds, communities and ecosystems. Here we study whether faster growth and reduction in adult body size are [...]
Does internal egg carrying impair foraging ability as much as external egg carrying in a neotropical spider?
Published: 2019-06-05
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Females not only produce costly gametes, but also store the eggs until oviposition, a period called pregnancy. The volume that eggs occupy in the female abdomen may decrease female foraging ability by making females slow. Although females of all species are subjected to these potential costs, it remains an unexplored matter in invertebrates. Females of the spider Paratrechalea ornata carry their [...]
Transgenerational plasticity and bet-hedging: a framework for reaction norm evolution
Published: 2019-06-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Decision-making under uncertain conditions favors bet-hedging (avoidance of fitness variance), whereas predictable environments favor phenotypic plasticity. However, entirely predictable or entirely unpredictable conditions are rarely found in nature. Intermediate strategies are required when the time lag between information sensing and phenotype induction is large (e.g. transgenerational [...]
A future without stocking? The importance of harvest and river regulation for long-term population viability of migratory salmonids
Published: 2019-05-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Humans are influencing animal and plant populations both directly (e.g. through harvest) and indirectly by altering environments. For many exploited species, stocking with captive-bred individuals is a common strategy to mitigate negative human impacts and sustain populations over time. However, accumulating knowledge of negative side effects of stocking calls for quantification of [...]
Understanding the Evolution of Ecological Sex Differences: Integrating Character Displacement and the Darwin-Bateman Paradigm
Published: 2019-05-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Sex differences in selection arise for two possible reasons: 1) differences originating from anisogamy – the Darwin-Bateman paradigm – and 2) competition-driven ecological character displacement (ECD), agnostic of anisogamy. Despite mounting evidence of ECD and increasing focus on the ecological causes and consequences of sexual dimorphism, progress in understanding the evolution of ecological [...]
Beneath the surface: community assembly and functions of the coral skeleton microbiome
Published: 2019-05-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology
Coral microbial ecology is a burgeoning field, driven by the urgency of understanding coral health and slowing reef loss due to climate change. Coral resilience depends on its microbiota, and both the tissue and the underlying skeleton are home to a rich biodiversity of eukaryotic, bacterial and archaeal species that form an integral part of the coral holobiont. New techniques now enable detailed [...]
Phylogenetic Comparative Methods: Learning From Trees
Published: 2019-05-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
A review of the field of phylogenetic comparative methods.
The role of selection and evolution in changing parturition date in a red deer population
Published: 2019-05-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Changing environmental conditions cause changes in the distributions of phenotypic traits in natural populations. However, determining the mechanisms responsible for these changes and, in particular, the relative contributions of phenotypic plasticity vs evolutionary responses, is difficult. To date, to our knowledge no study has reported evidence that evolutionary change underlies the most [...]
Replicating Natures Fabric - High Information Markets and the Sustainability of Global Seafood
Published: 2019-05-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Misinformation currently plagues our global seafood market. Because this globally interconnected, complex and dynamic market parallels food webs and places humans as apex predators, we can apply our understanding of nature’s structure to better understand the consequences of misinformation in the global seafood system. Here, we argue that this misinformation undermines the sustainability of our [...]
The importance of individual-to-society feedbacks in animal ecology and evolution
Published: 2019-05-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. The social decisions that individuals make—who to interact with and how frequently—gives rise to social structure. The resulting social structure then determines how individuals interact with their surroundings—resources and risks, pathogens and predators, competitors and cooperators. 2. However, despite intensive research on (i) how individuals make social decisions and (ii) how social [...]
Sexual Selection in Bacteria?
Published: 2019-05-08
Subjects: Bacteriology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Microbiology
A main mechanism of lateral gene transfer in bacteria is transformation, where cells take up free DNA from the environment which subsequently can be recombined into the genome. Bacteria are also known to actively release DNA into the environment through secretion or lysis, which could aid uptake via transformation. Various evolutionary benefits of DNA uptake and DNA release have been proposed but [...]
Into the wild: microbiome transplant studies need broader ecological reality
Published: 2019-05-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Gut microbial communities (microbiomes) profoundly shape the ecology and evolution of multicellular life. Interactions between host and microbiome appear to be reciprocal, and ecological theory is now being applied to better understand how hosts and their microbiome influence each other. However, some ecological processes that underlie reciprocal host-microbiome interactions may be obscured by [...]
Heritability and maternal effects on social attention during an attention bias task in a non-human primate, Macaca mulatta
Published: 2019-05-02
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Social attention is fundamental to a wide range of behaviours in non-human primates. However, we know very little about the heritability of social attention in non-human primates, and the heritability of attention to social threat has not been assessed. Here, we provide data to begin to fill this gap in knowledge. We tested 67 female rhesus macaques, Macaca mulatta, on an attention bias [...]
Open Access Principles and Practices Benefit Conservation
Published: 2019-05-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Open access is often contentious in the scientific community, but its implications for conservation are under-discussed or omitted entirely from scientific discourse. Access to literature is a key factor impeding implementation of conservation research, and many open access models and concepts that are little-known by most conservation researchers may facilitate implementation. Conservation [...]
Forest management effects on survival of a long-lived bird
Published: 2019-04-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
1. A high number of reproductive events is a critical fitness correlate for long-lived species. Thus, individuals of these species should be sensitive to factors that increase their mortality. Living in habitats with high exposure to predators can decrease lifespan, but the ecological drivers of longevity within populations remain poorly studied. Forest management in boreal forests can increase [...]