Preprints
There are 2684 Preprints listed.
Untangling the impact of live baitfish restrictions on recreational fishing participation in the United States
Published: 2024-08-29
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
In recent decades, many jurisdictions have established regulations governing the use of live baitfish in recreational fishing. These regulations are usually motivated by environmental concerns, such as the role that live baitfish play in the spread of invasive species and aquatic diseases. One question that might be posed by policymakers is whether limiting the use of live baitfish could impact [...]
Community-ecosystem interactions control plant biodiversity change before and after mangrove restoration.
Published: 2024-08-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Restoring biological diversity and ecosystem function requires understanding how introduced species interact with one another and their environments. The most prevalent and challenging scenarios involve multiple invasive species whose traits feedback through ecosystem processes. However, research into these systems often focuses on either community dynamics or ecosystem properties, rather than [...]
Quantifying Carbon Sequestration and Ecosystem Enhancement Through Novel Phytoplankton Farming Techniques
Published: 2024-08-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Phytoplankton farming emerges as a critical nature-based solution to address the intertwined crises of climate change and marine ecosystem degradation. As foundational drivers of oceanic carbon cycling, phytoplankton generate ~50% of Earth’s oxygen and sequester 10–20 billion metric tons of CO₂ annually through the biological carbon pump . This study develops scalable cultivation techniques to [...]
Rethinking Environmental Impact Assessment for nature positive development
Published: 2024-08-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Achieving nature positive development within existing regulatory frameworks will be challenging. Halting and reversing biodiversity loss requires restoration and enhancement of ecosystems alongside a fundamental shift in how we value biodiversity and assess quantifiable improvements. Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) focussed on mitigating negative impacts do not promote positive outcomes – [...]
Why did the human brain size evolve? A way forward
Published: 2024-08-28
Subjects: Biological and Physical Anthropology, Evolution
Why the human brain size evolved has been a major evolutionary puzzle since Darwin but addressing it has been challenging. A key reason is the lack of research tools to infer the causes of a unique event for which experiments are not possible. We suggest that analogous problems have been successfully addressed in other disciplines using what has been recently termed simulation-based [...]
Thermal performance curves, activity and survival in a free-ranging ectotherm
Published: 2024-08-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physiology
Temperature profoundly influences the distribution and diversity of ectotherms, yet in natural settings, interactions between environmental temperatures, behaviour, physiological function and the influence of these factors on individual survival remain poorly understood. In particular, it is unclear as to how trade-offs between these factors are optimised in wild, free-ranging species. We [...]
Let’s DAG in – How DAGs can help Behavioural Ecology be more transparent
Published: 2024-08-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) are powerful tools for visualizing assumptions/hypothesis and causal inference. Although their use is becoming more widespread across various disciplines, they remain underutilized in behavioural ecology and evolution. Here, we point out why DAGs can serve as highly valuable tools in this field, particularly in the context of observational and field studies, which [...]
Quantifying disturbance effects on ecosystem services in a changing climate
Published: 2024-08-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Disturbances, such as hurricanes, fires, droughts, and pest outbreaks, can cause major changes in ecosystem conditions that threaten nature’s contributions to people (ecosystem services). However, approaches to assess these impacts on diverse services under climate change are rare. To advance such efforts, we build on the accelerating research on disturbance ecology and ecosystem services to [...]
Navigating the complexities of “One Health”
Published: 2024-08-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
For two decades, a One Health approach to managing the emergence of novel zoonotic pathogens has been increasingly called for by the animal and public health sectors. One health systems require the integration of data from wildlife indicator species, domesticated animals, and humans into a framework of monitoring and analysis that provides for early warning of impending pathogen spillover and [...]
Bridging the gap between lab and field sleep studies: a proof of concept for studying wild rats in semi-captive environments.
Published: 2024-08-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Sleep is a vital and universal behavior distinct from mere inactivity, yet its ecological role remains poorly understood due to methodological limitations in recording sleep in the wild. Using a small, low-power biologger, collecting brain activity, body movements, and physiology, we recorded key sleep parameters in wild black rats (Rattus rattus) under semi-captive conditions. We developed a [...]
A toolbox to quantify human activity in protected areas for park management
Published: 2024-08-26
Subjects: Biodiversity
1. Recreation in protected areas (PAs) is growing worldwide, potentially conflicting with wildlife and ecosystem protection. Efficiently estimating human activity in PAs is crucial for balancing a dual mandate of supporting visitor access and biodiversity, but managers lack clear recommendations about how best to monitor spatial and temporal trends in human activity. 2. Through two case [...]
Current knowledge on the novel semiarid photovoltaic ecosystems and their impacts on biodiversity
Published: 2024-08-26
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is fundamental to mitigate the effects of global climate change. Renewable power capacity is increasing globally, and solar photovoltaic will be the dominant renewable energy source by 2050. Photovoltaic parks require great extensions of land, usually in drylands. But both ecosystems created by solar parks and the effect of solar parks [...]
Dormancy in the origin, evolution, and persistence of life on Earth
Published: 2024-08-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Life has existed on Earth for most of the planet's history, yet major gaps and unresolved questions remain about how it first arose and persisted. Early Earth posed numerous challenges, including harsh, noisy, and fluctuating environments. Today, many organisms cope with such conditions by entering a reversible state of reduced metabolic activity, a phenomenon known as dormancy. This process [...]
PPSDB : A Linked Open Data knowledge base for protist-prokaryote symbiotic interactions
Published: 2024-08-26
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences
As the ecological and evolutionary importance of symbiotic interactions between protists (microbial eukaryotes) and prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) is better appreciated, keeping an overview of their diversity and the literature becomes a growing and ongoing challenge. Here we present the Protist-Prokaryote Symbiosis Database (PPSDB), comprising 789 manually curated interaction statements [...]
Experimental comparison of defence behaviour against different avian top predators in an intraguild prey
Published: 2024-08-26
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Ornithology
The loss of top predators has been shown to lead to drastic changes in community structure. An important part of this is the shift in behaviour of other species. The understanding of such changes is scarce because recordings of behavioural reactions towards lost species are rarely done. This is important for predators experiencing predation pressure themselves, known as intraguild predation. [...]