Preprints
There are 2178 Preprints listed.
Gardens as drivers of native plant dispersal and conservation
Published: 2023-08-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Gardens hold untapped potential for participatory biodiversity conservation. Conservation gardening has recently emerged as a way to foster declining native plant species in urban and rural green spaces. But the impact of cultivating these species on population trends in the broader landscape remains underexplored. 2. Here, I study the effects of cultivating herbaceous native plants on [...]
On the trade-off between accuracy and spatial resolution when estimating species occupancy from geographically biased samples
Published: 2023-08-24
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Species occupancy is often defined as the proportion of areal units (sites) in a landscape that the focal species occupies, but it is usually estimated from the subset of sites that have been sampled. Assuming no measurement error, we show that three quantities–the degree of sampling bias (in terms of site selection), the proportion of sites that have been sampled and the variability of [...]
Origin and Evolution of Translation: A Unifying Perspective Across Time
Published: 2023-08-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
Translation is a foundational biological process that decodes genetic information provided by an mRNA template. Over the past decade major advancements have been made towards understanding the origins and early evolution of translation. There remain two critical gaps: First, we lack a coherent view of how translation factors emerged and co-evolved to regulate the cellular protein synthesis. [...]
Family-living and cooperative breeding in birds are associated with the number of avian predators
Published: 2023-08-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Cooperative breeding occurs when individuals contribute parental care to offspring that are not their own. Numerous intra- and inter-specific studies have aimed to explain the evolution of this behaviour. Recent comparative work suggests that family living (i.e., when offspring remain with their parents beyond independence) is a critical steppingstone in the evolution of cooperative breeding. [...]
Relative abundance distributions reveal constraints on tetrapod community diversity
Published: 2023-08-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Evolution
Previous efforts to understand the pace of species diversification through time have disagreed over whether species diversity is unbounded or limited by a carrying capacity. Tetrapods (limbed vertebrates) have frequently been employed as a case-study in examinations of this issue, with studies of diversity being used to support both sides. Here, we examine the shape of relative abundance [...]
Additions and Corrections to the Taxonomy of “Cistanthe arenaria” (Montiaceae)
Published: 2023-08-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
This work provides corrections and additions to a previously published taxonomy of Chilean plants classified as Cistanthe arenaria (Cham.) Carolin ex Hershk. The identity of Calandrinia bracteosa Phil. is discussed. Errors and omissions involving a table, figures and figure captions, and measurement are reported.
DAISIEmainland: an R package for simulating an island-mainland system for macroevolution on islands
Published: 2023-08-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Speciation and extinction of species are two of the most fundamental processes that are investigated in the field of evolutionary biology. Ideally, one would like to study these processes in replicated isolated systems. Islands come close to this setting if colonisation is rare. However, often we cannot directly measure when an island was colonised, when a colonist species speciated, or when [...]
CasPEDIA Database: A Functional Classification System for Class 2 CRISPR-Cas Enzymes
Published: 2023-08-17
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Bioinformatics, Life Sciences
CRISPR-Cas enzymes enable RNA-guided bacterial immunity and are widely used for biotechnological applications including genome editing. In particular, the Class 2 CRISPR-associated enzymes (Cas9, Cas12 and Cas13 families), have been deployed for numerous research, clinical and agricultural applications. However, the immense genetic and biochemical diversity of these proteins in the public domain [...]
On the use of individual-based models in predictive plant ecology
Published: 2023-08-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
The use of IBM may be the only possible method for getting quantitative insights into some dynamical aspects of animal populations with complicated behavior, but this is surely not the case in plant ecology, where relevant plant population models have been formulated and used for decades. In my opinion, credible predictive plant ecological models is most effectively performed using population [...]
The feeding apparatus of ants: An overview of structure and function
Published: 2023-08-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
Ants are a dominant family of eusocial terrestrial insects with a diversity of ecologies, lifestyles and morphologies. Ant diet preferences range from strict carnivory through omnivory to almost complete herbivory in species feeding on seeds or exudates of plant sucking insects. While several studies have investigated ant feeding performance on different substrates, comparatively little is [...]
Feedback loops drive ecological succession; towards a unified conceptual framework
Published: 2023-08-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The core principle shared by most theories and models of succession is that plant-environment (PE) feedback dynamics drive a directional change in the plant community, following a major disturbance. The most commonly studied feedback loops are those in which the regrowth of the plant community causes changes to the biotic (e.g., dispersers) or abiotic (e.g., soil nutrients) environment, which [...]
Botany and Geogenomics: constraining geological hypotheses in the Neotropics with large-scale genetic data derived from plants
Published: 2023-08-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Decades of empirical research have revealed how the geological history of our planet shaped plant evolution by establishing well-known patterns (e.g., how mountain uplift resulted in high rates of diversification and replicate radiations in montane plant taxa). Under this approach, information is passed from geology to botany by interpreting data in light of geological processes. Instead, in this [...]
Paws for thought: Impacts of animal husbandry on tundra greening in High Arctic Svalbard
Published: 2023-08-08
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Dog sledding in High Arctic Svalbard is a key tourist attraction, and the keeping of animals and livestock has historically been in practice in the settlements of the archipelago. The resulting waste disposal practices - particularly those involving the disposal of animal faeces and fodder - hugely enrich soils with excess nutrients. Here, we explore how animal husbandry affected changes in [...]
The unfulfilled potential of dogs in studying behavioural ecology and evolution during the Anthropocene
Published: 2023-08-08
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology
Dogs are an exceptional resource for studying ecological, behavioural and evolutionary processes. However, several widespread misconceptions limit our understanding of dog behaviour and inhibit the use of dogs as model study systems in diverse areas of biological science. These include extensive anthropomorphisation of dog behaviour, a profound bias towards almost exclusively studying pet dogs, a [...]
Leadership in Animal Groups: The Interplay between Individual Traits and Coordination Mechanisms
Published: 2023-08-08
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
In social systems, movement of individual group members scales up to spatiotemporal dynamics of the group. However, the level of influence on group movement dynamics can be variable among group members. The influence of an individual is often referred to as their leadership potential. However, despite the common occurrence of leader-follower patterns across various taxa, little is known whether [...]