Preprints
There are 1975 Preprints listed.
The more you get, the more you give: Positive cascading effects shape the evolutionary potential of prenatal maternal investment
Published: 2019-01-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Maternal effects are prevalent in nature and significantly contribute to variation in phenotypic trait expression. However, little attention has been paid to the factors shaping variation in the traits mediating these effects (maternal effectors). Specific maternal effectors are often not identified, and typically they are assumed to be inherited in an additive genetic and autosomal manner. Given [...]
Dominance determines fish community biomass in a temperate seagrass ecosystem
Published: 2019-01-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Biodiversity and ecosystem function are often correlated, but there are multiple hypotheses about the mechanisms underlying this relationship. Ecosystem functions such as primary or secondary production may be maximized by species richness, evenness in species abundances, or the presence or dominance of species with certain traits. Here, we combined surveys of natural fish communities (conducted [...]
Returning the Earth to Mankind and Mankind to Earth: an Ecosystemic Approach to Advocacy, Public Policies, Research and Teaching Programmes
Published: 2019-01-20
Subjects: Other Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
In view of the overwhelming pressures on the global environment and the need to disrupt the systems that drive them, an ecosystemic theoretical and practical framework is posited for the evaluation and planning of communication, advocacy, public policies, research and teaching programmes; Priority is given to a set of values, norms and policies in view of human well-being, quality of life and [...]
Visual-based male mate preference for conspecific females in mutually ornamented fish: possible importance of species recognition hypothesis
Published: 2019-01-18
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Because sexual selection typically acts on males, evolution of conspicuous ornamentation in females has been understudied. Genetic correlation between sexes and sexual or social selection on females have been proposed to explain female ornamentation, but they cannot fully explain observed patterns in nature such as female ornamentation in non-territorial, promiscuous species. The species [...]
Rapid isolation and characterization of microsatellites in the critically endangered Mountain Bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus isaaci)
Published: 2019-01-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics
High-throughput sequencing tools promise to revolutionize many aspects of genetics research, e.g. by allowing the identification of functional adaptive genetic variation. However, the expense and expertise required to apply these tools to basic conservation questions is a challenge for applications outside academia, resulting in a so-called “conservation genomics gap” (Shafer et al. 2015). The [...]
Cetacean morbillivirus, a journey from land to sea and viceversa
Published: 2019-01-15
Subjects: Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Virology
Cetacean Morbillivirus, the most relevant pathogen impacting the health and conservation of cetaceans worldwide, has shown in recent years an increased tendency to cross “interspecies barriers”, thereby giving rise to disease and mortality outbreaks in free-ranging dolphins and whales. This "Personal View" deals with the evolutionary “trajectories” of this viral pathogen, likely originating from [...]
The covariance between metabolic rate and behaviour varies across behaviours and thermal types: meta-analytic insights
Published: 2019-01-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physiology
Energy metabolism has received much attention as a potential driver of repeatable among-individual differences in behaviour (animal personality). Several factors have been hypothesized to mediate this relationship. We performed a meta-analysis of >70 studies comprised of >8000 individuals reporting relationships between measures of maintenance metabolic rates (i.e., basal metabolic rate, [...]
Macroecology of parental care in arthropods: higher mortality risk leads to higher benefits of offspring protection in tropical climates
Published: 2019-01-12
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The intensity of biotic interactions varies around the world, in such a way that mortality risk imposed by natural enemies is usually higher in the tropics. A major role of offspring attendance is protection against natural enemies, so the benefits of this behaviour should be higher in tropical regions. We tested this macroecological prediction with a meta‐regression of field experiments in which [...]
Local forest structure variability increases resilience to wildfire in dry western U.S. coniferous forests
Published: 2019-01-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
A “resilient” forest endures disturbance and is likely to persist. Resilience to wildfire may arise from feedback between fire behavior and forest structure in dry forest systems. Frequent fire creates fine-scale variability in forest structure, which may then interrupt fuel continuity and prevent future fires from killing overstory trees. Testing the generality and scale of this phenomenon is [...]
Counter culture: Causes, extent and solutions of systematic bias in the analysis of behavioural counts
Published: 2019-01-07
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
We often quantify the rate at which a behaviour occurs by counting the number of times it occurs within a specific, short observation period. Measuring behaviour in such a way is typically unavoidable but induces error. This error acts to systematically reduce effect sizes, including metrics of particular interest to behavioural and evolutionary ecologists such as R2, repeatability (intra-class [...]
BEHAVIOUR OF WHITE FULANI CALVES GRAZING PANICUM/STYLO PASTURE IN SOUTHWEST NIGERIA
Published: 2019-01-03
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The objective of this study was to investigate the behaviour of White Fulani (WF) yearling calves grazing a Panicum maximum/Stylosanthes guainensis mixture under traditional management system in south western Nigeria. The effects of two biomass spatial distribution (dense and sparse) were evaluated in association with three pasture heights (10, 15 and 20 cm), with calves allowed access to the [...]
Monitoring large and complex wildlife aggregations with drones
Published: 2019-01-02
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
• Recent advances in drone technology have rapidly led to their use for monitoring and managing wildlife populations but a broad and generalised framework for their application to complex wildlife aggregations is still lacking • We present a generalised semi-automated approach where machine learning can map targets of interest in drone imagery, supported by predictive modelling for estimating [...]
Slicing: a sustainable approach to the analysis of long-term biobanks
Published: 2018-12-19
Subjects: Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
The longitudinal study of populations is a core tool for understanding ecological and evolutionary processes. These studies typically collect samples over individual lifetimes and across multiple generations, building up a continuously growing biobank from which samples are then analysed in clusters over time in the laboratory. To ensure data are comparable among clusters we need to account for [...]
Measuring competitive impact: joint-species modelling of invaded plant communities
Published: 2018-12-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Non-native species can dominate plant communities by competitively displacing native species, or because environmental change creates conditions favourable to non-native species but unfavourable to native species. We need to disentangle these alternative mechanisms so that management can target competitively dominant species and reduce their impacts. 2. Joint-species distribution models [...]
DNA methylation patterns in the round goby hypothalamus support an on-the-spot decision scenario for territorial behaviour
Published: 2018-12-11
Subjects: Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences
How early life experiences are stored on a molecular level and affect behavioural phenotypes later in life is not well understood. In fish, reproductive phenotypes are often easily discernible and frequently depend on previous life experiences. DNA methylation is an epigenetic mechanism which is both sensitive to environmental conditions and stable across cell divisions. In this study, we [...]