Preprints
There are 2380 Preprints listed.
An Optical Scattering Based Cost-Effective Approach Towards Quantitative Assessment Of Turbidity And Particle Size Estimation In Drinking Water Using Image Analysis
Published: 2020-09-23
Subjects: Business, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
Contaminated water consumption primarily for drinking purposes is the cause of approximately 502,000 global deaths every year mostly in economically challenging countries indicating the need for a cheap, easy to use a yet robust and scientifically proven method for determination of water quality. In this work, we have characterized the water quality utilizing the principles of optical scattering [...]
Pathways linking biodiversity to human health: A conceptual framework
Published: 2020-09-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Geography, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Other Psychology, Psychology, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Biodiversity is a cornerstone of human health and well-being. However, while evidence of the contributions of nature to human health is rapidly building, research into how biodiversity relates to human health remains limited in important respects. In particular, a better mechanistic understanding of the range of pathways through which biodiversity can influence human health is needed. These [...]
Rumicastrum Ulbrich (Montiaceae): a beautiful name for the Australian calandrinias
Published: 2020-09-18
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
For more than 30 years, Montiaceae specialists have agreed that Australian species classified in Calandrinia Kunth pertain to a distinct and divergent lineage whose oldest validly published name is Rumicastrum Ulbrich. In 1998, more than half of accepted species were transferred erroneously to a new genus, Parakeelya Hershk. However, taxonomists and databases have continued to classify the [...]
Püllomen: an ethnoecological perspective of the Mapuche protector spirit insect
Published: 2020-09-17
Subjects: Anthropology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Anthropology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Biodiversity plays an important role in cultural worldviews, influencing myths, stories, and spiritual beliefs of indigenous peoples. This short review explores an ecological phenomenon that may have influenced and contributed to the development of the Mapuche good spirit insect (Püllomen), which represents the spirit of someone who passed away and comes back to the world of the living providing [...]
Changes in plant composition and diversity in an Alpine heath and meadow after 18 years of experimental warming
Published: 2020-09-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Background and aim Global warming is expected to have large impacts on high alpine and Arctic ecosystems in future. Here we report the effects of 18 years of experimental warming on two contrasting high alpine plant communities in subarctic Sweden. Methods Using open-top chambers (OTCs), we analysed the effects of long-term passive experimental warming on two high alpine plant communities, a [...]
Shifting to broad patterns of interests in conservation culturomics with Bayesian dynamic factor analysis
Published: 2020-09-16
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Biological invasions are a major driver of global change and the target of many public policies. However, we still do not know whether they attract the interest of laypeople and motivate them to know more about this topic. We modeled the temporal evolution of on-line searches about general terms regarding invasive alien species in Italy, on Wikipedia and Google. Wikipedia pages about biological [...]
Blacklists do not necessarily make people curious about invasive alien species. A case study with Bayesian structural time series and Wikipedia searches about invasive mammals in Italy
Published: 2020-09-16
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Blacklists of invasive alien species are a popular tool to manage and prevent biological invasions. Furthermore, by providing accessible examples of invasive alien species and by having a certain media resonance, they can in principle raise the awareness and make laypeople curious towards this topic. However, no study ever tested for this side-effect of blacklists. We tested if the implementation [...]
Records of rat control campaigns in a food market with the largest seafood trading volume worldwide
Published: 2020-09-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) and roof rats (Rattus rattus) are among the most common mammals worldwide. Little is known about the effects of season on rat population size, which is important for understanding rat ecology and/or performing effective rat control campaigns. Tsukiji Market was a metropolitan central wholesale market in Tokyo and was located within 1 km from one of the biggest [...]
Alternative seafood networks during COVID-19: Implications for resilience and sustainability
Published: 2020-09-14
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Export-oriented seafood trade faltered during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, alternative seafood networks (ASNs) that distribute seafood through local and direct marketing challenges were identified as a “bright spot”. In this paper, we draw on multiple lines of quantitative and qualitative evidence to show that ASNs experienced a temporary pandemic “bump” in both the [...]
Meta-analysis reveals an extreme “decline effect” in the impacts of ocean acidification on fish behaviour
Published: 2020-09-14
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Ocean acidification – decreasing oceanic pH resulting from the uptake of excess atmospheric CO2 – has the potential to affect marine life in the future. Among the possible consequences, a series of studies on coral reef fishes suggested that the direct effects of acidification on fish behaviour may be extreme and have broad ecological ramifications. Recent studies documenting a lack of effect of [...]
BERTERO’S GHOST REVISITED: NEW TYPIFICATIONS OF TALINUM LINARIA COLLA AND CALANDRINIA GAUDICHAUDII BARNÉOUD (= CALANDRINIA PILOSIUSCULA DC; MONTIACEAE)
Published: 2020-09-08
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
In a revision of the systematics of Calandrinia pilosiuscula DC (including Calandrinia compressa Schrad. ex DC; Montiaceae), Hershkovitz recognized a total of ten validly named synonyms, including Calandrinia gaudichaudii Barnéoud and Talinum linaria Colla. He concluded that these two names were homotypic, both protologs citing a Bertero collection from Valparaiso, which Hershkovitz inferred to [...]
Recent advances of quantitative modeling to support invasive species eradication on islands
Published: 2020-09-08
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The eradication of invasive species from islands is an important part of managing these ecologically unique and at-risk regions. Island eradications are complex projects and mathematical models play an important role in supporting efficient and transparent decision-making. In this review we cover the past applications of modelling to island eradications, which range from large-scale [...]
Urban biodiversity and the importance of scale
Published: 2020-09-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Many ecological and evolutionary processes are affected by urbanization, but cities vary by orders of magnitude in their human population size and areal extent. To quantify and manage urban biodiversity we must understand both how biodiversity scales with city size, and how ecological, evolutionary, and socioeconomic drivers of biodiversity scale with city size. We show how environmental abiotic [...]
How microbes can, and cannot, be used to assess soil health
Published: 2020-09-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Healthy soils are critical to the health of ecosystems, economies, and human populations. Thus, it is widely acknowledged that soil health is important to quantify, both for assessment and as a tool to help guide management strategies. What is less clear is how soil health should actually be measured, especially considering that soil health is not exclusively a product of soil physical and [...]
Filling the Information Gap in Meta-Ecosystem Ecology
Published: 2020-08-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Fluxes of matter, energy, and information over space and time contribute to ecosystems’ functioning. The meta-ecosystem framework addresses the dynamics of ecosystems linked by these fluxes, however, to date, meta-ecosystem research focused solely on fluxes of energy and matter, neglecting information. This is problematic due to organisms’ varied responses to information, which influence local [...]