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The best of two worlds: using stacked generalization for integrating expert range maps in species distribution models bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-18 Julian Oeser, Damaris Zurell, Frieder Mayer, Emrah Coraman, Niya Toshkova, Stanimira Deleva, Ioseb Natradze, Petr Benda, Astghik Ghazaryan, Sercan Irmak, Nijat Alisafa Hasanov, Gulnar Gahraman Guliyeva, Mariya Gritsina, Tobias Kuemmerle
Species distribution models (SDMs) are powerful tools for assessing suitable habitat across large areas and at fine spatial resolution. Yet, the usefulness of SDMs for mapping species realized distributions is often limited, since data biases or missing information on dispersal barriers or biotic interactions hinder them from accurately delineating species range limits. One way to overcome this limitation
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Growth parameters of the clupeids Limnothrissa miodon and Stolothrissa tanganicae in northern Lake Tanganyika (Bujumbura sub-basin) bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-17 Mulimbwa T. N'Sibula, Cesc Gordó-Vilaseca, Leona J. M. Milec, Deepti M. Patel, Alidor Kankonda Busanga, Jean-Claude Micha, Jouko Sarvala, Joost A. M. Raeymaekers
The analysis of growth parameters in fish stocks, such as the asymptotic length (Linf) and the curvature parameter (K) is crucial for the estimation of production rates and total mortality rates in fisheries management. Here, we estimated the growth parameters of the clupeids Limnothrissa miodon and Stolothrissa tanganicae in the northern part of Lake Tanganyika (Bujumbura sub-basin). Both species
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Functional phases encode the response of the soil microbiome to environmental change bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-17 Kiseok Keith Lee, Siqi Liu, Kyle Crocker, David R. Huggins, Mikhail Tikhonov, Madhav Mani, Seppe Kuehn
A major challenge in microbiome research is understanding how natural communities respond to environmental change. The ecological, spatial, and chemical complexity of soils makes understanding how these communities respond metabolically to perturbations particularly challenging. Here we measure the dynamics of respiratory nitrate utilization in >1,500 soil microcosms from 20 soil samples subjected
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Variability and correlations among vital rates and their influence on population growth in mule and black-tailed deer bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-17 Joel S Ruprecht, Tavis Forrester, Darren Clark, Michael Wisdom, Joshua Smith, Taal Levi
To reverse observed range-wide population declines, managers of mule and black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus) require information on the vital rates and life stages that are most influential to population growth for which to target management actions. We conducted a range-wide literature review and used hierarchical models to provide biological descriptions of mule and black-tailed deer vital rates
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Microbial utilisation of maize rhizodeposits applied to an agricultural soil at a range of concentrations bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-16 Daniela Niedeggen, Lioba Rueger, Eva Oburger, Michael Santangeli, Mutez Ahmed, Doris Vetterlein, Sergey Blagodatsky, Michael Bonkowski
Rhizodeposition fuels carbon (C) and nutrient cycling in soil. However, the dynamics of microbial growth on rhizodeposits in relation to the distance from the root have not been well studied. This study investigates microbial growth on individual organic components of rhizodeposits and on maize root-derived exudates and mucilage from an agricultural soil. By creating a gradient of substrate concentrations
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Thermal environment and ecological interactions modulate the importance of evolution in response to warming bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-16 Cara A. Faillace, Soraya Álvarez-Codesal, Alexandre Garreau, Elvire Bestion, José M. Montoya
Understanding the interaction between evolutionary history, the current abiotic environment, and biotic interactions is critical for a more nuanced understanding of the response of communities to anthropogenic stressors. We leveraged a long term experiment manipulating temperature in mesocosms containing communities of phytoplankton and zooplankton to examine how evolution in response to long-term
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First concrete documentation for presence of Aedes (Stegomyia) albopictus in Bolivia: Dispelling previous anecdotes bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-16 Frédéric Lardeux, Philippe Boussès, Rosenka Tejerina, Audric Berger, Christian Barnabé, Lineth Garcia
