Preprints
There are 2204 Preprints listed.
Egg predation on native fish by invasive round goby revealed by species-specific gut content DNA analyses
Published: 2019-09-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Conservation of riverine fish typically aims at improving access to spawning grounds and the restoration of longitudinal connectivity requires substantial investments. However, the removal of migration barriers also enables the upstream invasion of non-native species into spawning areas, with potential negative effects on recruitment of threatened freshwater fish through egg or fry predation. [...]
Structure of past and present food webs from a semiarid wetland subjected to species invasion and environmental degradation
Published: 2019-09-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Species invasion and habitat degradation very often result in local species loss, which may result in a cascade of secondary extinctions that typically end up disrupting whole ecological netwroks. Herein, we used historical records and the natural abundance of stable isotopes (13C and 15N) of primary producers, aquatic animals and sediment/detritus to derive the past and present structure of food [...]
Endocrinology of thermoregulation in birds in a changing climate
Published: 2019-09-08
Subjects: Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Endocrinology, Life Sciences, Physiology
The ability to maintain a (relatively) stable body temperature in a wide range of thermal environments is a unique feature of endotherms such as birds. Endothermy is acquired and regulated via various endocrine and molecular pathways, and ultimately allows wide aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial distribution in variable environments. However, due to our changing climate, birds are faced with [...]
Main carbon sources supporting primary and secondary production in a disturbed semiarid wetland from central Spain
Published: 2019-09-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Approximately 95% of the total carbon (C) in wetlands is typically found as particulate organic matter (POM). In this study, we evaluated the main C sources of a semiarid floodplain wetland in central Spain under disturbance. For this, we used stable isotopes (13C and 15N) and the Bayesian mixing model SISUS. We show that the allochthonous C derived from wastewater discharges have distinctive [...]
Effects of anthropogenic disturbance on 13C and 15N of aquatic plants from a semiarid wetland
Published: 2019-09-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Wetlands provide a great variety of environmental services to society, but they are currently globally threatened by human activities. We evaluated the effects of anthropogenic disturbances on the ecological quality of semiarid wetlands from central Spain (La Mancha Húmeda) through the natural abundance of isotopes (13C and 15N) of aquatic plants. We measured water quality and also compiled [...]
Non-avian reptile learning 40 years on: advances and promising new directions
Published: 2019-09-07
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Recently, there has been a surge in cognition research using non-avian reptile systems. As a diverse group of animals, non-avian reptiles (turtles, the tuatara, crocodilians, and squamates - lizards, snakes and amphisbaenids) are good model systems for answering questions related to cognitive ecology; from the role of the environment in impacting brain, behaviour and learning, to how social and [...]
The Natural History of the Satellite Lakes of Lake Malawi
Published: 2019-09-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Large, long-lived lakes, such as Lake Baikal and the African Great Lakes are known for their diverse endemic faunas. Nearby smaller isolated lakes have long been hypothesised to facilitate allopatric speciation, such as Lake Nabugabo at the edge of Lake Victoria, helping seed the radiation in the large lakes. Furthermore, crater lakes, formed by volcanic activity are often deep, long-lived and [...]
Game of Tenure: the role of “hidden” citations on researchers’ ranking in Ecology
Published: 2019-08-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aim Field ecologists and macroecologists often compete for the same grants and academic positions, with the former producing original data that the latter generally use for model parameterization. Original data are usually cited only in the supplementary materials thereby not counting formally as citations, creating an unfair system where field ecologists are routinely under-acknowledged and [...]
Helpers compensate for age-related declines in parental care and offspring survival in a cooperatively breeding bird
Published: 2019-08-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Offspring from elderly parents often have lower survival due to parental senescence. In cooperatively breeding species, where offspring care is shared between breeders and helpers, the alloparental care provided by helpers is predicted to mitigate the impact of parental senescence on offspring provisioning and, subsequently, offspring survival. We test this prediction using data from a long-term [...]
How to build a biodiverse city: environmental determinants of bird diversity within and among 1,581 cities
Published: 2019-08-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Cities are novel environments compared with the evolutionary history of the species that reside within them. Collectively, cities and their fauna can be thought of as ecosystems, recognized as playing a critical role in supporting global biodiversity, but they are fundamentally a combination of old species surviving or thriving in a new environment, and the mechanisms and underlying processes [...]
Ecosystem services of a functionally diverse riparian zone in the Amazon–Cerrado agricultural frontier
Published: 2019-08-21
Subjects: Agronomy and Crop Sciences Life Sciences, Biochemistry, Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biodiversity, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The ecological services provided by protected riparian zones in human-altered landscapes are widely acknowledged, yet little is known about them. In this study, we assess ecosystem properties that a protected riparian zone maintains in contrast to environmental changes in its surroundings caused by agro-industrial activities in the northwestern fringe of the Brazilian Cerrado on the [...]
A Review of Peer-Review for Pedobiologia – Journal of Soil Ecology
Published: 2019-08-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Peer-review is an integral part of the scientific process, but getting a sufficient number of busy scientists to provide constructive reviews on a manuscript can be a challenge. The majority of individuals that we polled have had experience in the last two years with having manuscripts rejected and then submitting them elsewhere and/or with receiving invitations to review the same manuscript for [...]
Social network node-based metrics can function as proxies for animal personality traits
Published: 2019-08-14
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Behavioural traits are considered animal personality traits when individuals differ consistently in trait expression across time and context. Previous research has primarily focused on the shy-bold continuum, with research on sociability as potential proxy for animal personality traits only recently being considered. Here, we test the hypothesis that three node-based metrics derived from social [...]
Optimising occupancy models and detection probability for conservation monitoring in a forest-dwelling small mammal
Published: 2019-08-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
The ability to determine the survey effort required to detect species presence is critical for the conservation of populations in order to monitor changes in distribution or abundance, a challenge for rare and elusive species. While designing an effective population survey may be of concern to scientists, it may also be a legal requirement for protected species. We analysed how spatial and [...]
Finding fungal ecological strategies: Is recycling an option?
Published: 2019-08-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
High-throughput sequencing (e.g., amplicon and shotgun) has provided new insight into the diversity and distribution of fungi around the globe, but developing a framework to understand this diversity has proved challenging. Here we review key ecological strategy theories developed for macro-organisms and discuss ways that they can be applied to fungi. We suggest that while certain elements may be [...]