Preprints
There are 1649 Preprints listed.
Vulnerability of amphibians to global warming
Published: 2024-01-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Amphibians are the most threatened vertebrates, yet their resilience to rising temperatures remains poorly understood. This is primarily because knowledge of thermal tolerance is taxonomically and geographically biased, compromising global climate vulnerability assessments. Here, we employed a phylogenetically-informed data imputation approach to predict the heat tolerance of 60% of amphibian [...]
Meta-analysis reveals that the effects of precipitation change on soil and litter fauna in forests depend on body size
Published: 2024-01-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Anthropogenic climate change is altering precipitation regimes at a global scale. While precipitation changes have been linked to changes in the abundance and diversity of soil and litter invertebrate fauna in forests, general trends have remained elusive due to mixed results from primary studies. We used a meta-analysis based on 352 comparisons from 30 primary studies to address associated [...]
Morphological evolution in a time of Phenomics
Published: 2024-01-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Organismal morphology has been at the core of study of biodiversity for millennia before the formalization of the concept of evolution. In the early to mid-twentieth century, a strong theoretical framework was developed for understanding both pattern and process of morphological evolution on a macroevolutionary scale. The past half century has been a transformational period for the study of [...]
The role of deadwood in the carbon cycle: Implications for models, forest management, and future climates
Published: 2024-01-11
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Deadwood represents a significant carbon pool in forests and savannas. Although previous research has focused mainly on forests, we synthesise deadwood studies across all ecosystems with woody vegetation. Storage and release of carbon from deadwood is controlled by interacting decomposition drivers including biotic consumers (animals, microbes) and abiotic factors (water, fire, sunlight, [...]
Integrating intraspecific trait variability in functional diversity: an overview of methods and a guide for ecologists
Published: 2024-01-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
The variability in traits within species (intraspecific trait variability; ITV) has attracted an increased interest in functional ecology, as it can profoundly influence the detection of functional trait patterns, calculation of functional diversity (FD), and assessments of ecosystem functioning. This renewed focus stems from the recognition that species are not homogeneous entities but rather [...]
Systematic mapping of experimental approaches to studying common mycorrhizal networks
Published: 2024-01-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mycorrhizal fungi can interlink and connect plants in a common mycorrhizal network (CMN). Studying CMNs is challenging due to pathways of material transfer but also plant and mycorrhizal effects that have to be tested and controlled in order to be able to evaluate the presence and magnitude of a specific CMN effect. These controls let to a clear but strict definition of CMN which requires [...]
Switching to bioplastics may exacerbate ingestion of lost and discarded fishing gear by marine invertebrates
Published: 2024-01-09
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Biology, Environmental Health Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Sustainability
Bioplastics are argued to be more environmentally sustainable than conventional plastics. Yet, little is known about how bioplastics degrade in marine environments or their likelihood of being ingested by animals. We measured changes in the weight of biodegradable, semi-biodegradable, and non-biodegradable fishing gears (soft plastic lures, SPLs) in or out of seawater over 14 days. We then [...]
An integrated open population distance sampling approach for modelling age-structured populations
Published: 2024-01-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Estimation of abundance and demographic rates for populations of wild species is a challenging but fundamental issue for both management and research into ecology and evolution. One set of approaches that has been used extensively to estimate abundance of wildlife populations is Distance Sampling (DS) methods for line or point transect survey data. Historically, DS models were only available as [...]
The rarity of Invertebrates prevents reliable application of IUCN Red-List criteria.
Published: 2024-01-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
Among the most widely used information underpinning international conservation efforts is the IUCN Red List of endangered species. The Red List designates species extinction risk based on geographic range, population size, or declines in either. However, the Red-List has poor representation of invertebrates which comprise the majority of animal diversity, and it has frequently been questioned [...]
Solving the “small outbreak problem” in climate epidemiology
Published: 2024-01-05
Subjects: Climate, Diseases, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Parasitic Diseases, Public Health, Virus Diseases
Climate change can cause outbreaks of infectious diseases in unfamiliar locations — but how do we know which unusual outbreaks are the result of climate change? Scientists often hesitate to guess, leaving the task to journalists or the public. All of these audiences would benefit from a clear and consistent framework for thinking about causality, especially in situations where outbreaks are too [...]
House Sparrows as Sentinels of Childhood Lead Exposure
Published: 2024-01-05
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Our understanding of connections between human and animal health has advanced substantially since the canary was introduced as a sentinel of toxic conditions in coal mines. Nonetheless, the development of wildlife sentinels for monitoring human exposure to toxins has been limited. Here, we capitalized on a three-decade long child blood lead monitoring program to demonstrate that the globally [...]
The meaning and measure of concordance factors in phylogenomics
Published: 2024-01-03
Subjects: Evolution
As phylogenomic datasets have grown in size, researchers have developed new ways to measure biological variation and to assess statistical support. Larger datasets have many more sites and many more loci, and therefore less sampling variance. While this means that we can more accurately measure the mean signal in these datasets. the lower sampling variance is often reflected in widely used [...]
Quantifying heritability of the environment using animal models: a case study
Published: 2024-01-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Evolutionary ecology has traditionally studied how natural selection shapes the phenotypes of individuals in response to their environment, which increases population fitness. It is also well known how habitat choice can affect individual local adaptation. However, recent work has highlighted the incompleteness of the link between habitat choice and its evolutionary consequences. By treating the [...]
Experimental rapid and small-scale ecological population divergence in the absence of current natural selection
Published: 2024-01-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Adaptive divergence has long been a core topic in the field of evolutionary biology, with natural selection traditionally considered its only driver. Here we focus on the ability of matching habitat choice to generate population divergence and reproductive isolation. This alternative mechanism of divergence considers that individuals choose their habitats based on an evaluation of the ecological [...]
Performance-dependent movement: An alternative driver of adaptive divergence
Published: 2024-01-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
It is a tenet of evolutionary biology that local adaptation is driven by natural selection, while it is hindered by gene flow. This is because random movements between populations disrupt the match between phenotype and the local environment. However, if individuals moved to the environments where they have higher ecological performance, movements between populations could facilitate local [...]