Preprints
There are 1649 Preprints listed.
Ecology and conservation of an endangered flying squirrel in plantations
Published: 2023-04-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
Flying squirrels have important roles in ecosystems; as a disperser of seeds and spores. However, flying squirrel species which strongly depend on old mature forests are declined in abundance as a result of logging of mature forests. Guidelines for the conservation of flying squirrels have been developed, but it is important to have an accurate and deeply understanding of their ecology in order [...]
Forest management drives evolution of understorey herbs
Published: 2023-04-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
Forest management has a strong impact on the forest structure and subsequently on the biotic and abiotic forest understorey environment. Forest understorey herbs can thus be expected to evolutionary respond to management-induced environmental variation (provided sufficient time for adaptation), but this has been little tested to date. Here we use a common garden, to test for genetically based [...]
Navigating the science policy interface: A co-created mind-map for early career researchers
Published: 2023-04-24
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Education, Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies, Other Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Sustainability
The science-policy interface (SPI) is a complex space, in theory and practice, that sees the interaction of various actors and perspectives coming together to enable scientific knowledge to support decision-making. Early Career Researchers (ECRs) are increasingly interested in engaging with SPI, with the number of opportunities to do so increasing at national and international levels. However, [...]
The role of basic sciences in addressing global challenges to sustainable development: experiences from CIFOR-ICRAF
Published: 2023-04-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
Human-induced global challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation and broken food systems, militate against the attainment of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Centre for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) has, for many decades, worked in support of research in development initiatives aimed at addressing [...]
Phenological sensitivity of climate across taxa and local habitats in a high-Arctic arthropod community
Published: 2023-04-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Arthropods respond to climate change by shifting their phenology in the spring and summer seasons. These phenological shifts are rarely uniform, and taxa show distinct variation in the direction and magnitude of phenological responses to climate drivers. To gain insights into the most climate-sensitive taxa and forecast the implications of climate change on community-wide activity and biotic [...]
Disentangling the effects of male-male competition, reproductive investment and social dominance on telomere length
Published: 2023-04-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Energetically costly events can accelerate telomere loss and ageing via oxidative damage. For adult males, increased levels of reproduction and more frequent fighting for access to mates are therefore stressful experiences that should hasten telomere shortening. Testing for these relationships is, however, confounded by potential correlations between social status and reproductive investment. We [...]
Killer prey: Pre-interaction ecology reverses bacterial predation
Published: 2023-04-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Ecological variation influences the character of many biotic interactions, but examples of predator-prey reversal mediated by abiotic context are few. We show that the temperature at which prey grow before interacting with a bacterial predator can determine the very direction of predation, reversing predator and prey identities. While Pseudomonas fluorescens reared at 32 °C was extensively killed [...]
Vicuña antipredator diel migration drives spatial nutrient subsidies in a high Andean ecosystem
Published: 2023-04-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Spatial subsidies of nutrients within and among ecosystems have profound effects on ecosystem structure and functioning. Large animals can be important drivers of nutrient cycling and transport as they ingest resources in some habitats and release them in others, even moving nutrients against elevational gradients. In high Andean deserts, vicuñas (Vicugna vicugna) navigate a landscape of fear by [...]
Implementing a rapid geographic range expansion - the role of behavior changes
Published: 2023-04-12
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences
It is generally thought that behavioral flexibility, the ability to change behavior when circumstances change, plays an important role in the ability of species to rapidly expand their geographic range. Great-tailed grackles (Quiscalus mexicanus) are a social, polygamous species that is rapidly expanding its geographic range by settling in new areas and habitats. They are behaviorally flexible [...]
Metabolic consequences of sex-reversal in two lizard species: a test of the like genotype and like phenotype hypotheses
Published: 2023-04-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Vertebrate sex is typically determined genetically, but in many ectotherms sex can be determined by genes (Genetic Sex Determination: GSD), temperature (Temperature-dependent Sex Determination: TSD), or interactions between genes and temperature during development. Temperature dependent sex determination may involve GSD systems with either male or female heterogamety (XX/XY or ZZ/ZW) where [...]
Yield declines and producer responses to shifting climate and economic conditions in Mexican coffee production
Published: 2023-04-06
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Agriculture, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Life Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Other Environmental Sciences
Coffee’s climate sensitivity contributes to extreme production and price fluctuations. However, as coffee is a perennial crop, producers have difficulty responding to short-term market shifts. Combining historical climate, production and price data from all coffee-growing municipalities in Mexico, we examined trends of climate and coffee production and then characterized and quantified coffee [...]
Geographic, seasonal and ontogenetic variations of δ15N and δ13C of Japanese sardine explained by baseline variations and diverse fish movements
Published: 2023-04-05
Subjects: Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Understanding and predicting variability in the stable isotope ratios of nitrogen and carbon (δ15N and δ13C, respectively) of small pelagic fish is crucial to enable isotopic studies of a variety of marine predators that feed on them. However, because the isotope ratios reflect plastic feeding habits and fish migration in addition to baseline variation, their predictions require a mechanistic [...]
Replicated radiations in the South American Marsh Pitcher Plants (Heliamphora) lead to convergent carnivorous trap morphologies
Published: 2023-04-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
The evolution of carnivorous pitcher traps across multiple angiosperm lineages represents a classic example of morphological convergence. Nevertheless, no comparative study to-date has examined pitcher evolution from a quantitative morphometric perspective. In the present study, we used comparative morphometric approaches to quantify the shape space occupied by Heliamphora pitchers and to trace [...]
Litter quality outweighs climate as a driver of decomposition across the tundra biome
Published: 2023-03-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Considerable uncertainty exists regarding the strength, direction and relative importance of the drivers of decomposition in the tundra biome, partly due to a lack of coordinated decomposition field studies in this remote environment. Here, we analysed 3717 incubations of two uniform litter types, green and rooibos tea, buried at 330 circum-Arctic and alpine sites to quantify the effects of [...]
Evolution of chemodiversity - From verbal to quantitative models
Published: 2023-03-28
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Plants harbour an astonishing amount of chemodiversity, i.e., diversity of specialized metabolites, at different scales. For instance, individual plants can produce a large number of different specialized metabolites and individuals in a population can differ in their metabolite composition. Given the ecological and economic importance of plant chemodiversity, it is important to understand how it [...]