Preprints
There are 2544 Preprints listed.
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, [...]
Climatic Variability Shapes Plasticity of Hydric and Thermal Physiology in Tropical Geckos
Published: 2024-06-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
Phenotypic plasticity in reptiles is a key mechanism enabling individuals to maintain and optimize physiological responses to changing environments. The ability to adjust metabolic rates and thermal physiology in response to seasonal changes is known to be central to the physiological ecology of some reptiles, but less is known about reptiles’ ability to exhibit seasonal flexibility in rates of [...]
Gehyra Geckos Prioritise Warm Over Humid Environments
Published: 2024-06-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
Maintaining stable hydric and thermal states are dual challenges for reptiles that inhabit terrestrial environments with variable conditions across time and space. Under some conditions, reptiles face a conundrum where both physiological parameters cannot be simultaneously maintained at optimal states by behavioural or physiological means. Prioritisation of behavioural regulation of hydric or [...]
Climate Does Not Predict Thermal and Hydric Traits in Northern Australian Geckos
Published: 2024-06-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Reptiles are challenged with maintaining stable hydric states and viable body temperatures in a variable terrestrial environment. Reptiles can use behaviour to select favourable microhabitats as well as physiological adaptations, such as increased skin resistance to water loss to regulate their hydric and thermal states. The degree to which a species’ physiology is adapted to overcome [...]
Predator activity, proactive anti-predator strategies, and nesting phenology produce a dynamic landscape of risk to tundra goose reproduction
Published: 2024-06-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Birds generally rely on proactive anti-predator strategies when selecting nest sites, as they have limited options to adapt to changing levels of risk once incubation begins. Arctic waterfowl often nest colonially as an anti-predator strategy but dispersed-breeding species may use other proactive strategies, such as nesting in areas perceived to be safer. However, empirical links between [...]
Biodiversity indicators miss local and short-term change: A blank space waiting to be filled
Published: 2024-06-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The year 2030 is rapidly approaching. Building, monitoring, and reporting indicators to evaluate the 2030 targets in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is a major challenge that requires, at minimum, nations to assess their progress at least once within the next five years. To effectively capture this progress, we need indicators that capture fast-paced, on-the-ground [...]
Did organs precede organisms in the dawn of life?
Published: 2024-06-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Evolutionary processes acting on molecule populations and their assemblies preceded the origin of living organisms. These prebiotic world entities were (re)produced; that is, independently produced by the assembly of their components, following an iterative process giving rise to identical entities, recalling the progeny resulting from self-reproduction. Before the dawn of life, natural selection [...]
The promise of community-driven preprints in ecology and evolution
Published: 2024-06-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Publishing preprints is quickly becoming commonplace in ecology and evolutionary biology. Preprints can facilitate the rapid sharing of scientific knowledge establishing precedence and enabling feedback from the research community before peer review. Yet, significant barriers to preprint use exist including language barriers, a lack of understanding about the benefits of preprints and a lack of [...]
Sedimentary ancient DNA reveals Neolithic pastoralism and plant community interactions at Southern European high altitudes
Published: 2024-06-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
The Neolithization process introduced significant ecological impacts, especially in Mediterranean mountain areas. We generated a comprehensive sedimentary ancient DNA record from the central Pyrenees, spanning 12.2 to 1.3 ka BP, revealing the earliest continuous presence of sheep (6.5 ka BP) and cattle (5.9 ka BP) in alpine southern Europe. This evidence suggests pastoralism nearly concurred with [...]
Hydrological fluctuations determine predator-prey interactions in a semi-arid non-perennial river
Published: 2024-06-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Predator-prey interactions in highly dynamic ecosystems such as non-perennial rivers and streams (NPRs) are relevant to understanding the effects of fragmentation and reshaping of aquatic habitat structure in interspecific relationships. In this context, our study offers a temporal snapshot of predator-prey interaction dynamics across different hydrological phases in an NPR. We sampled along 1.15 [...]
The "Conhecimento Brasil" Program neglects the structural problems of Brazilian science and fails to offer a solution to the brain drain
Published: 2024-06-12
Subjects: Science and Technology Studies
We, a group of Brazilian scientists residing abroad in diverse career stages, are writing in response to CNPq’s recent announcement of the "Talent Repatriation Program - Conhecimento Brasil," (see Morimoto 2024). We discuss our impressions and suggestions to align the proposal with what the program aims to achieve.
Trophic generalism in the winter moth: a model system for phenological mismatch
Published: 2024-06-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate change has the potential to disrupt phenological synchrony among interacting species that vary in their phenological sensitivity to temperature. The phenological synchrony observed between winter moth Operophtera brumata caterpillars and oak leafing in spring has become an emblematic test case of this phenomenon, with caterpillars seemingly advancing their phenology more than their [...]
Quantifying life-history trade-offs in diameter growth for tropical tree species from a large urban inventory dataset
Published: 2024-06-11
Subjects: Forest Biology, Forest Management, Horticulture, Integrative Biology, Plant Biology, Population Biology
Trees are important ecosystem service providers that improve the physical environment and human experience in cities throughout the world. Since the ecosystem services and maintenance requirements of urban trees change as they grow in time, predictive models of tree growth rates are useful to forecast societal benefits and maintenance costs over a tree’s lifetime. However, many models to date are [...]