Preprints
There are 2238 Preprints listed.
Plio-Pleistocene African megaherbivore losses associated with community biomass restructuring
Published: 2023-06-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution
Fossil abundance data can reveal ecological dynamics underpinning taxonomic declines. Using fossil dental metrics, we reconstructed body mass and mass-abundance distributions in Late Miocene to recent African large mammal communities. Despite collection biases, fossil and extant mass-abundance distributions are highly similar, with unimodal distributions likely reflecting savanna environments. [...]
Language Inclusion in Ecological Systematic Reviews and Maps: Barriers and Perspectives
Published: 2023-06-09
Subjects: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Systematic reviews and systematic maps are considered the most reliable form of research evidence in science, but they often neglect non-English-language literature. Non-English-language literature can provide important evidence, especially in ecological studies, which may also influence findings and alter conclusions. To understand the barriers that might limit authors’ ability or intent to find [...]
Advances in biologging can identify nuanced energetic costs and gains in predators
Published: 2023-06-09
Subjects: Life Sciences
Foraging is a key driver of animal movement patterns, with specific challenges for predators which must search for mobile prey. These patterns are increasingly impacted by global changes, principally in land use and climate. Understanding the degree of flexibility in predator foraging and social strategies is pertinent to wildlife conservation under global change, including potential top-down [...]
Anticoagulant rodenticides are climbing the food chain to the top: a first proof of widespread positivity in grey wolves (Canis lupus)
Published: 2023-06-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
Second-generation Anticoagulant Rodenticides (ARs) can be particularly critical for large carnivores, due to their widespread use and time-delayed impacts on their populations. While many studies explored the impacts of ARs on small and mesocarnivores, no study explored the extent to which they could contaminate large carnivores in anthropized landscapes of Europe. We filled this gap by [...]
Academic publishing requires linguistically inclusive policies
Published: 2023-06-05
Subjects: Biology, International and Intercultural Communication, Scholarly Publishing
Scientific knowledge is produced in multiple languages but is predominantly published in English. This academic publishing practice creates a language barrier to the generation and transfer of scientific knowledge between communities with diverse linguistic backgrounds, hindering the ability of scholars and communities to address global challenges and achieve diversity and equity in science, [...]
Queering ecology: (Re)Constructing ecology as a home to better understand the social-ecological pressures of wildlife
Published: 2023-06-02
Subjects: Arts and Humanities
Homes are intimate spaces where many bodies come together in space and time to deeply learn and understand the many processes that have created one another. Ecology, the study of the relationship between organisms and their environment, is based on the study of a home. Yet, ecologists are trained in patriarchal, heteronormative, and otherwise Western articulations and understandings of nature [...]
Post-fire reference densities for giant sequoia seedlings
Published: 2023-06-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
In some areas burned by recent wildfires, most or all giant sequoias were killed. Sequoia managers wish to know whether post-fire seedling establishment in those areas has been adequate to regenerate the locally extirpated sequoias. To provide a yardstick for interpreting sequoia seedling densities measured after the recent severe wildfires, here we calculate mean seedling densities measured [...]
Welcoming more participation in open data science for the oceans
Published: 2023-05-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Open science is a global movement happening across all research fields. It builds on years of efforts by individual researchers and a broad array of institutions, agencies, and grassroots organizations. Enabled by technology and the open web, the goal is to share knowledge and broaden participation in science, from team formation and early ideation to making intermediate and final research [...]
Predicting Bird Diversity with Lidar-derived Vegetation Structure in an African Savanna
Published: 2023-05-31
Subjects: Life Sciences
Vegetation structural complexity and the diversity of animal communities are closely linked in vegetated ecosystems. These structure-diversity relationships have the potential to be used to predict biodiversity at large spatial scales using remote sensing data. However, structure-diversity relationships may not be generalizable across different ecosystems or even across ecotypes within a single [...]
Trophic interaction models predict interactions across space, not food webs
Published: 2023-05-30
Subjects: Biology
Aim: Trophic interactions are central to our understanding of essential ecosystem functions as well as their stability. Predicting these interactions has become increasingly common due to the lack of empirical data on trophic interactions for most taxa in most ecosystems. We aim to determine whether and how accurately we can extrapolate to new communities both in terms of pairwise predator-prey [...]
The trade-off between vocal learning and dexterity: a balancing act
Published: 2023-05-30
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Behavioral Neurobiology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Uncontroversial evidence of vocal production learning, the capacity to modify vocal output on the basis of experience, is sparsely distributed in the animal kingdom. We suggest that this is in large part due to a trade-off between vocal learning complexity and a much more widely distributed trait—non-vocal dexterity. We argue that given some generally required neural and anatomical conditions for [...]
Predation and biophysical context control long-term carcass nutrient inputs in an Andean ecosystem
Published: 2023-05-30
Subjects: Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Animal carcass decomposition is an often-overlooked component of nutrient cycles. The importance of carcass decomposition for increasing nutrient availability has been demonstrated in several ecosystems, but impacts in arid lands are poorly understood. In a protected high desert landscape in Argentina, puma predation of vicuñas is a main driver of carcass distribution. Here, we sampled puma kill [...]
Context matters when rewilding for climate change
Published: 2023-05-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
There is a cross-sectoral push amongst conservation practitioners to simultaneously mitigate biodiversity loss and climate change, especially as the latter increasingly threatens the former. Growing evidence demonstrates that animals can have substantial impacts on carbon cycling and as such, there are increasing calls to use animal conservation and trophic rewilding to help dually overcome [...]
Breaking the Ice: A Review of Phages in Polar Ecosystems
Published: 2023-05-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Microbiology
Bacteriophages, or phages, are viruses that infect and replicate within bacterial hosts, playing a significant role in regulating microbial populations and ecosystem dynamics. However, phages from extreme environments such as polar regions remain relatively understudied due to challenges like restricted ecosystem access and low biomass. Understanding the diversity, structure, and functions of [...]
Assessing giant sequoia mortality and regeneration following high severity wildfire
Published: 2023-05-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Fire is a critical driver of giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum [Lindl.] Buchholz) regeneration. However, fire suppression combined with the effects of increased temperature and severe drought have resulted in fires of an intensity and size outside of the historical norm. As a result, recent mega-fires have killed a significant portion of the world’s sequoia population (13 to 19%), and [...]