Preprints
There are 1649 Preprints listed.
Environmental Stress, Bacterial Cell Differentiation, and Antimicrobial Resistance
Published: 2024-02-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Environmental stress, either natural or anthropogenic, influences both the form and function of bacterial cells. The general stress adaptive response of bacteria alters the bacterial shape, resulting in functional changes, as the bacterial cell has associated “organules” and molecular interactions that are dependent on the cell’s topology. These changes in form and function are frequently linked [...]
Reporting guidelines for terrestrial respirometry: Building openness, transparency of metabolic and evaporative water loss data
Published: 2024-02-20
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
Respirometry is an important tool for understanding whole-animal energy and water balance in relation to their environment. Consequently, the growing number of studies using respirometry over the last decade warrants reliable reporting and data sharing for effective dissemination and research synthesis. We provide a checklist guideline on five key areas to facilitate the transparency and [...]
Tempo and mode of diapause evolution in butterflies
Published: 2024-02-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Quantifying the tempo and mode via modern phylogenetic comparative methods can provide insights into how selection and constraints shape trait evolution. Here we elucidate the evolution of diapause, a complex and key trait that allows temporal escape from unfavorable conditions in many insects, including our model system, butterflies. Using a thorough literature survey, we first scored the [...]
Energetic costs of mounting an immune response in a coral reef damselfish (Pomacentrus amboinensis)
Published: 2024-02-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
While immune responses can be energetically costly, quantifying these costs is challenging. We tested the metabolic costs of immune activation in damselfish (Pomacentrus amboinensis Bleeker, 1868) following a mass-adjusted injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) endotoxin. Fish were divided into eight treatments: two controls (handling and saline injection) and six LPS groups with concentrations [...]
Theoretical research to extract, combine and generate concepts for understanding life phenomena
Published: 2024-02-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
Living systems evolve through interactions with the environment, which are nonequilibrium processes that resist the law of increasing entropy in the environment and maintain their organization by exhausting an entropy inflow from the environment. Although several principles have been proposed to explain the nonequilibrium processes of living systems and the mechanism of entropy extraction, a [...]
Loring Pond Duckweed Abundance and Diversity Assessment Via By-Catch of Surface Skimming, and Suitability of Compost for Organic Gardens
Published: 2024-02-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
Duckweed are tiny aquatic plants that are part of the Lemnaceae family including five genera: Lemna, Landoltia, Spirodela, Wolffia, and Wolfiella. Previous research has shown duckweed to have strong properties of phytoremediation of heavy metals and other pollutants (Ekperusi et al., 2019). Here we examine Loring Pond, an urban pond in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that is partially covered by [...]
Reduced plasticity and variance in physiological rates of ectotherm populations under climate change
Published: 2024-02-17
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Climate change is expected to result in warmer and more variable thermal environments globally. Maintaining phenotypic variability in physiological rates and adjusting them in response to extreme temperatures (plasticity) is essential for allowing populations to adapt to climate change. Yet, incorporating both plasticity and changes in phenotypic variation when predicting the impacts of climate [...]
Why are trees hollow? Termites, microbes, and tree internal stem damage in a tropical savanna
Published: 2024-02-15
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Wood plays a vital role in the terrestrial carbon cycle, serving as a significant carbon store that is then released back to the atmosphere during decomposition. Decomposition has largely been studied in fallen and standing deadwood; however, decomposition can occur within living trees via hollowing by wood-feeding termites and microbial heart rot. Internal stem damage is difficult to measure, [...]
The ecology of ageing in wild societies: linking age structure and social behaviour
Published: 2024-02-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
The age of individuals has consequences not only for their fitness and behaviour, but also for the functioning of the groups they form. Because social behaviour often changes with age, population age structure is expected to shape the social organisation, the social environments individuals experience, and the operation of social processes within populations. Although research has explored [...]
Cryptic species and hybridisation in corals: challenges and opportunities for conservation and restoration
Published: 2024-02-14
Subjects: Genomics, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Conservation and management of coral reef ecosystems will depend on accurate assessments of reef-building coral species diversity. However, the true diversity of corals may be obfuscated by the presence of cryptic species, which are likely much more pervasive than is currently recognised. Additionally, cryptic species may sometimes hybridize, resulting in gene introgression between species. Here, [...]
Probing the functional significance of wild animal microbiomes using omics data
Published: 2024-02-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Host-associated microbiomes are thought to play a key role in host physiology and fitness, but this conclusion mainly derives from studies of a handful of animal models and humans. To test the generality of this conclusion, studies in non-model and wild animals are needed. However, whilst microbiome taxonomic diversity has recently received much attention, characterization of its functional [...]
Smartphones as a new tool for biodiversity research
Published: 2024-02-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Rangewide occupancy of a flagship species, the California Gnatcatcher (Polioptila californica) in southern California: habitat associations and recovery from wildfire
Published: 2024-02-12
Subjects: Biodiversity
The California Gnatcatcher (Polioptila californica), a federally threatened species, is a flagship species for regional conservation planning in southern California (USA). An inhabitant of coastal sage scrub vegetation, the gnatcatcher has declined in response to habitat loss and fragmentation, exacerbated by catastrophic wildfires. We documented the status of gnatcatchers throughout their [...]
Japanese mayfly family classification with a vision transformer model
Published: 2024-02-10
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Benthic macroinvertebrates are a frequently used indicator group for biomonitoring and biological assessment of river ecosystems. However, their taxonomic identification is laborious and requires special expertise. In this study, we aimed to assess the capability of a vision transformer (ViT) model for family-level identification of mayflies (order Ephemeroptera). Specifically, we focused on [...]
Assessing the risk of climate maladaptation for Canadian polar bears
Published: 2024-02-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Abstract The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the world, threatening the persistence of Arctic species. It is uncertain if Arctic wildlife will have sufficient time to adapt to such rapidly warming environments. We used genetic forecasting to measure the risk of maladaptation to warming temperatures and sea ice loss in polar bears (Ursus maritimus) sampled across the Canadian [...]