Background: The presence of Aedes albopictus in Bolivia has been a subject of controversy, lacking concrete documentation until now. Objectives: This study aimed to furnish evidence of Ae. albopictus presence in Bolivia. Methods: Larval breeding sites were sampled in two northern Bolivian localities, Rosario del Yata and San Agustin, both situated in the Beni department within the Vaca Diez province
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Extreme temperatures impede the release success of captive-bred avian scavengers bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-16 Nili Anglister, Marta Acacio, Gideon Vaadia, Eitam Arnon Arnon, Michael Bruer Bruer, Ohad Hatzofe, Ygal Miller, Roni King, Noa Pinter-Wollman, Orr Spiegel
Conservation translocations (reinforcements and reintroductions) are central for managing various endangered species, yet, their implementation is logistically and financially challenging. Because many translocations fail due to the mortality of released individuals, identifying and preventing these factors is crucial. Here we examine risk factors affecting the post-release survival of the Griffon
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Advancing marker-gene-based methods for prokaryote-mediated multifunctional redundancy: exploring random and nonrandom extinctions in a watershed bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-16 Wan-Hsuan Cheng, Takeshi Miki, Motohiro Ido, Kinuyo Yoneya, Kazuaki Matsui, Taichi Yokokawa, Hiroki Yamanaka, Shin-ichi Nakano
Multifunctional redundancy, the extent of loss in multiple ecosystem functions with decreasing biodiversity, stands as a crucial index for evaluating ecosystem resilience to environmental changes. We aimed to refine a marker-gene-based methodology for quantifying multifunctional redundancy in prokaryotic communities. Using PICRUSt2, we predicted KEGG orthologs (KOs) for each Amplicon Sequence Variant
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Multisystemic inflammatory disease in Pheasantshell (Unionidae, Actinonaias pectorosa) associated with Yokenella regensburgei infection at sites experiencing seasonal mass mortality events bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-16 Jeronimo Gomes Da Silva Neto, Rebecca H Hardman, Augustin C Engman, Gerald R Dinkins, Timothy Lane, Michael M Fry, Christian R Rines, Amber Bisenieks, Sree Rajeev, Michelle M Dennis
Freshwater mussels are integral components of riverine ecosystems, influencing water quality, nutrient cycling, and habitat characteristics. Enigmatic freshwater mussel declines, often characterized by sudden mass mortality events, pose significant challenges to conservation efforts. The Clinch River, a freshwater biodiversity hotspot, has experienced several enigmatic mass mortality events since 2016
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Olfaction in Tephritidae: a balance between detection and discrimination bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Gaëlle Ramiaranjatovo, Maud Charlery de la Masselière, Teun Dekker, Pierre-François Duyck, Sebastian Larsson Herrera, Bernard Reynaud, Vincent Jacob
Phytophagous insects are capable of detecting and locating suitable hosts, which emit volatile compounds. Polyphagous species appear to have a complex olfactory strategy given that their numerous hosts have diverse emission profiles. In particular, their hosts' volatile emissions share some of the same compounds, providing chemical bridges between them. However, the behavioural plasticity observed
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The host genotype actively shapes its microbiome across generations bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Laurentiu Benga, Anna Rehm, Christina Gougoula, Philipp Westhoff, Thorsten Wachtmeister, W. Peter M. Benten, Eva Engelhardt, Andreas P.M. Weber, Karl Koehrer, Martin Sager, Stefan Janssen
The microbiome greatly affects health and wellbeing. Evolutionarily, it is doubtful that a host would rely on chance alone to pass on microbial colonization to its offspring. However, the literature currently offers inconclusive evidence regarding two alternative hypotheses: active microbial shaping by host genetic factors or transmission of a microbial maternal legacy. To untangle the influence of
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Disentangling the effects of eutrophication and natural variability on macrobenthic communities across French coastal lagoons bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Auriane G Jones, Gauthier Schaal, Aurelien Boye, Marie Creemers, Valerie Derolez, Nicolas Desroy, Annie Fiandrino, Theophile L Mouton, Monique Simier, Niamh Smith, Vincent Ouisse
