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Preprints

There are 2173 Preprints listed.

Husby, Reed & Visser - Demonstrating temperature induced phenological mismatch does not require negative effects on fitness or population growth: A comment on Samplonius et al.

Arild Husby, tom reed, Marcel Erik Visser

Published: 2020-06-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology

In a recent article Samplonius et al. (2020; preprint on EcoEvoRxiv, Version 1, Submitted 05, 2020 | Last edited: May 06, 2020) argue that there are “systematic weaknesses in the evidence for temperature mediated phenological mismatch”. While we appreciate their review of the literature on this topic and their call for a broadening of the taxonomic and geographic scope of mismatch research, their [...]

Potential effects of habitat fragmentation on wild animal welfare

Luke Hecht, Matthew Allcock

Published: 2020-06-19
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences

The fragmentation of habitat has occurred throughout the history of life on Earth, but has been accelerated and magnified in scale over the past few centuries as a result of human industrial development. Habitat fragmentation affects the welfare of some wild animals directly, through the often violent processes that bring about fragmentation and by reducing the distance between them and the [...]

Do the ages of parents or helpers affect offspring fitness in a cooperatively breeding bird?

Eve Cooper, Timothée Bonnet, Andrew Cockburn, et al.

Published: 2020-06-16
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Age-related changes in either the phenotypes or genotypes of care-givers can impact juvenile performance. However, rarely in wild populations have germline and non-germline transgenerational effects of ageing been separately quantified. In cooperatively breeding animals, in addition to parental ages, the age of ‘helpers’ attending the nest may also impact juvenile performance. Using a wild [...]

Animal size and seawater temperature, but not pH, influence a repeatable startle response behaviour in a wide-ranging marine mollusc

Jeff Clements, Kirti Ramesh, Jacob Nysveen, et al.

Published: 2020-06-16
Subjects: Life Sciences, Marine Biology

Startle response behaviours are important in predator avoidance and escape for a wide array of animals. For many marine invertebrates, however, startle response behaviours are understudied, and the effects of global change stressors on these responses are unknown. We exposed two size classes of blue mussels (Mytilus edulis × trossulus) to different combinations of temperature (15 and 19 °C) and [...]

Phylogeny can Inform Animal Model Development for Both Inherited and Induced Conditions: Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD)

Mason B. Meers, Nora Demers, Audra Hewett, et al.

Published: 2020-06-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

The use of animal models in research on human and veterinary diseases and disorders is retracting, though it is likely to remain critical for decades. In light of increasing regulation and expectations of judicious use of animal subjects, we examine the idea that the use of animal models can be guided by phylogenetic relationships and modern evolutionary and cladistic analyses. Given that [...]

Potential long-distance dispersal of freshwater diatoms adhering to waterfowl plumage

Faye Manning, P. Jefferson Curtis, Ian J. Walker, et al.

Published: 2020-06-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

1. Waterfowl are potential long-distance dispersal vectors for aquatic microbes such as diatoms, but supporting empirical data are scarce, especially concerning external transport on feathers. 2. We conducted an experiment designed to partially emulate diatom dispersal via adherence to waterfowl, and to evaluate the effects of relative humidity (RH) and exposure time on viability. We dipped [...]

Desert Locust in India: The 2020 invasion and associated risks

Sayantan Ghosh, Arindam Roy

Published: 2020-06-02
Subjects: Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Life Sciences, Animal Sciences, Entomology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Urban Studies and Planning, Zoology

Wind direction, often used in forecasting locust migration, indicates a non-zero probability of desert locust invasion in eastern Indian states. Apart from present controlling measures, we are additionally suggesting to be cautious about the eggs of locust as the rainfall associated with Super Cyclone Amphan has created a favorable breeding ground for the gregarious locust. Also reverse migration [...]

