Preprints
There are 2377 Preprints listed.
Evaluating drivers and predictability of catch composition in a highly mixed trawl fishery using stacked and joint species models
Published: 2024-08-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Evaluating drivers and the predictability of catch is valuable for the management of mixed fisheries. Drivers can represent or help to identify levers for management and predictable catch compositions are a key component of simulation tools and dynamic management strategies. But modelling mixed fisheries can be challenging due to the large number of taxa, and analysis typically focuses on a few [...]
The macroecology of knowledge: Spatio-temporal patterns of name-bearing types in biodiversity science
Published: 2024-08-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Ecological and evolutionary processes are recognized as the main factors generating and maintaining biodiversity. However, how biodiversity knowledge is collated, organized, and distributed worldwide influences our perceptions and inferences about biodiversity and the underlying processes. We demonstrated that name-bearing type specimens (NBT), the most fundamental reference for the identity of [...]
No support for honest signalling of male quality in zebra finch song
Published: 2024-08-12
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Ornithology
Alam et al.1 claim to have discovered a song feature, “path length”, that honestly signals male fitness and is therefore preferred by all females. However, their data and analyses provide no statistical support for this claim. (1) The key finding — that long-path songs are difficult to learn (Fig. 4c) — is a statistical artefact: regressing y minus x on x creates an illusory effect where none [...]
Experimental evidence that phenotypic evolution but not plasticity occurs along genetic lines of least resistance in homogeneous environments
Published: 2024-08-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Genetic correlations concentrate genetic variation in certain directions of the multivariate phenotype. Adaptation and, under some models, plasticity is expected to occur in the direction of the phenotype containing the greatest amount of genetic variation (gmax). However, this may hinge upon environmental heterogeneity, which can affect patterns of genetic variation. I use experimental evolution [...]
Sunlight and diel behaviors promote coexistence of frogs through temporal acoustic partitioning
Published: 2024-08-12
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Understanding how species coexist is one of the main goals in ecology. While many have documented how species coexist in nature, there is much interspecific and spatial heterogeneity in which resources are partitioned and in the contributing environmental factors. Overall, we lack a general understanding of how stable coexistence is maintained for particular groups of organisms. Thus, we studied [...]
The Architecture of Theory and Data in Microbiome Design: towards an S-matrix for microbiomes
Published: 2024-08-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Designing microbiomes for applications in health, bioengineering, and sustainability is intrinsically linked to a fundamental theoretical understanding of the rules governing microbial community assembly. Microbial ecologists have used a range of mathematical models to understand, predict, and control microbiomes, ranging from mechanistic models, putting microbial populations and their [...]
Potentiality of Metal Nanoparticles in Precision and Sustainable Agriculture
Published: 2024-08-08
Subjects: Agriculture, Life Sciences
The world’s increasing population has a higher demand for food and a suitable environment. However, using conventional farming methods and industrial agrochemicals leads to environmental risk, which is a significant threat for the next generation. So, nanotechnology can be a blessing for saving our environment and producing risk-free foods at minimal cost in an eco-friendly way. Nanoparticles [...]
Three Paths Through the Levels of Selection
Published: 2024-08-08
Subjects: Anthropology, Behavior and Ethology, Evolution, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, Statistical Models, Zoology
Should we really predict the response of wild endotherms to climate change based on thermal responses measured in captivity?
Published: 2024-08-07
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Life Sciences
A database of foraging guilds of seabirds
Published: 2024-08-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
The foraging guilds of terrestrial birds have been a focus of past studies, however little is known about the guilds in seabirds, except for certain species and localities. To overcome this gap, here we developed the Foraging Guilds of Seabirds database (FGSdb) by compiling a global database of 311 seabird species (from a total of 346 known, representing 90% of all seabird species) and assigning [...]
What do functional diversity, redundancy, rarity, and originality actually measure? A theoretical guide for ecologists and conservationists
Published: 2024-08-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Functional diversity, redundancy, rarity, and originality are fundamental concepts in ecology and conservation biology. Despite their frequent use, the precise meaning and relationships between these measures are often unclear. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive theoretical framework to elucidate what each of these measures captures and how they interrelate. By integrating traditional [...]
Inductive link prediction facilitates the discovery of missing links and enables cross-community inference in ecological networks
Published: 2024-08-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Predicting species interactions (links) within ecological networks is crucial for advancing our understanding of ecosystem functioning and responses of communities to environmental changes. Transductive link prediction models are often used but are constrained by sparse, incomplete data and are limited to single networks. We address these issues using an inductive link prediction (ILP) approach. [...]
Assembly Graph as the Rosetta Stone of Ecological Assembly
Published: 2024-08-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Ecological assembly---the process of ecological community formation through species introductions---has recently seen exciting theoretical advancements across dynamical, informational, and probabilistic approaches. However, these theories often remain inaccessible to non-theoreticians, and they lack a unifying lens. Here, I introduce the assembly graph as an integrative tool to connect [...]
An integrated population modelling workflow for supporting mesopredator management
Published: 2024-08-01
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Natural Resources and Conservation, Population Biology, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Survival Analysis, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Expanding populations of mesopredators threaten biodiversity and human health in many ecosystems across the world. Lethal control through harvest is commonly implemented as a mitigation measure, yet its effects on mesopredator population dynamics in interaction with compensatory mechanisms and environmental conditions has rarely been assessed quantitatively due to data constraints. Recent [...]
New frontiers in AI for biodiversity research and conservation with multimodal language models
Published: 2024-08-01
Subjects: Biodiversity
The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into biodiversity research and conservation is growing rapidly, demonstrating great potential in reducing the intensive human labor required for data preprocessing, thereby, facilitating larger data collections that offer ecological insights at unprecedented scales. However, most of these AI applications for biodiversity are still in the early [...]