Coastal lagoons are transitional ecosystems that host a unique diversity of species and support many ecosystem services. Owing to their position at the interface between land and sea, they are also subject to increasing human impacts, which alter their ecological functioning. Because coastal lagoons are naturally highly variable in their environmental conditions, disentangling the effects of anthropogenic
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In sickness and in health: RNA-Seq finds viruses associated with mutualist quality in the Amazonian plant-ant Allomerus octoarticulatus bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-15 María C Tocora, Christopher Reid, Jesse Huisken, Haoran Xue, Megan E Frederickson
Ant-plant symbioses are classic examples of mutualism in which ant "bodyguards" defend myrmecophytic plants against enemies in exchange for nest sites and often food. We used RNA-Seq to profile the transcriptomes of Allomerus octoarticulatus ant workers, which aggressively defend the Amazonian plant Cordia nodosa against herbivores, but to varying degrees. Field behavioral assays with herbivores in
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Nutrient loading from a sustainably certified aquaculture operation dwarfs annual nutrient inputs from a large multi-use watershed, Lake Yojoa, Honduras bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Jemma Fadum, Matthew Ross, Erika Tenorio, Casey Barby, Ed Hall
Net-pen aquaculture is a popular and increasingly prevalent method for producing large quantities of low-fat protein in freshwater ecosystems across the tropics. While there are numerable social and economic advantages associated with aquaculture, there are also challenges related to the environmental sustainability of aquaculture. Chief among these risks is excessive nutrient loading which can drive
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Causal inference with observational data and unobserved confounding variables bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Jarrett E. K. Byrnes, Laura E Dee
As ecology tackles progressively larger problems, we have begun to move beyond the scale at which we can conduct experiments to derive causal inferences. Randomized controlled experiments have long been seen as the gold standard for quantifying causal effects in ecological systems. In contrast, observational data, though available at larger scales, has primarily been used to either explore ideas derived
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Czech Republic butterfly barcoding reveals that distribution of genetic lineages depends on species traits bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Alena Suchackova Bartonova, Patrik Skopek, Martin Konvicka, Jiri Benes, Lukas Spitzer, Claudio Sbaraglia, Vladimir Vrabec, Jana Papp Maresova, Hana Konvickova, Zdenek Faltynek Fric
Aim: The distribution of within-species lineages has been affected by Quaternary climate changes, and population differentiation has been influenced by species life histories. We investigated whether the distribution of individual mitochondrial genetic lineages reflects the constituent species traits. Using the functionally diverse group of butterflies, we examined which lineages are present in Central
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Soil viruses reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote microbial necromass accrual bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Xiaolong Liang, Shiyu Sun, Yujun Zhong, Ying Zhang, Shuo Wang, Yongfeng Wang, Ninghui Xie, Lu Yang, Mark Radosevich
Viral-induced microbial mortality has been proposed as a major contributor in shaping microbial community structure and function, soil carbon (C) accrual and mobilization of plant available nutrients. Yet, how soil viruses influence soil organic C (SOC) turnover and sequestration remains unknown. Here, we performed microcosm experiments with two distinct soils from grassland (GL) and agricultural (AG)
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Effect of spatial overdispersion on confidence intervals for population density estimated by spatial capture-recapture bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Murray Grant Efford, David Fletcher
Spatially explicit capture-recapture models are used widely to estimate the density of animal populations. The population is represented by an inhomogeneous Poisson process, where each point is the activity center of an individual and density corresponds to the intensity surface. Estimates of average density are robust to unmodeled inhomogeneity, but the coverage of confidence intervals is poor when
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Circatidal control of gene expression in the deep-sea hot vent shrimp Rimicaris leurokolos bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Hongyin Zhang, Takuya Yahagi, Norio Miyamoto, Chong Chen, Qingqiu Jiang, Pei-Yuan Qian, Jin Sun
