Preprints
There are 2215 Preprints listed.
Understanding Host-Microbiome Evolution through the Lens of Evolutionary Theory: New Tricks for Old Dogs
Published: 2024-11-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Microbiology
All plants and animals are host to a community of microorganisms, their microbiomes, that have crucial influences on the life history and performance of their hosts. Despite the importance of such host-microbiome relationships, relatively little is known about the role microbiomes play in mediating evolution of the host as well as entire host-microbe assemblages. This knowledge gap is partly due [...]
Fine-tuning mast seeding: as resources accumulate, plants become more sensitive to weather cues
Published: 2024-11-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Interannual variability of seed production, known as masting, has far-reaching ecological impacts including effects on forest regeneration and the population dynamics of seed consumers. It is important to understand the mechanisms driving masting to predict how plant populations and ecosystem dynamics may change into the future, and for short-term forecasting of seed production to aid management. [...]
Traditional water structures in villages support amphibian populations within a protected landscape
Published: 2024-11-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Amphibians are among the most globally threatened vertebrates, with habitat loss and degradation being the primary drivers of their decline. While natural wetlands are essential for amphibian survival, artificial habitats can also play a significant role as refuges, especially in human-altered landscapes. This study examines the role of artificial waterbodies in supporting amphibian populations [...]
Monitor Social-Ecological Systems to Achieve Global Goals for Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People
Published: 2024-11-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
Life, Death and Energy: Nature Selects No Free Lunch
Published: 2024-11-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Brown et al. (2024) highlight that organisms invest a constant amount of energy into the production of viable offspring per unit of body mass per generation. This explains how diversity in life can exist. We interpret their result in relation to balancing offspring costs in real vs. physiological time.
Integrating macroecology with temporal and trait-based perspectives : toward better attribution of human drivers to diversity changes
Published: 2024-11-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
The ongoing biodiversity crisis presents a complex challenge for ecological science. Despite a consensus on general biodiversity decline, identifying clear trends remains difficult due to variability in data, methodologies, and scales of analysis. To enhance our understanding of ongoing biodiversity changes and address discrepancies in biodiversity trend detection, we propose integrating [...]
New technology for an ancient fish: A lamprey life cycle modeling tool with an R Shiny application
Published: 2024-11-25
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Population Biology, Systems Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Lampreys (Petromyzontiformes) are an ancient group of fishes with complex life histories. We created a life cycle model that includes an R Shiny interactive web application interface to simulate abundance by life stage. This will allow scientists and managers to connect available demographic information in a framework that can be applied to questions regarding lamprey biology and conservation. We [...]
Unrecognized lineages transform our understanding of diversification in a clade of lizards
Published: 2024-11-21
Subjects: Evolution
Evolutionary lineages at the tip of the tree of life can be genetically diverged yet phenotypically similar and therefore unrecognized by traditional morphology-based taxonomy. Such lineages, spanning the “grey zone of speciation” 1, are increasingly uncovered using genomic analyses. Here we show that incorporating this unrecognized lineage diversity into macro-evolutionary analyses yields novel [...]
Causes of recent changes in bill length in Crozet wandering albatross, a long-lived seabird
Published: 2024-11-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Population Biology
Phenotypes are changing in many wild populations, largely in response to environmental changes due to human activities. Phenotypic change can be driven by several mechanisms, with contrasted consequences for the persistence of populations. Identifying those mechanisms is key to understand current responses to human pressures and to predict the future fate of populations. Here we attempt to [...]
Experimentally-induced low flows reveal climate change may shrink trophic niches of mountain stream predators.
Published: 2024-11-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Climate change is projected to decrease snowpack and advance snowmelt in mountain ranges globally–including in California’s Sierra Nevada, where streamflow in snow-dominated rivers is expected to peak up to 2 months earlier, and remain in baseflow conditions for extended periods of time. Predators may be particularly sensitive to low flows, owing to their larger body sizes, higher metabolic [...]
The evolutionary conflict theory of aging
Published: 2024-11-20
Subjects: Biology, Evolution
Why we age is an enduring mystery. This manuscript proposes aging is microevolutionarily opposed, but macroevolutionarily favored. Such a conflict between microevolution and macroevolution is highly unusual since traits that are harmful to the organism are usually harmful to the survival of the species. In the case of aging, however, a shorter lifespan makes a species better able to adapt to a [...]
Foraging actively can be advantageous in heterogeneous environments
Published: 2024-11-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
A wealth of evidence indicates that the existence of active foragers and sit-and-wait foragers is widespread in nature. While active foragers visit foraging sites and leave them randomly, sit-and-wait foragers only do so if the benefit of leaving exceeds the cost. This dichotomy has been documented in the larval and adult stages of Drosophila melanogaster. For instance, when exposed to a [...]
Towards a unified ontology for monitoring ecosystem services
Published: 2024-11-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
The concept of ecosystem services (ES) has greatly evolved since it was first proposed and, as it gained popularity, has been used in diverse applications. Today, ES are an important part of global and national environmental policies. In this context, there is a call for the monitoring of ES to support their management. The proliferation of terms used with the concept of ES may be a barrier to [...]
Effect of bulb type on moth trap catch and composition in UK gardens
Published: 2024-11-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Abstract 1. A wide variety of light sources are employed to trap moths, differing in brightness and spectrum. Relatively little is known about how these factors affect the resulting sample. 2. We analyse 7 moth trap bulb types using 10 years of records from the Garden Moth Scheme to provide the largest and most comprehensive comparison of moth trap bulb types to date. 3. 125W Mercury Vapour (MV) [...]
The Influence of Light Colour on the Behaviour of Atlantic Cod in an Experimental Setting
Published: 2024-11-15
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Marine Biology
Fishing technologies often exploit the visual sensitivity of target species to alter their behaviours. Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua Linnaeus, 1758) are an economically important species, commonly targeted by fisheries in the North Atlantic, yet the behaviour of adult Atlantic cod in reaction to the simultaneous presentation of various light stimuli has not been assessed in an isolated setting to [...]