Preprints
There are 2534 Preprints listed.
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Galapagos
Published: 2024-11-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Galapagos is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Eastern Galapagos Islands, Northern Galapagos Islands, and Western Galapagos Islands. The Galapagos province mapped extent in 2014 was 36.6 km2, representing 0.03% of the global mangrove area. The biota is characterized by four species of true [...]
Overcoming the disconnect between species interaction networks and biodiversity conservation
Published: 2024-11-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Decision-makers need to act now to halt biodiversity loss, and ecologists must provide them with relevant species interaction indicators to inform about community- and ecosystem-level changes. Yet, the integration of ecological networks into conservation is still virtually non-existent. Here, we argue that existing data and methodologies are sufficient to generate network information usable for [...]
Individual foraging specialization and success change with experience in a virtual predator-prey system
Published: 2024-11-27
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The capacity of predators to match their tactic to their prey and to optimize their skills at implementing a given tactic are expected to drive the outcome of predator-prey interactions. Hence, successive interactions of predators with their prey may result in increased flexibility in tactic use or in individual foraging specialization. Yet, there are limited empirical assessments showing links [...]
Stability in the Face of Global Decline: A 20-Year Study of Arthropods in an Oceanic Archipelago
Published: 2024-11-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Insect declines have been reported globally but whilst island ecosystems are potentially facing exacerbated challenges, no long-term studies (LTER) have confirmed this trend. This study utilises the first available LTER data on island invertebrates, targeting epigeal and canopy arthropods from the Azores, and covering over 20 years in three distinct sampling events from 30 standard sites. We [...]
Applying Evolutionary Theory to Understand Host-Microbiome Evolution: New Tricks for Old Dogs
Published: 2024-11-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Microbiology
All plants and animals are host to a community of microorganisms, their microbiomes, that have crucial influences on the life history and performance of their hosts. Despite the importance of such host-microbiome relationships, relatively little is known about the role microbiomes play in mediating evolution of the host as well as entire host-microbe assemblages. This knowledge gap is partly due [...]
Fine-tuning mast seeding: as resources accumulate, plants become more sensitive to weather cues
Published: 2024-11-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Interannual variability of seed production, known as masting, has far-reaching ecological impacts including effects on forest regeneration and the population dynamics of seed consumers. It is important to understand the mechanisms driving masting to predict how plant populations and ecosystem dynamics may change into the future, and for short-term forecasting of seed production to aid management. [...]
Traditional water structures in villages support amphibian populations within a protected landscape
Published: 2024-11-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Amphibians are among the most globally threatened vertebrates, with habitat loss and degradation being the primary drivers of their decline. While natural wetlands are essential for amphibian survival, artificial habitats can also play a significant role as refuges, especially in human-altered landscapes. This study examines the role of artificial waterbodies in supporting amphibian populations [...]
Monitor Social-Ecological Systems to Achieve Global Goals for Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People
Published: 2024-11-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
Life, Death and Energy: Nature Selects No Free Lunch
Published: 2024-11-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Brown et al. (2024) highlight that organisms invest a constant amount of energy into the production of viable offspring per unit of body mass per generation. This explains how diversity in life can exist. We interpret their result in relation to balancing offspring costs in real vs. physiological time.
Integrating macroecology with temporal and trait-based perspectives : toward better attribution of human drivers to diversity changes
Published: 2024-11-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
The ongoing biodiversity crisis presents a complex challenge for ecological science. Despite a consensus on general biodiversity decline, identifying clear trends remains difficult due to variability in data, methodologies, and scales of analysis. To enhance our understanding of ongoing biodiversity changes and address discrepancies in biodiversity trend detection, we propose integrating [...]
New technology for an ancient fish: A lamprey life cycle modeling tool with an R Shiny application
Published: 2024-11-25
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Population Biology, Systems Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Lampreys (Petromyzontiformes) are an ancient group of fishes with complex life histories. We created a life cycle model that includes an R Shiny interactive web application interface to simulate abundance by life stage. This will allow scientists and managers to connect available demographic information in a framework that can be applied to questions regarding lamprey biology and conservation. We [...]
Unrecognized lineages transform our understanding of diversification in a clade of lizards
Published: 2024-11-21
Subjects: Evolution
Evolutionary lineages at the tip of the tree of life can be genetically diverged yet phenotypically similar and therefore unrecognized by traditional morphology-based taxonomy. Such lineages, spanning the “grey zone of speciation” 1, are increasingly uncovered using genomic analyses. Here we show that incorporating this unrecognized lineage diversity into macro-evolutionary analyses yields novel [...]
Causes of recent changes in bill length in Crozet wandering albatross, a long-lived seabird
Published: 2024-11-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Population Biology
Phenotypes are changing in many wild populations, largely in response to environmental changes due to human activities. Phenotypic change can be driven by several mechanisms, with contrasted consequences for the persistence of populations. Identifying those mechanisms is key to understand current responses to human pressures and to predict the future fate of populations. Here we attempt to [...]
Experimentally-induced low flows reveal climate change may shrink trophic niches of mountain stream predators.
Published: 2024-11-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Climate change is projected to decrease snowpack and advance snowmelt in mountain ranges globally–including in California’s Sierra Nevada, where streamflow in snow-dominated rivers is expected to peak up to 2 months earlier, and remain in baseflow conditions for extended periods of time. Predators may be particularly sensitive to low flows, owing to their larger body sizes, higher metabolic [...]
The evolutionary conflict theory of aging
Published: 2024-11-21
Subjects: Biology, Evolution
Why we age is an enduring mystery. This manuscript proposes aging is microevolutionarily opposed, but macroevolutionarily favored. Such a conflict between microevolution and macroevolution is highly unusual since traits that are harmful to the organism are usually harmful to the survival of the species. In the case of aging, however, a shorter lifespan makes a species better able to adapt to a [...]