Preprints
There are 1657 Preprints listed.
Biofilm formation is intrinsic to the origin of life
Published: 2022-03-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Biofilm formation the build up of multicellular, often surface-associated, communities of autonomous cells, is the natural mode of growth of up to 80% of microorganisms living on this planet. Their tolerance against multiple environmental stresses makes biofilms refractory towards antimicrobial treatment strategies and the actions of the immune system. But how did biofilm formation arise? Here, I [...]
Defence mitigation by predators of chemically defended prey integrated over the predation cycle and across biological levels
Published: 2022-03-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The long-term evolution of species involved in predator-prey interactions has resulted in many examples of specialised prey defences. The methods that predators use to mitigate prey defences has received less attention. The frequent reference to an arms races or coevolution without clear evidence that both strategies evolved under the influence of each other is problematic. In this review, we use [...]
Developing a framework to improve global estimates of conservation area coverage
Published: 2022-03-18
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Area-based conservation is a widely used approach for maintaining biodiversity, and there are ongoing discussions over what is an appropriate global conservation area coverage target. To inform such debates, it is necessary to know the extent and ecological representativeness of the current conservation area network, but this is hampered by gaps in existing global datasets. In particular, [...]
Interpolation of temporal biodiversity change, loss, and gain across scales: a machine learning approach
Published: 2022-03-15
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistics and Probability
1. Estimates of temporal change of biodiversity, and its components loss and gain, are needed at local and geographical scales. However, we lack them because of data in-completeness, heterogeneity, and lack of temporal replication. Hence, we need a tool to integrate heterogeneous data and to account for their incompleteness. 2. We introduce spatiotemporal machine learning interpolation that can [...]
An integrative indicator linking area-based actions to national and global outcomes for forest biodiversity
Published: 2022-03-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Indicators supporting implementation of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) are likely to be used not only to monitor progress toward achieving agreed goals and targets, but also to help prioritise specific actions to address shortfalls in this achievement as efficiently as possible. To perform this dual role, adopted indicators must be derived from data of sufficient rigour and [...]
The Global Forest Health Crisis: A Public Good Social Dilemma in Need of International Collective Action
Published: 2022-03-10
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Behavioral Economics, Biodiversity, Biology, Biosecurity, Botany, Economics, Entomology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Studies, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, International Relations, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Pathogenic Microbiology, Plant Biology, Plant Pathology, Plant Sciences, Political Science, Science and Technology Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Society is confronted by interconnected threats to ecological sustainability. Among these is the devastation of forests by destructive non-native pathogens and insects introduced through global trade, leading to the loss of critical ecosystem services and a global forest health crisis. We argue that the forest health crisis is a public good social dilemma and propose a response framework that [...]
Endosymbiosis or Bust: Influence of Ectosymbiosis on Evolution of Obligate Endosymbiosis
Published: 2022-03-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Endosymbiosis, symbiosis in which one symbiont lives inside another, is woven throughout the history of life and the story of its evolution. From the mitochondrion residing in almost every eukaryotic cell to the gut microbiome found in every human, endosymbiosis is a cornerstone of the biological processes that sustain life on Earth. While endosymbiosis is ubiquitous, many questions about its [...]
Keep Your Frenemies Closer: Bacteriophage That Benefit Their Hosts Evolve to be More Temperate
Published: 2022-03-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Bacteriophages, also known as phages, are viruses that infect bacteria. They are found everywhere in nature, playing vital roles in microbiomes and bacterial evolution due to the selective pressure that they place on their hosts. As obligate endosymbionts, phages depend on bacteria for successful reproduction, and either destroy their hosts through lysis or are maintained within the host through [...]
Machine learning pipeline extracts biologically significant data automatically from avian monitoring videos
Published: 2022-03-08
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Measuring parental care behaviour in the wild is central to the study of animal life-history trade-offs, but is often labour and time-intensive. More efficient machine learning-based video processing tools have recently emerged that allow parental nest visit rates to be measured using video cameras and computer processing. Here, we used open-source software to detect movement events from videos [...]
Technical comment on Negative-assortative mating for color in wolves
Published: 2022-03-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Hedrick et al. (2016) reported on "negative-assortative mating for color in wolves" from Yellowstone National Park, the "first documented case of significant negative-assortative mating in mammals." Here I report a logical inconsistency in their population genetic model that effectively imposes selection against some assortatively mating genotype. After pointing out this inconsistency, I derive [...]
Summer temperature – but not growing season length – influences radial growth of Salix arctica in coastal Arctic tundra
Published: 2022-03-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Arctic climate change is leading to an advance of plant phenology (the timing of life history events) with uncertain impacts on tundra ecosystems. Although the lengthening of the growing season is thought to lead to increased plant growth, we have few studies of how plant phenology change is altering tundra plant productivity. Here, we test the correspondence between 14 years of Salix arctica [...]
Overcoming language barriers in academia: machine translation tools and a vision for a multilingual future
Published: 2022-03-07
Subjects: Communication, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Having a central scientific language remains crucial for the advancement and global sharing of science. Nevertheless, maintaining one dominant language also creates barriers to accessing scientific careers and knowledge. From an interdisciplinary perspective, we describe how, when, and why to more readily make scientific literature available in multiple languages through the practice of [...]
Pattern-based identification and mapping of landscape types using multi-thematic data
Published: 2022-03-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Categorical maps of landscape types (LTs) are useful abstractions that simplify spatial and thematic complexity of natural landscapes, thus facilitating land resources management. A local landscape arises from a fusion of patterns of natural themes (such as land cover, landforms, etc.), which makes an unsupervised identification and mapping of LTs difficult. This paper introduces the integrated [...]
How to enhance data FAIRness
Published: 2022-03-04
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences
In recent years, we witnessed an increasing number of funding agencies, scientific journals and scientists agreeing that society and science benefit from open access to research data. Benefits derive mainly from increased access to knowledge for all and improved transparency in academia. However, despite the advances in open science and open data, three significant aspects still need considerable [...]
Long-term trends in seasonality and abundance of three key zooplankters in the upper San Francisco Estuary
Published: 2022-03-02
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Zooplankton provide critical food for threatened and endangered fish species in the San Francisco Estuary (estuary). Reduced food supply has been implicated in the Pelagic Organism Decline of the early 2000s and further changes in zooplankton abundance, seasonality, and distribution may continue to threaten declining fishes. While we have a wealth of monitoring data, we know little about the [...]