Preprints
There are 2569 Preprints listed.
Micro- and nanoplastic effects on the reproduction of Daphnia spp. - a meta-analysis
Published: 2025-03-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Several traits of micro- and nanoplastic particles (MNPs), including among others, polymer type, size, and shape, have been shown to influence MNP toxicity. The direction and size of these moderating effects are however often unclear and generalizations from single studies are difficult to establish. Meta-analyses, which quantitatively aggregate data on a specific topic, can be used to increase [...]
Extremely low primary production after a decade long drought contributed to the local extinction of a group-living rodent
Published: 2025-03-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Some species exhibit physiological and behavioral plasticity to survive adverse periods, such as changing climates or reduced food availability. Yet, during extreme climatic events the mechanisms to respond to these adverse periods may not be sufficient, potentially driving local population extinctions. We studied the population dynamics of a common degu (Octodon degus) population in central [...]
Inferring reproductive phenology and success from proportions of juveniles in population monitoring
Published: 2025-03-13
Subjects: Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Ornithology, Statistical Methodology
1. Phenological shifts caused by climate change are increasingly documented in wild populations by the widespread collection of datasets on reproductive timing and success. These phenological events are often inferred by examining changes in population abundance and age structure throughout the breeding season. However, the quantitative relationship between the observed proportion of juveniles [...]
Evolvability in vertebrate segmentation
Published: 2025-03-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
The number of vertebrae in the axial skeleton of vertebrates is extremely diverse, and reflects adaptations to a diverse range of habitats and lifestyles. The capacity for heritable evolutionary change in the number of vertebrae - its evolvability - is underpinned by the process of somitogenesis, which determines the number of somites that form in the early embryo. However, despite the [...]
Measuring natural selection on the transcriptome
Published: 2025-03-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Other Genetics and Genomics
The level and pattern of gene expression is increasingly recognized as a principal determinant of plant phenotypes and thus of fitness. The estimation of natural selection on the transcriptome is an emerging research discipline. We here review recent progress and consider the challenges posed by the high dimensionality of the transcriptome for the multiple regression methods routinely used to [...]
Socioecology and the role of scramble competition
Published: 2025-03-11
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Animal Studies, Anthropology, Behavior and Ethology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Zoology
Ecological explanations for social organization and behavior are central to behavioral ecology. Unfortunately, the continuing mismatch between theoretical predictions and some empirical data led to increasingly complex hypotheses with numerous factors, raising doubts about their predictive value or even falsifiability. Moreover, several taxon-specific socioecological hypotheses have been [...]
Mystery of the disappearing dogfish: transboundary analyses reveal steep population declines across the Northeast Pacific with little evidence for regional redistribution
Published: 2025-03-11
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Population Biology
Quantifying broad-scale population trends and distribution change is critical for effective management and conservation of marine species, particularly under climate change. However, fragmented regional survey data often hinder such efforts for transboundary populations. A prime example is Pacific Spiny Dogfish (Squalus suckleyi, Squalidae), a small shark with a remarkably slow life history and [...]
Historical legacies of spatial and temporal climate exposure on thermal physiology shape butterfly vulnerability to recent climate change
Published: 2025-03-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Few observations are more indelible in ecology than widespread variation in the spatial and temporal occurrence of species. Although the mechanistic underpinnings of such variation are likely multifarious, temperature is argued to be a key driver. Understanding how temperature shapes species ranges and seasonal activity not only provides insights into historical biogeographic patterns, but also [...]
Which web to invade? Argyrodine kleptoparasites differentiate among architecturally different host webs
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Kleptoparasitism, the theft of resources from another organism, is a survival strategy found across the animal kingdom. Many argyrodinae cobweb spiders (Theridiidae) are obligatory kleptoparasites that have largely abandoned web building, relying instead on webs of larger hosts. Theory predicts, and limited prior research indicates, that kleptoparasites are not randomly distributed among host [...]
The emerging need to manage scavenged wildlife resources
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Biodiversity
Scavenged wildlife resources are a unique type of common pool wildlife resource that are collected without killing or capturing the animal, and their collection is understudied and potentially underregulated relative to their conservation significance. The separability of these resources from the living population of animals that produce them can complicate efforts to link collection to future [...]
Minimal viable sound systems for language evolution
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Physiology, Systems Biology
Human vocal gamut covers 3000 unique speech sounds comprising the world’s languages, with each new speaker having to learn the sounds of its new language. Since large, expandable repertoires are facilitated by vocal learning, this capacity has long been considered a prerequisite for speech and language evolution. The postulation of a vocal learning and repertoire size ceiling has, however, never [...]
Grazer-induced bioluminescence and toxicity in marine dinoflagellates
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Plant Biology
Marine copepods are the most abundant type of multicellular zooplankton in the global oceans. They imprint their surrounding waters with a unique bouquet of polar lipids; copepodamides. Copepodamides are recognized by prey organisms, who respond by inducing defensive traits including bioluminescence, toxin production, colony size plasticity and structural modifications. Copepodamides are [...]
Advancing Amazonian botanical knowledge: a detailed ecological characterization of an open ombrophile forest, southwest Amazonian Brazil
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Biodiversity inventories present excellent opportunities for ecological investigations and the classification of different threats to the community, nonetheless these applications are not frequently employed. Our main objective was to determine the tree and palm community within a one-hectare areas, also exploring the association between functional attributes and the projected threat of category [...]
A novel method to estimate actual infrastructure-induced mortality by integrating sampling biases
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Human infrastructures are among the most impactful threads to wildlife. While estimates exist on the number of animals killed by these structures over a given period, such estimates typically do no account for several detection biases. Consequently, true mortality rates may be severely underestimated, as well as their impact on populations and species. 2. We present a hierarchical Bayesian [...]
Pattern-informed energetics: Energy allocation modeling for predicting trait variation and population persistence
Published: 2025-03-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physiology
Energetics drive emergent ecosystem processes, shaping behavior and population dynamics in response to environmental conditions. While energy budget models can be used to effectively link resource dynamics to fitness outcomes, they often lack empirical grounding for energy allocation under resource constraints. Here, we introduce the Pattern-Informed Energetics (PIE) framework, which [...]