SYSTEMATICS OF CALANDRINIA PILOSIUSCULA DC A.K.A. CALANDRINIA COMPRESSA SCHRAD. EX DC (MONTIACEAE–MONTIOIDEAE)

Mark Alan Hershkovitz

Published: 2020-05-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Life Sciences

Calandrinia compressa Schrad. ex DC (Prodr. 3: 359. 1828) is the name currently widely applied to a polymorphic annual species of Calandrinia sect. Calandrinia endemic to the Chilean Floristic Region. A total of ten validly published heterotypic names plus six horticultural designations (and orthographic variants thereof) have been considered at some point as taxonomically the same as C. [...]

A guide to using the Internet to monitor and quantify the wildlife trade

Oliver C. Stringham, Adam Toomes, Aurelie M. Kanishka, et al.

Published: 2020-05-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Life Sciences

The unrivalled growth in e-commerce of animals and plants presents an unprecedented opportunity to monitor wildlife trade to inform conservation, biosecurity, and law enforcement. Using the Internet to quantify the scale of the wildlife trade (volume, frequency) is a relatively recent and rapidly developing approach, which currently lacks an accessible framework for locating relevant websites and [...]

Local landscape position impacts demographic rates in a widespread North American steppe bunchgrass

Robert K. Shriver, Erin Campbell, Christopher Dailey, et al.

Published: 2020-05-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology

[this article now published at Ecosphere: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3351] Understanding the environmental drivers of demographic rates and population dynamics over space and time is critical for anticipating how species will respond to climate change. While the influence of temporal environmental variation and large environmental gradients are well recognized, less is known about how local [...]

Tongue spots of dunnock nestlings vary in number and position over time but exert no clear influence on parental allocation

Carlos Esteban Lara, Benedikt Holtmann, Eduardo S. A. Santos, et al.

Published: 2020-05-16
Subjects: Other Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

The nestlings of many bird species have ornaments in their mouths (e.g., tongue spots), yet the within-species variation of these ornaments remains poorly explored. Here, we described a subtle and intriguing pattern of variation in the tongue spots of dunnock (Prunella modularis) nestlings and further evaluated their potential influence on parental feeding allocation. We observed that tongue [...]

Crowdsourcing global perspectives in ecology using social media

Emily Graham, A. Peyton Smith

Published: 2020-05-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Transparent, open, and reproducible research is still far from routine, and the full potential of open science has not yet been realized. Crowdsourcing––defined as the usage of a flexible open call to a heterogeneous group of individuals to recruit volunteers for a task ––is an emerging scientific model that encourages larger and more outwardly transparent collaborations. While crowdsourcing, [...]

Fieldwork in landscape ecology

Jesse E. D. Miller, Carly D. Ziter, Michael J Koontz

Published: 2020-05-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Fieldwork has played a critical role in the development of landscape ecology, and it remains essential for addressing contemporary challenges such as understanding the landscape ecology of global change. Advances in technology have expanded the scope of fieldwork to include the deployment of drones and other sensors, and in recent years, researchers have expressed concerns that traditional [...]

Small-scale farming in drylands: New models for resilient practices of millet and sorghum cultivation

Abel Ruiz-Giralt, Stefano Biagetti, Marco Madella, et al.

Published: 2020-05-11
Subjects: Agriculture, Life Sciences, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Finger millet, pearl millet and sorghum are amongst the most important drought-tolerant crops worldwide. They constitute primary staple crops in drylands, where their production is known to date back over 5000 years ago. Compared to other crops, millets and sorghum have received less attention until very recently, and their production has been progressively reduced in the last 50 years. Here, we [...]

Associations between habitat quality and body size in the Carpathian land snail Vestia turgida: species distribution model selection and assessment of performance.

Volodymyr Tytar

Published: 2020-05-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences

Associations between habitat quality and body size in the Carpathian land snail Vestia turgida: species distribution model selection and assessment of performance. Tytar V., Baidashnikov O. – Species distribution models (SDMs) are generally thought to be good indicators of habitat suitability, and thus of species’ performance, consequently SDMs can be validated by checking whether the areas [...]

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