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Preprints

There are 2179 Preprints listed.

Nature exposure and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: A Navigation Guide systematic review with meta-analysis

Muhammad Mainuddin Patwary, Mondira Bardhan, Asma Safia Disha, et al.

Published: 2023-02-18
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Previous reviews concluded that nature contact was an important coping strategy against poor mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the quality of evidence in these reviews was not sufficiently documented in terms of the risk of bias in reviewed studies. We attempted to fill this gap with a Navigation Guide systematic review and meta-analyses on the associations between nature [...]

High Survival and Percentages of Giraffe Calves Signal Areas in Need of Protection

Constance Dustin Becker, Petra Elisabeth Campbell, Leslie Ann Kadane, et al.

Published: 2023-02-17
Subjects: Life Sciences

We surveyed endangered Masai giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis tippelskirchi) at Oloirien Group Ranch (OGR) and Oloisukut Conservancy (OC) in Kenya to determine their conservation potential. Here, Maasai settlements, livestock, and predator control result in lion densities less than half that of adjacent protected areas. Using surveys and photographic mark-recapture (PMR), we annually calculated [...]

Kinematics and behaviour in fish escape responses: guidelines for conducting, analysing, and reporting experiments

Dominique Roche, Eric D Tytell, Paolo Domenici

Published: 2023-02-16
Subjects: Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences

Work carried out since the late 70s has provided key insights into the comparative biomechanics, kinematics, behaviour, and neurobiology of fish escape responses. With environmental change expected to affect the physiology and biomechanics of aquatic ectotherms, there is a growing interest in understanding how environmental stressors impact the swimming performance and behaviour of fishes during [...]

Prestige bias in cultural evolutionary dynamics

Saar Egozi, Yoav Ram

Published: 2023-02-16
Subjects: Evolution, Life Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology

If the traits of more successful individuals are more likely to be adopted, the resulting cultural transmission is described as being success-biased. Prestige may be used as a proxy for success. Here, we model prestige bias as a combination of indirect success bias and influence bias, the latter meaning that the choice of a role-model depends on the number of individuals that have already copied [...]

Two-step CRISPR-Cas9 protocol for transposable element deletion in D. melanogaster natural populations

Miriam Merenciano, Laura Aguilera, Josefa Gonzalez

Published: 2023-02-15
Subjects: Life Sciences

This protocol generates a precise deletion of a transposable element (TE) in a natural population of Drosophila melanogaster using two steps of CRISPR-Cas9 homology-directed repair. In the first step, the TE is replaced by a fluorescent marker, while in the second CRISPR-Cas9 step the fluorescence marker is removed to avoid any possible effect of the introduced marker sequence. This two-step [...]

Heritability and age-dependent changes in genetic variation of telomere length in a wild house sparrow population

Heung Ying Janet Chik, Aaron Sibma, Maria-Elena Mannarelli, et al.

Published: 2023-02-13
Subjects: Evolution

Telomeres are a popular biomarker of senescence, as telomere dynamics are linked with survival and lifespan. However, the evolutionary potential of telomere dynamics, and the selection pattern that gives rise to senescence, are not well known. To better understand this, it is necessary to quantify genetic variation in telomere length, and how such variation changes with age. Here, we analysed a [...]

USE it: uniformly sampling pseudo-absences within the environmental space for applications in habitat suitability models

Daniele Da Re, Enrico Tordoni, Jonathan Lenoir, et al.

Published: 2023-02-13
Subjects: Life Sciences

1. Habitat suitability models infer the geographical distribution of species using occurrence data and environmental variables. While data on species presence are increasingly accessible, the difficulty to confirm real absences in the field often forces researchers to generate them in silico. To this aim, pseudo-absences are commonly randomly sampled across the study area (i.e., the geographical [...]

