Preprints
There are 2373 Preprints listed.
Quantifying the Value of Community Science Data for Conservation Decision-making
Published: 2024-05-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Monitoring biodiversity can be critical for informing effective conservation strategies, but can also deplete the resources available for management actions. Freely-available community science data may help alleviate this issue, but only if data quality is sufficient to inform the best decisions. Our objective was to quantify the predicted outcomes of prioritizing conservation action based on [...]
O mapa do tesouro perdido: guias de campo e o seu papel na promoção da conservação
Published: 2024-05-01
Subjects: Education
O projeto ‘Guias da Conservação: de turista a naturalista’ surgiu com o propósito de estimular o pensamento conservacionista através da sensibilização do público, utilizando-se da biodiversidade contida na Mata Atlântica na forma de guias de campo. Este trabalho teve como objetivo avaliar a recepção dos guias de campo desenvolvidos pelo projeto. O público alvo foi o público participante do evento [...]
Wildlife health perceptions and monitoring practices in globally distributed protected areas
Published: 2024-04-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Monitoring, Epidemiology, Health Information Technology, Health Policy, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Recreation, Parks and Tourism Administration, Sustainability, Veterinary Preventive Medicine, Epidemiology, and Public Health
The status of health monitoring practices in protected areas (PAs) is largely unknown but potential gaps could undermine biodiversity conservation at these key sites. There is also a lack of baseline information regarding local perceptions of wildlife, human, and livestock health relevance that could affect health monitoring implementation in PAs. To address these deficiencies, we conducted a [...]
Seasonal patterns of resource use within natural populations of burying beetles
Published: 2024-04-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
For organisms in temperate environments, seasonal variation in resource availability and weather conditions exert fluctuating selection pressures on survival and fitness, resulting in diverse adaptive responses. By manipulating resource availability on a local spatial scale, we studied seasonal patterns of resource use within natural populations of burying beetles (Nicrophorus vespilloides) in a [...]
Trimming the hedges in a hurricane: Endangered Species lack research on the outcomes of conservation action
Published: 2024-04-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Given widespread biodiversity declines, there is an urgent need to ensure that conservation interventions are working. Yet, evidence regarding the effectiveness of conservation actions is often lacking. Using a case study of 208 terrestrial species listed as Endangered in Canada, we conducted a literature review to collate the evidence base on conservation actions to: 1) explore the outcomes of [...]
Dissecting transmission to understand parasite evolution
Published: 2024-04-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Parasite transmission is a complex, multi-stage process that significantly impacts host-parasite dynamics. Transmission plays a key role in epidemiology and in virulence evolution, where it is expected to trade-off with virulence. However, the extent to which classical models on virulence-transmission relationships apply in the real world are unclear. In this insight piece, we propose a novel [...]
Hijackers, hitchhikers, or co-drivers? The mysteries of microbial mobilizable genetic elements
Published: 2024-04-26
Subjects: Bacteriology, Evolution, Genetics, Life Sciences, Molecular Biology
Mobile genetic elements shape microbial gene repertoires and population dynamics, but their mechanisms of horizontal transmission are often unknown. Recent results reveal that many, possibly most, bacterial mobile genetic elements require helper elements to transfer between (or within) genomes. We refer to these non-autonomous, albeit mobile, elements as Hitcher Genetic Elements (hitchers or [...]
MacArthur’s consumer-resource model: a Rosetta Stone for competitive interactions
Published: 2024-04-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Recent developments in competition theory, namely, Modern Coexistence Theory (MCT), have aided empiricists in formulating tests of species persistence, coexistence, and evolution from simple to complex community settings. However, the parameters used to predict competitive outcomes, such as interaction coefficients, invasion growth rates, or stabilizing differences, remain biologically opaque, [...]
A research synthesis of humans, animals, and environmental compartments exposed to PFAS: A systematic evidence map and bibliometric analysis of secondary literature
Published: 2024-04-25
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
Background Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of widely used anthropogenic chemicals. Concerns regarding their persistence and potential adverse effects have led to multiple secondary research publications. Here, we aim to assess the resulting evidence base in the systematic secondary literature by examining research gaps, evaluating the quality of reviews, and exploring [...]
Insects decline with host plants but co-extinctions seem unlikely
Published: 2024-04-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
It is commonly assumed that the loss of wild plant populations leads to co-extinctions, especially among specialized insects. Despite global declines in both terrestrial insects and plants, the relationship between these trends remains elusive. Here, we address this gap by analyzing the relationship between population trends of insects and their host plants in Germany, encompassing over 150,000 [...]
Addictive manipulation: a perspective on the role of reproductive parasitism in the evolution of bacteria-eukaryote symbioses
Published: 2024-04-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Other Microbiology
Wolbachia bacteria encompass noteworthy reproductive manipulators of their arthropod hosts. which influence host reproduction to favour their own transmission, also exploiting toxin-antitoxin systems. Recently, multiple other bacterial symbionts of arthropods have been shown to display comparable manipulative capabilities. Here we wonder whether such phenomena are truly restricted to arthropod [...]
Historic residential segregation impacts biodiversity data availability disparately across the tree of life
Published: 2024-04-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Race and Ethnicity, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Urban Studies and Planning
Urbanization alters species ranges and nature’s contributions to people, motivating urban conservation. Residential segregation policies have left an indelible impact on urban environments, greenspaces, and wildlife communities, creating socioeconomic heterogeneity and altering biota. However, the extent to which data sufficiently capture urban biodiversity patterns remains unclear, especially [...]
Evolution and maintenance of mtDNA gene content across eukaryotes
Published: 2024-04-22
Subjects: Evolution, Genetics, Genomics
Across eukaryotes, most genes required for mitochondrial function have been transferred to, or otherwise acquired by, the nucleus. Encoding genes in the nucleus has many advantages. So why do mitochondria retain any genes at all? Why does the set of mtDNA genes vary so much across different species? And how do species maintain functionality in the mtDNA genes they do retain? In this review we [...]
Is turning food waste into insect feed an uphill climb? A review of persistent challenges
Published: 2024-04-22
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Entomology, Food Science, Technology and Innovation
One major hurdle for our current food system is the enormous amount of food that goes to waste. Insect farming has been proposed as a potential solution, offering one way to turn waste into agricultural resources such as livestock and aquaculture feed. In this article, we review the types of materials currently used to raise insects at commercial scales, and we examine whether those materials [...]
The nitroplast and its relatives support a universal model of features predicting gene retention in endosymbiont and organelle genomes
Published: 2024-04-22
Subjects: Evolution, Genomics
Endosymbiotic relationships have shaped eukaryotic life. As endosymbionts coevolve with their host, towards full integration as organelles, their genomes tend to shrink, with genes being completely lost or transferred to the host nucleus. Modern endosymbionts and organelles show diverse patterns of gene retention, and why some genes and not others are retained in these genomes is not fully [...]