Biological clocks are a ubiquitous feature of all life, enabling the use of natural environmental cycles to track time. Although studies on circadian rhythms have contributed greatly to the knowledge of chronobiology, biological rhythms in dark biospheres such as the deep sea remain poorly understood. Lacking day-night cycles, the deep sea allows organisms to adapt to other temporal effects such as
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Savanna-forest dynamics: Encroachment speed, model inference and spatial simulations bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Yuval R. Zelnik, Ivric Valaire Yatat-Djeumen, Pierre Couteron
Forest encroachment over savannas has been recurrently reported in the tropics over the last decades, especially in northern tropical Africa. However, process-based, spatially-explicit modelling of the phenomenon is still trailing broad scale empirical observations. In this paper, we used remotely-sensed diachronic data from Central Cameroon to calibrate a simple reaction-diffusion model, embodying
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Nanoparticles alter the nature and strength of intraploidy and interploidy interactions in plants bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Elizabeth A Esser, Jiaqi Tan, Na Wei
Engineered nanoparticles have profound impacts on organisms, yet there is limited understanding of how nanoparticle exposure shapes species interactions that are key for natural community dynamics. By growing plants of the same (intraploidy) and different ploidy levels (interploidy) of Fragaria in axenic microcosms, we examined the influence of nanoparticles on species interactions in polyploid and
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Temporal and spatial variability in availability bias has consequences for marine bird abundance estimates during the non-breeding season bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Ruth E Dunn, James Duckworth, Sue O'Brien, Robert W Furness, Lila Buckingham, Francis Daunt, Maria I Bogdanova, Jonathan A Green
1. To effectively navigate and monitor how marine ecosystems are being reshaped by anthropogenic pressures, we require an understanding of species abundances and distributions. Due to their social, economic, and ecological value, predatory species are often at the forefront of survey efforts. However, survey data are only valuable if they can reliably be converted into estimates of underlying distributions
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Coupling hydrodynamic drifting simulations and seasonal demographics to forecast the occurrence of jellyfish blooms bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-13 James Cant, Owen R Jones, Ingrid Ellingson, Jack H Laverick, Sanna Majaneva, Jan Dierking, Nicole Aberle, Jamileh Javidpour
1. Although jellyfish are an important component of coastal marine communities, their public perception is often tainted by their proclivity for aggregating in vast numbers, known as jellyfish blooms. Jellyfish blooms occur worldwide and are associated with major economic ramifications, particularly throughout the fisheries, aquaculture, and tourism sectors. 2. Forecasting jellyfish blooms is critical
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Environmental DNA as a complementary tool for biodiversity monitoring: A multi-technique and multi-trophic approach to investigate cetacean distribution and feeding ecology bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Luis Afonso, Joana Costa, Ana Mafalda Correia, Raul Valente, Eva Lopes, Maria Paola Tomasino, Ágatha Gil, Cláudia Oliveira-Rodrigues, Isabel Sousa-Pinto, Alfredo López, Catarina Magalhães
The use of environmental DNA (eDNA) to assess the presence of biological communities has emerged as a promising monitoring tool in the marine conservation landscape. Moreover, advances in Next-Generation Sequencing techniques, such as DNA metabarcoding, enable multi-species detection in mixed samples, allowing the study of complex ecosystems such as oceanic ones. We aimed at using these molecular-based
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Seasonal structural stability promoted by forest diversity and composition explains overyielding bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-13 J. Antonio Guzman Q., Maria H. Park, Laura J. Williams, Jeannine Cavender-Bares
The stability of forest productivity over time is a widely studied parameter often associated with benefits of forest diversity. Yet, the structural stability (SS) through the season of forest communities and its relationship to diversity, composition, and productivity remains poorly understood. Using a large-scale (10 ha) young tree diversity experiment, we evaluated how forest structure and multiple
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Freshwater fish egg dispersal by attaching to waterbirds bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Akifumi Yao, Miyuki Mashiko, Yukihiko Toquenaga
