Preprints
There are 2243 Preprints listed.
Gut microbiome composition and function – including transposase gene abundance - varies with age, but not senescence, in a wild vertebrate
Published: 2024-11-14
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Ornithology
Studies on wild animals, mostly undertaken using 16S metabarcoding, have yielded ambigous evidence regarding changes in the gut microbiome (GM) with age and senescence. Furthermore, variation in GM function has rarely been studied in such wild populations, despite GM metabolic characteristics potentially being associated with host senescent declines. Here, we used seven years of longitudinal [...]
Prokaryotes Become Larger at High Temperatures but They Do Not Grow Faster
Published: 2024-11-14
Subjects: Education
Metabolic theory posits that metabolism governs the rate at which organisms transform energy into biological work and growth. Thus, it constitutes the main mechanism driving the evolution of organismal growth and size across almost all domains of life. One general prediction of metabolic theory suggests that populations of larger organisms grow more slowly than populations of smaller organisms. [...]
Advancing the spatiotemporal dimension of wildlife–pollution interactions
Published: 2024-11-14
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Health Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Animal Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Toxicology, Zoology
Chemical pollution is a pervasive problem and is now considered the fastest-growing agent of global environmental change. Numerous pollutants are known to disrupt animal behaviour, alter ecological interactions, and shift evolutionary trajectories. Crucially, both chemical pollutants and individual organisms are non-randomly distributed throughout the environment. Despite this, the current [...]
Choosing friends in an uncertain world: information reduces relationship stability in a Bayesian learning model of cooperative partnership
Published: 2024-11-14
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Social animals often form differentiated social relationships with conspecifics. Developing closer partnerships with some than others can facilitate cooperative interactions in which individuals share resources or risk. When choosing a partner, individuals face a decision: a known partner might be sub-optimal if better options are available, but switching partners can be risky if others' [...]
Social bonds between non-kin are common, but less stable, in a mixed-related society
Published: 2024-11-13
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology
Members of social groups often form social relationships, which are known to carry important fitness benefits. Kin selection predicts that these relationships should be prevalent between kin, yet there is increasing evidence that, in societies that feature a mixture of related and unrelated individuals, social bonds are also formed with non-kin. Nevertheless, quantitative research on non-kin [...]
Pollinator ethanology: A comment on Bowland et al.
Published: 2024-11-13
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Nutrition, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Toxicology, Zoology
An integrated approach to above- and below-ground ecological monitoring for nature-based solutions
Published: 2024-11-12
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. As the development of nature-based solutions (NbS) increases globally, it is important to ensure that projects meet the objective of benefiting biodiversity, alongside tackling societal challenges. However, most NbS projects do not directly monitor ecological outcomes, and those that do often focus on a limited set of metrics. It is therefore challenging to assess whether projects fulfil the [...]
Frequency-dependence favors social plasticity and facilitates socio-eco-evolutionary feedback in fluctuating environments
Published: 2024-11-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology
1. Increasing attention is being devoted to the study of phenotypic plasticity in social environments. However, much remains unknown about the selection pressures driving the evolution of social plasticity, as well as the pathways by which social plasticity may facilitate or constrain feedback between ecological and evolutionary dynamics. Here we explore these questions using quantitative genetic [...]
Charting uneven progress of sustainability: A multi-dimensional assessment of the SDGs in Northeast India
Published: 2024-11-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are used to assess progress in the fields of the environment, economy, and society. Although assessments conducted at national and international levels are popular, subnational research, especially on India, is less common. Using 84 accessible indicators (2021–2022), a comprehensive study of 15 SDGs was conducted across 103 districts in eight states in the [...]
Probable physical factors of anthropogenesis
Published: 2024-11-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
The increasing frequency of climate catastrophes worldwide against background of global warming and reduction of biodiversity in human ecosystem are typical signs of global extinction, the sixth in ~600 million years of Phanerozoic. The regularity of global extinctions of marine biota with a period of ~62 Myr in Phanerozoic correlates with cyclicity of tidal effects of stellar environment of [...]
Harbingers of change: towards a mechanistic understanding of anticipatory plasticity
Published: 2024-11-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Phenotypic plasticity is a central avenue through which organisms cope with environmental heterogeneity by responding to cues of current environmental change to maximize fitness. If environmental change is impending and cues can reliably predict future conditions, organisms can also mount adaptive responses in anticipation of these changes if they possess the mechanistic architecture to do so [...]
¿Cretaceous Montiaceae? Reevaluation of the classification of Kuprianovaites deccanensis Nambudiri & Thomas (Caryophyllales)
Published: 2024-11-11
Subjects: Biodiversity
Kuprianovaites deccanensis Nambudiri & Thomas is a form species referring to fossil ovule/seed-bearing fructifications from the Cretaceous/Paleocene boundary of central India. It has been classified in Montiaceae based on similarities to fruits of Phemeranthus Raf. species, in particular a 3- valvate unilocular loculicidal capsule with free-central placentation and seeds with campylotropous [...]
Population genetics of rainforest mountain frogs (Anura: Limnodynastidae: Philoria) severely impacted by the Australian megafires
Published: 2024-11-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The 2019/20 Australian megafires impacted numerous species, including six of the seven montane frog species in the genus Philoria, which are confined to isolated rainforest habitats across high-altitude areas in eastern Australian Gondwonan rainforest. Using single nucleotide polymorphisms, we examined the genetic structure and diversity of the six northern Philoria species to inform conservation [...]
Conformal Prediction quantifies the uncertainty of Species Distribution Models
Published: 2024-11-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Providing accurate estimates of uncertainty is key for the analysis, adoption, and interpretation of species distribution models. In this manuscript, through the analysis of data from an emblematic North American cryptid, I illustrate how Conformal Prediction allows fast and informative uncertainty quantification. I discuss how the conformal predictions can be used to gain more knowledge about [...]
Behavioral flexibility is related to exploration, but not boldness, persistence or motor diversity
Published: 2024-11-09
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences
Behavioral flexibility, the ability to change behavior when circumstances change based on learning from previous experience, is thought to play an important role in a species' ability to successfully adapt to new environments and expand its geographic range. However, behavioral flexibility is rarely directly tested at the individual level. This limits our ability to determine how it relates to [...]