Preprints
There are 2376 Preprints listed.
Species lists of the Koffler Scientific Reserve at Jokers Hill, Ontario, Canada
Published: 2024-06-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
This document includes taxonomically-organized lists of all vascular plants, amphibians and reptiles, birds, and mammals recorded from the 350 ha Koffler Scientific Reserve of the University of Toronto, in King Township, Regional Municipality of York, Ontario, Canada (44° 01' N, 79° 31' W). These lists were initially compiled by C.S. Blaney and were published as an appendix to his M.Sc. thesis [...]
Tundra vegetation community, not microclimate, controls asynchrony of above and belowground phenology
Published: 2024-06-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The below-ground growing season often extends beyond the above-ground growing season in tundra ecosystems. However, we do not yet know where and when this occurs and whether these phenological asynchronies are driven by variation in local vegetation communities or by spatial variation in microclimate. Here, we combined above- and below-ground plant phenology metrics to compare the relative [...]
New insights to be gained from a Virtual Ecosystem
Published: 2024-06-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
The myriad interactions among individual plants, animals, microbes and their abiotic environment generate emergent phenomena that will determine the future of life on Earth. Here, we argue that holistic ecosystem models – incorporating key biological domains and feedbacks between biotic and abiotic processes – capable of predicting emergent phenomena are required if we are to understand the [...]
A species-level multi-trophic metaweb for Switzerland
Published: 2024-06-21
Subjects: Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Understanding how species interact within ecological networks is essential for predicting the consequences of environmental change, from trophic cascades to broader changes in species distributions and ecosystem functioning across large spatial scales. To facilitate the such explorations, we constructed trophiCH: a national trophic meta-food web (henceforth “metaweb”) that includes vertebrates, [...]
Microbial growth in soil
Published: 2024-06-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences
The growth rate of a microorganism is a simple yet profound way to quantify its impact on the world. Microbial fitness in the environment depends on the ability to reproduce quickly when conditions are favorable and adopt a survival physiology when conditions worsen, which cells coordinate by adjusting their growth rate. At the population level, per capita growth rate is a sensitive metric of [...]
L’espèce incertaine et les taxons flous
Published: 2024-06-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
La question de la « bonne » définition de l’espèce, qui unit les biologistes, les naturalistes et les personnes impliquées dans l’usage ou la conservation de la biodiversité, est constamment réactualisée par les progrès des connaissances sur l’évolution et la spéciation. Cette question est loin [...]
Genetic variation of heat tolerance in a model ectotherm: an approach using thermal death time curves
Published: 2024-06-20
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physiology
The assessment of thermal tolerance holds significant importance in predicting the physiological responses of ectotherms, particularly in elucidating their capacity for evolutionary adaptation in the context of global warming. Current approaches to assessing thermal tolerance have limitations that can lead to misleading results, especially with regard to the heritability of thermal limits. [...]
Curating reserve level species lists in an era of diverse and dynamic data sources
Published: 2024-06-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Dynamic yet accurate reserve-level species lists are essential for conservation and biodiversity research. Even when such lists exist, changing taxonomy, ongoing species migrations and invasions, and new discoveries of historically overlooked species mean static lists can become rapidly outdated. Biodiversity databases such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, and citizen science [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Tropical East Pacific
Published: 2024-06-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Tropical East Pacific (TEP) province is a regional ecosystem subgroup (Level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology), present in the coastal ecoregions of the Mexican Tropical Pacific, Chiapas-Nicaragua, Nicoya, Panama Bight, and Guayaquil. In 2020, mangroves cover 7782 km2 in the province, representing 5.3% of the global coverage. In the province, there are eight true [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Warm Temperate Northwest Atlantic
Published: 2024-06-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The ‘Mangroves of the Warm Temperate Northwest Atlantic’ province is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Carolinian and Northern Gulf of Mexico. The biota is characterized by 3 species of mangroves: Avicennia germinans, Laguncularia racemosa, and Rhizophora mangle, and 1 mangrove associate Conocarpus erectus, [...]
Identity crisis? News reports on invasive species feature misleading images of unrelated organisms
Published: 2024-06-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
In mainstream media, news outlets play a vital role in raising awareness and rallying public support for managing invasive species. However, news reports on invasive species occasionally feature misleading images of unrelated organisms. In this correspondence, I illustrate the problem with recent international news reports on invasions by Red Imported Fire Ants (Solenopsis invicta) in Asia, [...]
Symbiont community changes confer fitness benefits for larvae, but not juveniles, in a vertically transmitting coral
Published: 2024-06-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
Coral reefs worldwide are threatened by increasing ocean temperatures because of the sensitivity of the coral-algal symbiosis to thermal stress. Reef building corals form mutualistic symbiotic relationships with dinoflagellates (family Symbiodiniaceae), including those species which acquire their initial symbiont complement from their parents. Changes in the composition of symbiont communities, [...]
Heat tolerance and its plasticity in freshwater and marine fishes are linked to their thermal regimes.
Published: 2024-06-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
Responses to climate change are rooted in thermal physiology, and many studies have focussed on heat tolerance and plasticity of heat tolerance. Latitudinal patterns in heat tolerance are commonly considered to reflect latitudinal differences in thermal regimes, but direct tests are few. Here we show that the extremes and fluctuations in habitat temperature explain variation in heat tolerance of [...]
Leveraging Earth Observation to monitor genetic diversity from Space
Published: 2024-06-18
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Genetic diversity within and among populations is essential for species persistence, yet its assessment across many species, at national and regional scales, remains challenging. Conservationists, ecosystem managers, and Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) still require accessible tools for reliable and efficient monitoring at the multiple scales relevant for policy and [...]
Asian Hornbill Bibliography: a dynamic, online, open-access reference database for use in manuscript citations and hornbill research
Published: 2024-06-18
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Library and Information Science, Nature and Society Relations, Ornithology, Plant Sciences, Publishing, Scholarly Publishing
Bibliographic databases and citation tools are integral aids to research. The Asian Hornbill Bibliography presents a compendium of research on Asian hornbills by combining an open access bibliographic database with the free and open source reference manager, Zotero. The bibliography, also hosted and made accessible from the IUCN Hornbill Specialist Group website, includes 725 publications, [...]