Preprints
There are 2377 Preprints listed.
Time will tell: the temporal and demographic contexts of plant-soil microbe interactions
Published: 2024-10-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Soil microorganisms can have profound impacts on plant community dynamics and have received increasing attention in the context of plant-soil feedback. The effects of soil microbes on plant community dynamics are classically evaluated with a two-phase experimental design that consists of a conditioning phase, during which plants modify the soil microbial community, and a response phase, during [...]
Exploring bird biodiversity: a survey of avian richness in the dams of oke-ogun, nigeria
Published: 2024-10-31
Subjects: Life Sciences
Wetland degradation, both natural and anthropogenic, impacts biodiversity and ecosystem services. Artificial wetlands, such as dams, may help mitigate the loss of natural wetlands, but their conservation potential is understudied. This research explores avian diversity, anthropogenic impacts, and community perceptions of bird species across three dams -Igboho, Okeho, and Kishi located in [...]
Priced out of belonging? Insufficient concessions on membership fees across international societies in ecology and evolution
Published: 2024-10-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Learned societies, as professional bodies for scientists, are an integral part of the scientific system. However, their membership fees have the potential to be prohibitive to the most vulnerable members of the scientific community. To shed light on how membership fees are structured, we conducted a survey of 182 international learned societies relevant to researchers in ecology and evolution. We [...]
Overcoming Key Challenges of Satellite-based Monitoring of Ecosystem Condition: A Continental-scale Example From Australia
Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Effective satellite-based monitoring of ecosystem integrity or condition needs to address four key challenges: (a) context dependency; (b) alternative ecological states; (c) short-term temporal ecosystem dynamics; and (d) scarcity of reference data where ecosystems retain high levels of integrity. Here we present a typology, and outline strengths and weaknesses, of different approaches to mapping [...]
Sodium sulfite can reliably induce chemical hypoxia without toxic effects in the model sea anemone species, Exaiptasia diaphana
Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate change is accelerating deoxygenation in aquatic ecosystems worldwide, causing consequences for aerobic organisms. Empirically studying the effects of deoxygenation on biological processes is therefore critical. Multiple methods for inducing hypoxia in physiological studies have been developed, each with pros and cons. Using oxygen scavenger chemicals, such as sodium sulfite, to reliably [...]
Decadal recovery of fungal but not termite deadwood decay in tropical rainforest
Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Deadwood represents ~11% of carbon stocks in tropical rainforest ecosystems and its decay is driven largely by fungi and termites which contribute to the cycling of carbon and nutrients. Due to land use change, such as forest clearing, secondary growth tropical rainforests are increasingly prevalent around the globe. In secondary growth rainforest, studies found lower decay rates of leaf [...]
Reimagining species on the move across space and time
Published: 2024-10-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Climate change is already leaving a broad footprint of impacts on biodiversity, from an individual caterpillar emerging earlier in spring to dominant plant communities migrating poleward. Despite the various modes of how species are on the move, we primarily document shifting species along only one gradient (e.g., latitude or phenology) and along one dimension (space or time). Here we present a [...]
BON in a Box: An Open and Collaborative Platform for Biodiversity Monitoring, Indicator Calculation, and Reporting
Published: 2024-10-29
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Plant Sciences
The Convention on Biological Diversity’s Kunming-Montreal Global BiodiversityFramework (GBF) sets ambitious goals to protect and restore biodiversity. It includes a Monitoring Framework that mandates countries to track progress toward these goals using indicators that summarize biodiversity trends. Calculating indicators is challenging for countries due to technical barriers, lack of available [...]
Cichlid fishes are promising underutilised models to investigate helminth-microbiome interactions
Published: 2024-10-28
Subjects: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Microbiology, Parasitology
The “Old Friends Hypothesis” suggests that insufficient early exposure to symbionts may hinder immune development, contributing to increased immune-related diseases in the Global North. While the microbiome is often the focus, helminths, which may also offer health benefits, receive little attention. The infection and effect of helminths, in turn, are influenced and may be even determined by [...]
Beyond single invaders: Disentangling the effects of co-invading alien forbs on sandy old-fields
Published: 2024-10-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aims Invasive alien plants can severely impact ecosystem diversity and function. While individual species’ effects are often studied, the interaction between multiple invasive species is less understood. This study examines how Asclepias syriaca and Solidago spp. (including Solidago gigantea and S. canadensis) influence taxonomic and functional diversity in sandy old-fields. The aims are to: (1) [...]
Species changes are being misperceived - especially when populations increase
Published: 2024-10-25
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Environmental sciences seek to provide an unbiased quantitative basis for decision making, but conservation and management, as well as personal environmentally-related decisions are often driven by personal perception of the environment. Perception, in turn, is made up of personal experiences, information exchange and media exposure, personal values and beliefs. When documented changes in the [...]
Patterns of fruit production in tropical forests are shifting with negative outnumbering positive trends
Published: 2024-10-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
The impacts of climate change and anthropogenic disturbance are increasingly evident in the structure and demographics of tropical forests, yet the response of tree reproduction remains poorly understood. As fruit and seed production is a key step in forest recruitment, this gap is critical to understanding tropical forest resilience. Tropical fruits are important in diets of numerous frugivores [...]
infinitylists: A Shiny application and R package for rapid generation of place-based species checklists
Published: 2024-10-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
Premise: Online biodiversity databases like GBIF hold billions of occurrence records, including vouchered specimens and citizen science records. Integrating these two data streams facilitates more robust species checklists. However, processing huge biodiversity datasets can be time-consuming, and most databases are species-focused, rather than place-based, visualisation tools. Methods and [...]
A habitat suitability model for testing and refining the range of Zuni fleabane, a threatened plant species
Published: 2024-10-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Land managers and conservation practitioners need practical tools to protect rare species in light of rapidly changing climate and land use patterns. Habitat suitability models are tools that can inform multiple-use land management decisions and target conservation actions. The narrow endemic Zuni fleabane, Erigeron rhizomatus, occurs on lands managed for multiple uses and was listed as [...]
Model shows abrupt loss of soil organic carbon following disturbance in seagrass ecosystems
Published: 2024-10-23
Subjects: Life Sciences
Seagrasses are key carbon sinks in the biosphere and, hence, promising nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation. Unfortunately, they are also experiencing major anthropogenic and climatic pressures that can lead to seagrass degradation or even result in difficult-to-reverse abrupt shifts (i.e., tipping point responses) to complete loss. Although the possibility of tipping point [...]