Preprints
There are 2238 Preprints listed.
Geographic, seasonal and ontogenetic variations of δ15N and δ13C of Japanese sardine explained by baseline variations and diverse fish movements
Published: 2023-04-05
Subjects: Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Understanding and predicting variability in the stable isotope ratios of nitrogen and carbon (δ15N and δ13C, respectively) of small pelagic fish is crucial to enable isotopic studies of a variety of marine predators that feed on them. However, because the isotope ratios reflect plastic feeding habits and fish migration in addition to baseline variation, their predictions require a mechanistic [...]
Replicated radiations in the South American Marsh Pitcher Plants (Heliamphora) lead to convergent carnivorous trap morphologies
Published: 2023-04-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
The evolution of carnivorous pitcher traps across multiple angiosperm lineages represents a classic example of morphological convergence. Nevertheless, no comparative study to-date has examined pitcher evolution from a quantitative morphometric perspective. In the present study, we used comparative morphometric approaches to quantify the shape space occupied by Heliamphora pitchers and to trace [...]
Litter quality outweighs climate as a driver of decomposition across the tundra biome
Published: 2023-03-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Considerable uncertainty exists regarding the strength, direction and relative importance of the drivers of decomposition in the tundra biome, partly due to a lack of coordinated decomposition field studies in this remote environment. Here, we analysed 3717 incubations of two uniform litter types, green and rooibos tea, buried at 330 circum-Arctic and alpine sites to quantify the effects of [...]
Evolution of chemodiversity - From verbal to quantitative models
Published: 2023-03-28
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Plants harbour an astonishing amount of chemodiversity, i.e., diversity of specialized metabolites, at different scales. For instance, individual plants can produce a large number of different specialized metabolites and individuals in a population can differ in their metabolite composition. Given the ecological and economic importance of plant chemodiversity, it is important to understand how it [...]
The controversial origins of war and peace: apes, foragers, and human evolution
Published: 2023-03-28
Subjects: Biological and Physical Anthropology, Other Anthropology, Other Psychology
The role of warfare in human evolution is among the most contentious topics in the evolutionary sciences. The debate is especially heated because many assume that whether our evolutionary ancestors were peaceful or warlike has important implications for modern human nature. One side argues that warfare has a deep evolutionary history, possible dating to the last common ancestor of bonobos, [...]
Multilevel allometric growth equations improve accuracy of carbon monitoring during forest restoration.
Published: 2023-03-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences
Managing disturbed forests for climate mitigation and biodiversity requires monitoring the carbon (C) cycle consequences of replacing established exotic vegetation with native seedlings. Standard approaches rely on allometric growth equations with unexplored limitations for measuring C changes during restoration. Most plants lack species-specific allometric growth equations, which may perform [...]
Developing systems theory in soil agroecology: Incorporating heterogeneity and dynamic instability
Published: 2023-03-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Applied Mathematics, Biogeochemistry, Biology, Dynamic Systems, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Soil Science, Sustainability
Ecosystem management is integral to the future of soils, yet anthropogenic drivers represent a key source of uncertainty in ecosystem models. First- and new-generation soil models formulate many soil pools using first-order decomposition, which tends to generate simpler yet numerous parameters. Systems or complexity theory, developed across various scientific and social fields, may help improve [...]
Bacterial Subcellular Architecture, Structural Epistasis, and Antibiotic Resistance
Published: 2023-03-21
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
Epistasis refers to how genetic interactions between some genetic loci affect phenotypes and fitness. In this study, we propose the concept “structural epistasis” to emphasize the role of the variable physical interactions between molecules located at particular spaces inside the bacterial cell in the emergence of novel phenotypes. The architecture of the bacterial cell (typically a [...]
Breaking down microbial hierarchies
Published: 2023-03-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Microbiology
Microbial communities that degrade natural polysaccharides are thought to have a hierarchical organization and one-way positive interactions from higher to lower trophic levels. Daniels et al. have recently shown that reciprocal interactions between trophic levels can occur and that these interactions change over the duration of a batch culture.
Allelopathy-selected microbiomes mitigate chemical inhibition of plant performance
Published: 2023-03-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Plant Biology
Allelopathy is a common and important stressor that shapes plant communities and can alter soil microbiomes, yet little is known about the direct effects of allelochemical addition on bacterial and fungal communities or the potential for allelochemical-selected microbiomes to mediate plant performance responses, especially in habitats naturally structured by allelopathy. Here we present the first [...]
Fragmentation disrupts microbial effects on native plant community productivity
Published: 2023-03-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences
1. Anthropogenic habitat fragmentation – the breaking up of natural landscapes – is a pervasive threat to biodiversity and ecosystem function worldwide. Fragmentation results in a mosaic of remnant native habitat patches embedded in human-modified habitat known as the “matrix”. By introducing novel environmental conditions in matrix habitats and reducing connectivity of native habitats, [...]
Partitioning variance in population growth for models with environmental and demographic stochasticity
Published: 2023-03-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
1. How demographic factors lead to variation or change in growth rates can be investigated using life table response experiments (LTRE) based on structured population models. Traditionally, LTREs focused on decomposing the asymptotic growth rate, but more recently decompositions of annual ‘realized’ growth rates have gained in popularity. 2. Realized LTREs have been used particularly to [...]
Spatial factors overcome seasonality in increasing the consumption of allochthonous food resources by fishes from tropical lotic ecosystems
Published: 2023-03-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. In lotic ecosystems, it is expected higher availability of allochthonous food resources during floods and rainfall events, which may yield a higher consumption of these resources by consumers. However, both the allochthonous input in aquatic ecosystems and seasonality in environmental conditions are locally dependent, thus dietary responses of freshwater consumers to seasonality should also be [...]
Beyond single-species models: leveraging multispecies forecasts to navigate the dynamics of ecological predictability
Published: 2023-03-13
Subjects: Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Multivariate Analysis, Population Biology, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
Forecasting the responses of natural populations to environmental change is a key priority in the management of ecological systems. This is challenging because the dynamics of multispecies ecological communities are influenced by many factors. Populations can exhibit complex, nonlinear responses to environmental change, often over multiple temporal lags. In addition, biotic interactions, and [...]
Prophage mediated control of higher order interactions - insights from systems approaches
Published: 2023-03-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Prophages, latent viral elements residing in bacterial genomes impact bacterial ecology and evolution in diverse ways. Do these prophage-mediated effects extend beyond the prophage-bacterium relationship? Here, I summarize the latest advances exploring how the impact of prophages are transmitted through multiple levels with potential impacts on ecosystem stability and functioning. The diverse [...]