Preprints
There are 2217 Preprints listed.
European wild honeybee populations are endangered
Published: 2024-10-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
The population trends of wild western honeybees (Apis mellifera) have been neglected by conservationists because the species has been considered to consist of managed colonies only. New data suggest that wild honeybee colonies (still) make up one sixth to one fifth of the overall European honeybee population. The population trends of wild cohorts can be evaluated like those of any other native [...]
The best of both worlds: why antipredator traits are lost in predator free havens and how to keep them
Published: 2024-10-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
As a response to the current biodiversity crisis, active management of threatened species has become more frequent (Hoffmann et al., 2010), with predator free havens an increasingly common conservation management strategy (Legge et al., 2022). In Australia, where introduced predators such as cats (Moseby et al., 2015) and foxes (Radford et al., 2018) are one of the largest threats to native [...]
A framework for reproductive outcomes of phenological match-mismatch in migratory breeders tested on a declining species, caribou
Published: 2024-10-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Long distance migrants with endogenously timed reproduction may be especially vulnerable to phenological mismatch on summer ranges where offspring are produced and provisioned. This is because departure timing from winter ranges and breeding timing on summer ranges in such species is cued primarily by photoperiod while the timing of resource availability on summer ranges is cued by local [...]
Biology, genetics and ecology of the cosmopolitan ectomycorrhizal ascomycete Cenococcum geophilum
Published: 2024-09-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
The ascomycete Cenococcum geophilum is a cosmopolitan and ecologically significant ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungus that forms symbiotic associations with diverse host plants globally across various ecosystems. As the only known ECM member of Dothideomycetes, C. geophilum exhibits several distinctive characteristics that distinguish it from other ECM fungi. Its high genetic diversity is particularly [...]
A historical confusion that has long permeated the sex paradox
Published: 2024-09-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
A historical misunderstanding permeates nearly every formulation of the sexual reproduction paradox, an age-old conundrum that continues to challenge the foundations of evolutionary theory. Recognizing this error will clarify the problem and facilitate its resolution.
Insect Lipid Metabolism in the Presence of Symbiotic and Pathogenic Viruses and Bacteria
Published: 2024-09-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Insects, like most animals, have intimate interactions with microorganisms that can influence the insect host’s lipid metabolism. In this chapter, we describe what is known so far about the role prokaryotic microorganisms play in insect lipid metabolism. We start exploring microbe-insect lipid interactions focusing on endosymbionts, and more specifically the gut microbiota that has been [...]
Are Australia’s volcanic-forests “biogeographic continental islands”?
Published: 2024-09-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
This study investigates whether Cenozoic volcanic complexes in eastern Australia act as biogeographic islands, fostering high levels of terrestrial vascular plant endemism and range-restricted species compared to surrounding sedimentary landscapes. Over six million herbarium records were analysed to assess range-restriction using area of occupancy (AOO) and extent of occurrence (EOO). [...]
A State and Transition framework to guide riparian woodland vegetation management and environmental water decisions
Published: 2024-09-30
Subjects: Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
River regulation and water extraction are major threats to the health and persistence of water-dependent ecosystems, such as riparian woodlands and forests. In heavily modified agricultural landscapes, riparian vegetation is also impacted by site-level stressors like livestock grazing, tree clearing, and weed invasions. Complex interactions among spatial and temporal drivers in water-dependent [...]
Temporal stability in songs across the breeding range of the Mourning Warbler may be due to learning fidelity and transmission biases
Published: 2024-09-30
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology
We found a stable pattern of geographic variation in songs across the breeding range of the Mourning Warbler over a 36 yr period. The Western, Eastern, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland regiolects found in 2005-2009 also existed from 1983-1988 and 2017-2019. Each regiolect contained a pool of syllables that were unique and different from the other regiolects. The primary syllable types that defined [...]
Anthropogenic lighting affects moth abundance and diversity differently across ecosystems
Published: 2024-09-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Light pollution poses a significant threat to nocturnal insects, yet our understanding of how insects are affected by lighting across ecosystems is limited. The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in light-induced attraction in abundance and diversity of moths in forest and grassland ecosystems. This study presents a novel comparison of moth attraction between these ecosystems [...]
Density dependence impacts our understanding of population resilience
Published: 2024-09-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Current metrics of demographic resilience (e.g., resistance, recovery) summarize the potential responses of populations to the frequent, varied disturbances that ecological systems experience. Much of the application of these metrics has focused on the potential response of time-invariant, density-independent structured population models to hypothetical disturbances. Here, we examine such [...]
Freshwater fish functional diversity shows diverse responses to human activities, but consistently declines in the tropics
Published: 2024-09-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Freshwater environments are intertwined with human activities and the consequence has been environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. Fish provide key ecological and economic benefits, and fish abundance and diversity can be affected by human activities resulting in functional diversity (FD) changes that might scale up to ecosystem impacts. Changes in FD can be expressed by quantifying its [...]
Spatial microbial flows: hidden fluxes of detritus, diversity, and function in meta-ecosystems
Published: 2024-09-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences
Ecosystems are linked by spatial flows of energy, nutrients, and organisms across ecosystem boundaries, forming a meta-ecosystem. The study of spatial flows has typically focused on fluxes of materials (e.g., nutrients or organic matter) and conspicuous organisms (e.g., fish or insects). However, recent evidence from field studies has suggested that numerically significant spatial flows of [...]
Seedlings of Temperate Tree Species Show Plastic Responses to Water Deficit and Heat Stress, But They Do Not Prevent Decline in Growth
Published: 2024-09-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Species response to climate change is difficult to predict because warming involves the interaction of multiple stressors whose effects are simultaneous and therefore difficult to disentangle. To address this gap, I studied the effect of global warming on plant performance and functional traits by exposing seedlings from five temperate tree species with distinct life histories to water deficit [...]
The importance of diversity for ecosystem functioning increases in heterogeneous environments
Published: 2024-09-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Aim Significant progress has been made in understanding the links between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in both experimental and real-world ecosystems. Yet, we have limited understanding to which extent biodiversity affects ecosystem functioning in natural heterogeneous environments and whether changes in ecosystem functions are related to changes in species richness and/or turnover. [...]