Dispersal over geographic barriers plays an essential role in colonization, gene flow, metapopulation dynamics, and invasion (Bowler and Benton 2005). Since dry lands strictly separate freshwater habitats, as expressed by the phrase "islands of water in a sea of dry land" (Faulks, Gilligan, and Beheregaray 2010), dispersal among freshwater waterbodies by themselves is challenging of aquatic organisms
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callsync: an R package for alignment and analysis of multi-microphone animal recordings bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Simeon Q. Smeele, Stephen A. Tyndel, Barbara C. Klump, Gustavo Alarcon-Nieto, Lucy M. Aplin
1. To better understand how vocalisations are used during interactions of multiple individuals, studies are increasingly deploying on-board devices with a microphone on each animal. The resulting recordings are extremely challenging to analyse, since microphone clocks drift non-linearly and record the vocalisations of non-focal individuals as well as noise. 2. Here we address this issue with 'callsync'
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Age-specificity in territory quality and spatial structure in a wild bird population bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Joe P Woodman, Josh A Firth, Ella F Cole, Ben C Sheldon
Age influences behaviour, survival, and reproduction; hence variation in population age structure can affect population-level dynamics. The extent of spatial age structure may be important in driving spatially-variable demography, particularly when space-use is linked to reproduction, yet it is not well understood. Here, we use long-term data from a wild passerine bird population to quantify covariance
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Forest and Biodiversity 2: a tree diversity experiment to understand the consequences of multiple dimensions of diversity and composition for long-term ecosystem function and resilience bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Jacob Grossman, Jose Antonio Guzman Quesada, Sarah E Hobbie, Matthew Kaproth, Shan Kothari, Cathleen Lapadat, Rebecca Montgomery, Maria Park
We introduce a new low-density tree diversity experiment at the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve in central Minnesota, USA aimed at testing long-term ecosystem consequences of tree diversity and composition. The experiment was designed to provide guidance on forest restoration efforts that will simultaneously advance carbon sequestration goals and contribute to biodiversity conservation and sustainability
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Do sister species respond similarly to dry conditions? An ecophysiological approach in natura bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Hamilcar Socrates Keilani, Nico L Avenant, Pierre Caminade, Neville Pillay, Guila Ganem
Understanding the proximate mechanisms of organisms' adaptations to the environment is a classical problem in evolutionary ecology. In the context of climate change, inducing increased aridity and disruption of seasonality, it is crucial to identify the potential for species responses. Here, the physiological response to food and water limitation during seasonally dry conditions were investigated.
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Key link between iron and the size structure of three main mesoplanktonic groups (Crustaceans, Rhizarians, and colonial N2-fixers) in the Global Ocean. bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Mathilde Dugenne, Marco Corrales-Ugalde, Jessica Luo, Lars Stemmann, Jean-Olivier Irisson, Fabien Lombard, Todd O'Brien, Charles Stock, Rainer Kiko
Size is commonly used as a master trait to characterize pelagic organisms as it affects a range of processes and impact marine biogeochemical cycles and services. Yet, a holistic understanding of what environmental factors shape size structure is lacking for most mesoplankton. As part of the Pelagic Size Structure database, we explore the linkages between environmental factors and global compilations
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Interspecific trait differences drive plant community responses on serpentine soils. bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Guillaume Delhaye, Panayiotis G. Dimitrakopoulos, George C. Adamidis
Serpentine ecosystems are characterized by multiple environmental stressors such as high levels of trace metals such as nickel (Ni), low availability of macronutrients and low water retention. These harsh environmental conditions exert a strong selective force on the vegetation, but their effect on the functional trait composition of the communities remains unknown. In 26 plots on four serpentine sites
