Preprints

There are 1957 Preprints listed.

Bird species’ centrality in seed-dispersal networks varies within climatic niches

Gabriel M. Moulatlet, Wesley Dáttilo, W. Daniel Kissling, et al.

Published: 2023-12-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Understanding how the functional role of species within seed-dispersal networks varies across geographical and climatic gradients can reveal the mechanisms driving network organization. Using data for 157 bird species from all continents, we evaluated the variation of species’ centrality within local networks across species’ climatic niches (occupied climatic conditions) and in response to [...]

MEWC: A user-friendly AI workflow for customised wildlife-image classification

Barry W. Brook, Jessie C. Buettel, Zach Aandahl

Published: 2023-12-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology

Monitoring wildlife is crucial for making informed conservation and land-management decisions. Remotely triggered cameras are widely used for this purpose, but the resulting 'big data' are laborious to process. Although artificial intelligence (AI) offers a powerful solution to this bottleneck, it has been challenging for ecologists and practitioners without substantial technical expertise to [...]

A guide to DNA extraction protocols for ecologists, conservation managers, and environmental DNA researchers

Jessica Rieder, Eliane Jemmi, Irene Adrian-Kalchhauser

Published: 2023-12-12
Subjects: Life Sciences

Ecologists, conservation biologists, and environmental managers are increasingly dependent on environmental DNA (eDNA) data for research and decision making. The inherent complexity of eDNA samples, coupled with different choices involved during the DNA extraction process, can introduce biases into the final eDNA dataset. Therefore, optimization and troubleshooting of DNA extraction protocols are [...]

Urbanization alters sandy beach scavenging assemblages but not ecosystem function

Francis David Gerraty, Ann Gobei-Bacaylan, Kaia Diel

Published: 2023-12-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Urbanization is rapidly transforming coastal landscapes around the world, altering the structure and function of marine, intertidal, and terrestrial ecosystems. In this study, we explore the impact of urbanization on the structure of vertebrate scavenging assemblages and the ecosystem functions they provide in sandy beach ecosystems across 40km of the central California coast, USA. We surveyed [...]

Quantifying clearance rates of restored shellfish reefs using modular baskets

Maja Paulina Andersson, Karen L Cheney, Robbie Porter, et al.

Published: 2023-12-08
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management, Zoology

Shellfish reefs are among the most degraded ecosystems globally, prompting substantial efforts to restore them. While biodiversity gains of restored reefs are well documented, other ecosystem services such as water filtration remain poorly quantified. We present a novel way of measuring water filtration by restored reefs using modular restoration structures called Robust Oyster Baskets (ROB 400). [...]

Linking biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people (NCP): a macroecological energy flux perspective

Ana Carolina Antunes, Emilio Berti, Ulrich Brose, et al.

Published: 2023-12-08
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Linking biodiversity and the provision of nature’s contribution to people (NCP) remains a challenge. This hinders our ability to properly cope with the decline in biodiversity and the provision of NCP under global climate and land use changes. Here, we propose a framework that combines biodiversity models with food web energy flux approaches to evaluate and map NCP at large spatio-temporal [...]

Impact of Green Space and Built Environment on Metabolic Syndrome: A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis

Muhammad Mainuddin Patwary, Mohammad Javad Zare Sakhvidi, Sadia Ashraf, et al.

Published: 2023-12-08
Subjects: Life Sciences

Metabolic Syndrome presents a significant public health challenge associated with an increased risk of noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular conditions. Evidence shows that green spaces and the built environment may influence metabolic syndrome. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies published through August 30, 2023, examining the association of [...]

The Palearctic view on a bat fungal disease

Flora Whiting-Fawcett, Anna Sofia Blomberg, Tanya Troitsky, et al.

Published: 2023-12-08
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biology, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Zoology

The fungal infection causing white-nose disease in hibernating bats in North America has resulted in dramatic population declines of affected species since it was first discovered in 2007. Shortly after, it was demonstrated that the causative agent, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, is native to the Palearctic, where it also infects several bat species. However, infection in the Palearctic rarely [...]

Towards the next generation of species delimitation methods: an overview of Machine Learning applications

Matheus Salles, Fabricius Domingos

Published: 2023-12-08
Subjects: Biology, Computational Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics

Species delimitation is the process of distinguishing between populations of the same species and distinct species of a particular group of organisms. Various methods exist for inferring species limits, whether based on morphological, molecular, or other types of data. In the case of methods based on DNA sequences, most of them are rooted in the coalescent theory. However, coalescence-based [...]

The world was our oyster: Records reveal the vast historical extent of European oyster reef ecosystems

Ruth H. Thurstan, Hannah McCormick, Joanne Preston, et al.

Published: 2023-12-08
Subjects: Biodiversity, Marine Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Anthropogenic activities have impacted marine ecosystems at extraordinary scales. Biogenic reef ecosystems built by the European flat oyster (Ostrea edulis) typically declined prior to scientific monitoring. Collating >1,600 records published over 350 years, we created a highly resolved (10km2) map of historical oyster reef presence across its biogeographic range, including documenting abundant [...]

Historical redlining impacts wildlife biodiversity across California

Cesar Omar Estien, Mason Fidino, Christine E. Wilkinson, et al.

Published: 2023-12-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Legacy effects describe the persistent, long-term impacts on an ecosystem following the removal of an abiotic or biotic feature. Redlining, a policy that codified racial segregation and disinvestment in minoritized neighborhoods, has produced legacy effects with profound impacts on urban ecosystem structure and health. These legacies have detrimentally impacted public health outcomes, [...]

Historical dataset details the distribution, extent and form of lost Ostrea edulis reef ecosystems.

Ruth H. Thurstan, Hannah McCormick, Joanne Preston, et al.

Published: 2023-12-08
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Biodiversity, Marine Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Ocean ecosystems have been subjected to anthropogenic influences for centuries, but the scale of past ecosystem changes is often unknown. For centuries, the European flat oyster (Ostrea edulis), an ecosystem engineer providing biogenic reef habitats, was a culturally and economically significant source of food and trade. These reef habitats are now functionally extinct, and almost no memory of [...]

Detecting context-dependence in the expression of life history tradeoffs

Louis Bliard, Jordan Scott Martin, Maria Paniw, et al.

Published: 2023-12-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Population Biology

Life history tradeoffs are one of the central tenets of evolutionary demography. Tradeoffs, depicting negative covariances between individuals’ life history traits, can arise from genetic constraints, or from a finite amount of resources that each individual has to allocate in a zero-sum game between somatic and reproductive functions. While theory predicts that tradeoffs are ubiquitous, [...]

The OptoReg system: A simple and inexpensive solution for regulating water oxygen.

Rasmus Ern, Fredrik Jutfelt

Published: 2023-12-06
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences

This paper describes an optocoupler-based regulation apparatus for saturation manipulation of oxygen in water (OptoReg). This system enables control of solenoid valves for oxygen and nitrogen gases using a FireSting-O2 meter, an optocoupler box, and an electronic switch box. The hardware components connect to a computer through USB cables. The control software is free and has a graphical user [...]

Natural selection is less efficient at species range edges

Chloé Schmidt, Jussi Mäkinen, Jean-Philippe Lessard, et al.

Published: 2023-12-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences

Changing species distributions due to global change underscore a pressing need to better understand range limits. However, our knowledge of general determinants of range limits remains poor despite over a century of work. Theoretical models demonstrate that genetic drift should strengthen across environmental gradients. This can limit natural selection to the point where populations can no longer [...]

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