Remarks on an approach to study flocking phenomenon in animals

Francois Gerard

Published: 2023-02-12
Subjects: Animal Studies, Neuroscience and Neurobiology

In theoretical discussions of the potential effects of collective interactions in such biological systems, statistical physics principles and methodologies have been applied. In order to enhance their capacity for collective computation, it has been suggested that such collective systems should function close to a phase transition, specifically a (pseudo-)critical point. This paper will [...]

Environmental insults and compensative responses: when microbiome meets cancer

Sunil Nagpal, Sharmila S. Mande

Published: 2023-02-12
Subjects: Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Organismal Biological Physiology, Other Microbiology, Pathogenic Microbiology

Tumor microenvironment has recently been ascribed a new hallmark – the polymorphic microbiome. Accumulating evidence regarding the tissue specific territories of tumor-microbiome have opened new and interesting avenues. A pertinent question is regarding the functional consequence of the meeting of the host-microbiome with cancer. Given microbial communities have predominantly been explored [...]

Disentangling human nature: Anthropological reflections on evolution, zoonoses and ethnographic investigations

Luis Gregorio Abad Espinoza

Published: 2023-02-12
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Human nature is a puzzling matter that must be analysed through a holistic lens. In this commentary, I foray into anthropology's biosocial dimensions to underscore that human relations span from microorganisms to global commodities. I argue that the future of social-cultural anthropology depends on the integration of evolutionary theory for its advancement. Ultimately, since the likelihood of [...]

Keep your cool: Overwintering physiology in response to urbanization in the acorn ant, Temnothorax curvispinosus

Eric Grant Prileson, Jordan Clark, Sarah E Diamond, et al.

Published: 2023-02-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences

Winter presents a challenge for survival, yet temperate ectotherms have remarkable physiological adaptations to cope with low-temperature conditions. Under recent climate change, rather than strictly relaxing pressure on overwintering survival, warmer winters can instead disrupt these low-temperature trait-environment associations, with negative consequences for populations. While there is [...]

Statistical methods to identify mechanisms in studies of eco-evolutionary dynamics

Jelena Holly Pantel, Lutz Becks

Published: 2023-02-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

While the reciprocal effects of ecological and evolutionary dynamics are increasingly recognized as an important driver for biodiversity, detection of such eco-evolutionary feedbacks, their underlying mechanisms, and their consequences remains challenging. Eco-evolutionary dynamics occur at different spatial and temporal scales and can leave signatures at different levels of organization (e.g., [...]

A novel method for measuring acute thermal tolerance in fish embryos

Zara-Louise Cowan, Anna H. Andreassen, Jeremy de Bonville, et al.

Published: 2023-02-07
Subjects: Life Sciences

1. Aquatic ectotherms are particularly vulnerable to thermal stress, with certain life stages (embryos) predicted to be more sensitive than others (juveniles and adults). When examining the vulnerability of species and life stages to warming, it is particularly important to use appropriate and comparable methodology so that robust conclusions can be obtained. Critical thermal methodology (CTM) is [...]

What acoustic telemetry can and can’t tell us about fish biology

David M.P. Jacoby, Adam T Piper

Published: 2023-02-07
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Zoology

Acoustic telemetry (AT) has become ubiquitous in aquatic monitoring and fish biology, conservation and management. Since the early use of active ultrasonic tracking that required researchers to follow at a distance their species of interest, the field has diversified considerably with exciting advances in both hydrophone and transmitter technology. Once a highly specialised methodology however, [...]

Lags in the response of plant assemblages to global warming depends on temperature-change velocity

Laura Camila Pacheco Riaño, Fride Høistad Schei, Suzette G. A. Flantua, et al.

Published: 2023-02-06
Subjects: Life Sciences

Aim: Current global warming is driving changes in biological assemblages by increasing the number of thermophilic species while reducing the number of cold-adapted species, leading to thermophilization of these assemblages. However, there is increasing evidence that thermophilization might not keep pace with global warming, resulting in thermal lags. Here, we quantify the magnitude of thermal [...]

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