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Evolutionary integration of the geography and pacing of the annual cycle in migratory birds bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Benjamin M Winger, Frank A La Sorte, Matthew D Hack, Teresa M Pegan
In migratory species, the temporal phases of the annual cycle are intrinsically linked to seasonally shifting geographic ranges. Despite intense interest in the annual cycle ecology of migration, a synthetic understanding of the relationship between the biogeography and phenology of seasonal migration remains elusive. Here, we interrogate the spatiotemporal structure of the annual cycle in a novel
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Why models underestimate tropical forest productivity: a case study in West Africa bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-12 huanyuan zhang-zheng, Xiongjie Deng, Benjamin Stocker, Ruijie Ruijie, Eleanor Thomson, Stephen Adu-Bredu, Akwasi Duah-Gyamfi, Agne Gvozdevaite, Sam Moore, Imma Oliveras Menor, I. Colin Prentice, Yadvinder Malhi
Tropical forests dominate terrestrial photosynthesis, yet there are major contradictions in our understanding due to a lack of field studies, especially outside the tropical Americas. A recent field study indicated that West African forests have among the highest forests gross primary productivity (GPP) yet observed, contradicting models that rank them lower than Amazonian forests. Here, we explore
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Growing older, growing more diverse: sea turtles and epibiotic cyanobacteria bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Lucija Kanjer, Klara Filek, Maja Mucko, Mateja Zekan Lupic, Masa Frleta-Valic, Romana Gracan, Suncica Bosak
Cyanobacteria are known for forming associations with various animals, including sea turtles, yet our understanding of sea turtles associated cyanobacteria remains limited. This study aims to address this knowledge gap by investigating the diversity of cyanobacteria in biofilm samples from loggerhead sea turtle carapaces, utilizing a 16S rDNA amplicon sequencing approach. The predominant cyanobacterial
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Directional swimming patterns in jellyfish aggregations bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Dror Malul, Hadar Berman, Aviv Solodoch, Omri Tal, Noga Barak, Gur Mizrahi, Igal Berenshtein, Yaron Toledo, Tamar Lotan, Daniel Jonathan Sher, Uri Shavit, Yoav Lehahn
Having a profound influence on marine and coastal environments worldwide, jellyfish hold significant scientific, economic, and public interest. The predictability of outbreaks and dispersion of jellyfish is limited by a fundamental gap in our understanding of their movement. Although there is evidence that jellyfish may actively affect their position, the role of active swimming in controlling jellyfish
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Prioritizing the Valorization Strategies of an Invasive Fern (Azolla) in a Wetland bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Farima Nikkhah Kolachahi, Mohammad Rahim Ramezanian, Kurt A Rosentrater
Wetlands play a vital role as one of the most important natural habitats on our planet. However, the survival of these natural wetlands is threatened by various factors. The arrival of invasive and non-native aquatic ferns is one of these challenges. In this regard, Azolla filiculoides has become a severe problem for the Anzali wetland. Azolla, as an aquatic fern, has created numerous issues in aquatic
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Wildlife-vehicle collisions simplify regional food webs bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Frederico Mestre, Vinicius A. G. Bastazini, Fernando Ascensao
Roads and traffic stand as major threats to biodiversity, primarily due to roadkill, affecting the functioning of ecosystems and the provision of ecosystem services. Understanding how wildlife-vehicle collisions affects the dynamics of ecological interactions is essential to help manage human impacts on biodiversity, but such studies remain largely unexplored. We investigated the intricate relationship
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Cool ocean temperatures fail to buffer the impacts of heat exposure during low tide on the behaviour and physiology of a keystone predator bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Lydia N. Walton, Viola R. Watts, Jasmin M. Schuster, Amanda E. Bates
Air temperatures are warming at faster rates than ocean temperatures, and this land-sea warming contrast may create reprieves from thermal stress by providing cool underwater refugia during extreme heat events. Here we tested the impacts of the land-sea warming contrast on physiology (metabolism) and behaviour (feeding) in the juvenile life stage of a keystone intertidal predator, Pisaster ochraceus
