Preprints
There are 2629 Preprints listed.
Extra-pair paternity variation in two passerine birds breeding in a gradient of urbanisation
Published: 2023-11-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Urbanisation has been increasing worldwide in recent decades, driving environmental change and exerting novel selective pressures on wildlife. Phenotypic differences between urban and rural individuals have been widely documented in several taxa. However, the extent to which urbanisation impacts mating strategies is less known. Here, we inferred extra-pair paternity variation in nestbox-breeding [...]
Decomposing social environment effects on eco-evolutionary dynamics: from density regulation to frequency-dependent selection
Published: 2023-11-08
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The density and frequencies of interacting phenotypes create a type of environment which affects both phenotypic selection and population growth. Fluctuations in population density create temporal variation in population mean fitness, driving population dynamics, while fluctuations in phenotypic frequencies create variation in the relative fitness of phenotypes through frequency-dependent [...]
Refining the trophic diversity, ecological network structure, and bottom-up importance of prey groups for temperate reef fishes
Published: 2023-11-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Marine fish communities are highly diverse, including all trophic levels of consumers and contributing to many ecosystem processes. Understanding the specific functional roles of many fish species and the importance of different prey groups for sustaining fish communities has, however, been limited by the historical classification of fishes into a few coarse trophic guilds. Using detailed diet [...]
The economics of nature’s healing touch: A systematic review and conceptual framework of green space, pharmaceutical prescriptions, and healthcare expenditure associations
Published: 2023-11-07
Subjects: Epidemiology
Green spaces play a crucial role in promoting sustainable and healthy lives. Recent evidence shows that green space also may reduce the need for healthcare, prescription medications, and associated costs. This systematic review provides the first comprehensive assessment of the available literature examining green space exposure and its associations with healthcare prescriptions and expenditures. [...]
Comparative life-history responses of lacewings to changes in temperature
Published: 2023-11-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Insects play a crucial role in all ecosystems, and are increasingly exposed to higher in temperature extremes under climate change, which can have substantial effects on their abundances. However, the effects of temperature on changes in abundances or population fitness are filtered through differential responses of life-history components, such as survival, reproduction, and development, to [...]
Darwin’s road not taken: white sclera, shared intentionality, niche construction, predator fear, teams and Homo origins
Published: 2023-11-04
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Evolution, Neuroscience and Neurobiology
Palaeoanthropologists have yet to pinpoint how Homo evolved from Australopithecus. I propose niche construction ending predator ambush and stalking attacks, white sclera, and ultrafast team cognition were key. Human white sclera allows the quick, distant detection of line-of-sight. This is unique. In other primates, predators eliminate conspicuous-eyed individuals. Consequently, nonhuman [...]
Sharing the burden: Cabbage stem flea beetle pest pressure and crop damage are lower in rapeseed fields surrounded by other rapeseed crops
Published: 2023-11-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The cabbage stem flea beetle (Psylliodes chrysocephala) is a significant pest of rapeseed (Brassica napus). Feeding by adult P. chrysocephala can cause severe leaf damage and larval infestation can reduce stem strength, both of which impact crop growth and development, causing substantial yield losses and economic damage. The structure of the agricultural landscape can regulate herbivorous pest [...]
Signatures of global processes shaping the structure of microbial co-occurrence networks
Published: 2023-11-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences
Co-occurrence networks offer insights into the complexity of microbial interactions, particularly in highly diverse environments where direct observation is challenging. However, identifying the scale at which local and non-local processes structure co-occurrence networks remains challenging because it requires simultaneously analyzing network structure within and between local networks. In this [...]
The behavioural costs of overcrowding for gregarious cave-dwelling bats
Published: 2023-11-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Bats are known for their gregarious social behaviour, often congregating in caves and underground habitats, where they play a pivotal role in providing various ecosystem services. Studying bat behaviour remains an underexplored aspect of bat ecology and conservation despite its ecological importance. 2. We explore the costs and impacts of overcrowding on bat social behaviour. This study [...]
Decoupling both local and global abundance from global range size: challenging the abundance-occupancy relationship in birds
Published: 2023-11-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
In macroecology, a classic empirical observation has been positive relationships between local abundance and species' range, known as the abundance-occupancy relationships (AORs). The existence of this empirical relationship has informed both theory development and applied questions. Notably, the spatial neutral model of biodiversity predicts AORs. Yet, based on the largest known meta-analysis of [...]
Endocrine flexibility can facilitate or constrain the ability to cope with global change.
Published: 2023-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Global climate change has increased average environmental temperatures world-wide, simultaneously intensifying temperature variability and extremes. Growing numbers of studies have documented phenological, behavioral, and morphological responses to climate change in wild populations. As systemic signals, hormones can contribute to orchestrating many of these phenotypic changes. Yet little is [...]
Industrial fishing compliance with a new marine corridor near the Galapagos Islands
Published: 2023-10-30
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Examining fishing pressure in under-resourced marine regions still presents a challenge to understanding patterns of fishing pressure. These issues are compounded in areas with complex marine zoning regulations or those that have changed over time. Satellite-based positioning tracking of fishing vessels has helped identify ocean-wide fishing effort distribution and potential encroachments into [...]
The dispersal potential of endangered plants versus non-native garden escapees
Published: 2023-10-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Amidst global challenges like climate change, plant dispersal corridors are essential. In human-dominated landscapes, urban and rural green spaces are key dispersal avenues. Non-native plants are known to benefit from these, yet the potential benefits for endangered plants remain unclear. To address this question, I compared dispersal traits of endangered native plants with those of [...]
Patterns and drivers of population trends on individual Breeding Bird Survey routes using spatially explicit models and route-level covariates
Published: 2023-10-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Population Biology, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
Spatial patterns in population trends, particularly those at fine geographic scales, can help better understand the factors driving population change in North American birds. The standard trend models for the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) were designed to estimate changes in relative abundance through time (trend) within broad geographic strata, such as countries, Bird Conservation [...]
Multifaceted density dependence: Social structure and seasonality effects on Serengeti lion demography
Published: 2023-10-27
Subjects: Population Biology
Interactions between density and environmental conditions have important effects on vital rates and consequently on population dynamics and can take complex pathways in species whose demography is strongly influenced by social context, such as the African lion, Panthera leo. In populations of such species, the response of vital rates to density can vary depending on the social structure (e.g., [...]