Preprints
There are 1649 Preprints listed.
Towards integrating and standardising information on plant invasions across Australia
Published: 2023-09-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Over the last decades, terminology to refer to invasion status along the introduction-naturalisation-invasion continuum have been based either on overcome barriers or on impact-based frameworks, generating debates within the scientific community. The lack of agreement with regards to definitions have sometimes hampered combining information from sources based on different criteria. In Australia, [...]
Towards a unified framework for studying behavioural tolerance to anthropogenic disturbance
Published: 2023-09-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Animals vary in how much they respond to risk and the extent to which they can modify their responsiveness over time. How and why animals vary has important consequences for understanding demographic and evolutionary responses to novel or rapidly changing environments. Behavioural tolerance is seen when animals do not have any or have a limited behavioural reaction to a potentially risky [...]
Lasting effects of avian-frugivore interactions on seed dispersal and seedling establishment
Published: 2023-09-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. The consequences of plant-animal interactions often transcend the mere encounter stage, as those encounters are followed by a chain of subsequent stages on the plant’s reproductive cycle that ultimately determine fitness. Yet, the dissemination and recruitment stages of animal-mediated seed dispersal are seldom analysed jointly, hindering a full understanding of the ecology of seed [...]
Taking cues from ecological and evolutionary theories to expand the landscape of disgust
Published: 2023-09-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Individual animals can attempt to prevent or mitigate parasite risks by altering their behaviour or space use. Behavioural change in response to the presence of parasites in the environment generates what is known as the “landscape of disgust” (analogous to the predator-induced “landscape of fear”). Using a spatial description of cues that indicate parasite risk, and characterizing individual [...]
Changing precipitation regime threatens population growth and persistence of a declining grassland songbird
Published: 2023-09-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
The interplay of biogeographic history, floral morphology, and climatic niche in Palicourea (Rubiaceae), an ecologically important group of Neotropical plants
Published: 2023-09-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
Investigating how biotic and abiotic factors interact to shape species distributions is critical to understanding current biodiversity patterns. This is particularly relevant in the Neotropics, a species-rich region home to several biodiversity hotspots, where the interplay of factors promoting diversification resulted in the assembly of the world’s richest flora. Using Palicourea, a species-rich [...]
Limits to modeling the (thermal) limits of Wolbachia
Published: 2023-09-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
Wolbachia release programs with the wMel strain are suppressing the incidence of dengue following releases in many countries. Vasquez et al use models to predict the impact of increasing temperatures and heatwaves on the replacement of wild mosquito populations with wMel carriers that are poor dengue vectors. They claim that wMel replacement is resilient to pre-2060 climate change including [...]
Comparative approaches in social network ecology
Published: 2023-09-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Social systems vary enormously across the animal kingdom, with important implications for ecological and evolutionary processes such as infectious disease dynamics, anti-predator defense, and the evolution of cooperation. Comparing social network structures between species offers a promising route to help disentangle the ecological and evolutionary processes that shape this diversity. Comparative [...]
Taming the terminological tempest in invasion science
Published: 2023-09-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Standardized terminology in science is important for clarity of interpretation and communication. In invasion science — a dynamic and quickly evolving discipline — the rapid proliferation of technical terminology has lacked a standardized framework for its language development. The result is a convoluted and inconsistent usage of terminology, with various discrepancies in descriptions of damages [...]
Re-defining common mycorrhizal and fungal networks
Published: 2023-09-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
The current use of the term ‘common mycorrhizal network’ (CMN) stipulates a direct link between plants formed by the mycelium of a mycorrhizal fungus. This means that a specific case (involving hyphal continuity) is used to define a much broader phenomenon of hyphae interlinking among plant roots. We here offer a more inclusive definition of the common mycorrhizal network as a network formed by a [...]
Diversity and function of fluorescent molecules in marine animals
Published: 2023-09-05
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Fluorescence in marine animals has mainly been studied in Cnidaria but is found in many different phyla such as Annelida, Crustacea, Mollusca, and Chordata. While many fluorescent proteins and molecules have been identified, very little information is available about the biological function of fluorescence. In this review, we focus on describing the occurrence of fluorescence in marine animals [...]
Growth and opportunities for drone surveillance in pinniped research
Published: 2023-09-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Zoology
Pinniped species undergo uniquely amphibious life histories that make them valuable subjects for many domains of research. Pinniped research has often progressed hand-in-hand with technological frontiers of wildlife biology, and drones represent a leap forward for methods of aerial remote sensing, heralding data collection and integration at new scales of biological importance. Drone methods and [...]
Partitioning the phenotypic variance of reaction norms
Published: 2023-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Many phenotypic traits vary in a predictable way across environments, as captured by their norms of reaction. These reaction norms may be discrete or continuous, and can substantially vary in shape across organisms and traits, making it difficult to compare amounts and types of plasticity among (and sometimes even within) studies. In addition, genetic variation and evolutionary potential in [...]
Indirect genetic effects should make group size more evolvable than expected
Published: 2023-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Group size is an important trait for many ecological and evolutionary processes. However, it is not a trait possessed by individuals but by social groups, and as many genomes contribute to group size understanding its genetic underpinnings and so predicting its evolution is a conceptual challenge. Here I suggest how group size can be modelled as a joint phenotype of multiple individuals, and so [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Andaman
Published: 2023-08-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
The 'Mangroves of the Andaman' is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology) within the Andaman province. It includes intertidal forests and shrublands of the marine ecoregions of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands; the Andaman Sea Coral Coast of Myanmar and Thailand; and northwest Sumatra. The diverse biota is characterised by 43 species of true mangroves, [...]