Preprints

There are 1033 Preprints listed.

Determinants of synergistic cell-cell interactions in bacteria

Benedikt Pauli, Shiksha Ajmera, Christian Kost

Published: 2023-01-27
Subjects: Life Sciences

Bacteria are ubiquitous and colonize virtually every conceivable habitat on earth. To achieve this, bacteria require different metabolites and biochemical capabilities. Rather than trying to produce all of the needed materials by themselves, bacteria have evolved a range of synergistic interactions, in which they exchange different commodities with other members of their local community. While it [...]

Fine-scale interplay between decline and growth determines the spatial recovery of coral communities within a reef

Julie Vercelloni, Chris Roelfsema, Eva Kovacs, et al.

Published: 2023-01-26
Subjects: Life Sciences

As coral reefs endure increasing levels of disturbance, understanding patterns of recovery following disturbance(s) is paramount to assessing the sustainability of these ecosystems. Given the slow dynamics of coral reefs and the increasing frequency of environmental pressures, management strategies focus on understanding recovery patterns to drive efforts and actively promote the recovery of key [...]

More Than Half of Statistically Significant Research Findings in the Environmental Sciences are Actually Not

Teshome Deressa, David Stern, Jaco Vangronsveld, et al.

Published: 2023-01-25
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Researchers have incentives to search for and selectively report findings that appear to be statistically significant and/or conform to prior beliefs. Such selective reporting practices, including p-hacking and publication bias, can lead to a distorted set of results being published, potentially undermining the process of knowledge accumulation and evidence-based decision making. We take stock of [...]

Meta-community processes supersede leaf subsidy effects on lake aquatic communities

Georges Etienne Charette, Éric Harvey

Published: 2023-01-25
Subjects: Life Sciences

There is a growing consensus that cross-ecosystem fluxes significantly influence the structure and stability of aquatic communities. What remains unclear, however, is the relative importance and potential interactions of those fluxes to/with other well-studied factors affecting aquatic community structure such as local environmental parameters or regional-scale influences related to connectivity [...]

The impact of rising temperatures on the prevalence of coral diseases and its predictability: a global meta-analysis

Samantha Burke, Patrice Pottier, Malgorzata Lagisz, et al.

Published: 2023-01-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistical Models

Coral reefs are under threat from disease as climate change alters environmental conditions. Rising temperatures exacerbate coral disease, but this relationship is likely complex as other factors also influence coral disease prevalence. To better understand this relationship, we meta-analytically examined 108 studies for changes in global coral disease over time alongside temperature, expressed [...]

Marine cleaning mutualisms provide new insights in biological market dynamics

Redouan Bshary, Ronald Noe

Published: 2023-01-24
Subjects: Life Sciences

Most mutually beneficial social interactions (cooperation within species, mutualism between species) involve some degree of partner choice. In an analogy to economic theory as applied to human trading practices, biological market theory (BMT) focusses on how partner choice affects payoff distributions among non-human traders. BMT has inspired a great diversity of research, including research on [...]

Why do some fish grow faster than others?

Harriet Rose Goodrich, Timothy D Clark

Published: 2023-01-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Physiology

All animals must acquire food to grow, but there is a vast diversity in how different species and even different individuals approach and achieve this task. Individuals within a species appear to fall along a bold-shy continuum, whereby some fish acquire food aggressively and with seemingly high risk, while others appear more submissive and opportunistic. Greater food consumption generally [...]

When habitat is lost matters: patterns of population decline and time to extinction in a seasonal, density-dependent model

Joseph Burant, D. Ryan Norris

Published: 2023-01-21
Subjects: Population Biology

Nearly all wild populations live in seasonal environments in which they experience regular fluctuations in environmental conditions that drive population dynamics. Recent empirical evidence from experimental populations of fruit flies suggests that demographic signals inherent in the counts of seasonal populations, including reproduction and survival, can indicate when in the annual cycle habitat [...]

Sex-specific covariation between exploratory behavior and natal dispersal strategies in a natural cooperative breeding passerine population

Tara Cox, Alexandra M Sparks, Terry Burke, et al.

Published: 2023-01-20
Subjects: Life Sciences

Natal dispersal is a major life-history strategy that has pervasive consequences on the spatial and genetic structure of populations. Between-individual variation in personality traits is increasingly recognized as an important determinant of natal dispersal via ‘personality-dependent dispersal’. However, few studies have investigated the importance of personalities in the context of delayed [...]

Psychological and Cultural Factors Influencing Antibiotic Prescription

Francisco Dionisio, Fernando Baquero, Marina Fuertes

Published: 2023-01-20
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Psychiatry and Psychology

Humans have been giving a selective advantage to antibiotic-resistant bacteria worldwide by inundating the environment with antimicrobials for about one century. As a result, the efficacy of antibiotics has been impaired. Antibiotic resistance is a public health problem, responsible for increases in mortality and extended stays at hospitals. Hospitals and other clinical settings have implemented [...]

Beta diversity of restored river dike grasslands is strongly influenced by uncontrolled spatio-temporal variability

Markus Bauer, Jakob Huber, Johannes Kollmann

Published: 2023-01-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

1. Spatio-temporal dynamics of biodiversity are a key measure when monitoring restoration success. Balanced species turnover is aimed at because it increases overall biodiversity and improves ecosystem stability and multifunctionality. For predictive restoration, it is important to analyse spatial beta diversity and to identify its drivers like site characteristics but also uncontrolled factors [...]

The missing link: discerning true from false negatives when sampling species interaction networks

Michael D Catchen, Timothée Poisot, Laura J. Pollock, et al.

Published: 2023-01-19
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring

Ecosystems are composed of networks of interacting species. These interactions allow communities of species to persist through time through both neutral and adaptive processes. Despite their importance, a robust understanding of (and ability to predict and forecast) interactions among species remains elusive. This knowledge-gap is largely driven by a shortfall of data—although species occurrence [...]

Developmental environments do not affect thermal physiology in reptiles: An experimental test and meta-analysis

Rose Zhang, Kris Wild, Patrice Pottier, et al.

Published: 2023-01-19
Subjects: Evolution, Integrative Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

On a global scale, organisms face significant challenges due to climate change and anthropogenic disturbance. In many ectotherms, developmental and physiological processes are sensitive to changes in temperature and resources. Developmental plasticity in thermal physiology may provide adaptive advantages to environmental extremes if early environmental conditions are predictable of late-life [...]

Evolutionary Game Theory and the Adaptive Dynamics Approach: Adaptation where Individuals Interact

Piret Avila, Charles Mullon

Published: 2023-01-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Evolutionary game theory and the adaptive dynamics approach have made invaluable contributions to understand how gradual evolution leads to adaptation when individuals interact. Here, we review some of the basic tools that have come out of these contributions to model the evolution of quantitative traits in complex populations. We collect together mathematical expressions that describe [...]

Moving beyond heritability in the search for coral adaptive potential

Thomas J Richards, Katrina McGuigan, J David Aguirre, et al.

Published: 2023-01-17
Subjects: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Global environmental change is happening at unprecedented rates. Coral reefs are among the ecosystems most threatened by global change and for wild populations to persist, they must adapt. However, little is known about corals’ complex ecological and evolutionary dynamics making prediction about potential adaptation to future conditions precarious. Here, we review the process of adaptation [...]

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