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Predicting species distributions in the open ocean with convolutional neural networks. bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Gaetan Morand, Alexis Joly, Tristan Rouyer, Titouan Lorieul, Julien Barde
As biodiversity plummets due to anthropogenic disturbances, the conservation of oceanic species is made harder by limited knowledge of their distributions and migrations. Indeed, tracking species distributions in the open ocean is particularly challenging due to the scarcity of observations and the complex and variable nature of the ocean system. In this study, we propose a new method that leverages
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Changes in plant physiology during cultivation periods influence the hydrogen isotope ratio of the water‒insect relationship bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Tomohisa Fujii, Gaku Akiduki, Shiho Yabusaki, Ichiro Tayasu
1. The hydrogen stable isotope ratios (δ2H) in tissues of terrestrial insects are widely applied to estimate natal origins in field populations. The hydrogen isotopes of insect tissues incorporate those of environmental waters through the insects′ metabolic processes. Water sources and abiotic environmental factors reflect changes in plant physiology, as indicated by the δ2H values of plants. However
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Sex differences in the relationship between maternal and foetal glucocorticoids in a free-ranging large mammal bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Bawan Amin, Ruth Fishman, Matthew Quinn, Devorah Matas, Rupert Palme, Lee Koren, Simone Ciuti
Maternal phenotypes can have long-term effects on offspring phenotypes. These maternal effects may begin during gestation, when maternal glucocorticoid (GC) levels may affect foetal GC levels, thereby having an organizational effect on the offspring phenotype. Recent studies have showed that maternal effects may be different between the sexes. However, how maternal GC levels relate to foetal levels
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Ecosystem Links: Macrophytes, Snail Preferences, and Trematode Transmission in Man-Made Water Bodies bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Aspire Mudavanhu, Emilie Goossens, Ruben Schols, Tawanda Manyangadze
Freshwater snails act as obligate intermediate hosts for trematode parasites that cause trematodiases threatening public and veterinary health, and biodiversity conservation. Therefore, interest has re-emerged in snails as a target for disease control, yet their ecology is poorly understood. We studied the relationship between physical and chemical water parameters, macroinvertebrates, macrophytes
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Microbial Response to Natural Disturbances: Rare Biosphere often plays a role bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Jianshu Zhao, Genevieve Brandt, Zhao Wang, Dana E. Hunt, Luis M. Rodriguez-R, Janet K. Hatt, Konstantinos T Konstantinidis
Understanding how microbial populations respond to disturbances represents a major goal for microbial ecology. While several theories have been advanced to explain microbial community compositional changes in response to disturbances, appropriate data to test these theories is scarce, especially when considering the challenges to define rare vs. abundant taxa and generalists vs. specialists, a prerequisite
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Tree species identity drives soil Carbon and Nitrogen stocks in nutrient-poor sites bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Estela C Foltran, Norbert Lamersdorf
The establishment of mixed forest stands can be seen as an option to enhance soil organic carbon stocks and to protect forest ecosystems from various impacts of climate change. Increasing temperatures and drought potentially affect the vitality of the native coniferous Norway spruce (Picea abies), often used in mixed forests. We investigated the effects of a replacement of Norway spruce by Douglas
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High-resolution climate data reveals increased risk of Pierce's Disease for grapevines worldwide bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Àlex Giménez-Romero, Eduardo Moralejo, Manuel A Matias
Range shifts in plant disease distributions are sensitive to scaling processes, but few crop case studies have included these predictions under climate change. High-quality wines are increasingly produced in topographically heterogeneous river valleys, whereby disease models that capture steep relief gradients become especially relevant. Here we show how non-linear epidemiological models more accurately
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Buzz-world: Global patterns and drivers of buzzing bees and poricidal plants bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Avery L Russell, Stephen L Buchmann, John S Ascher, Zhiheng Wang, Ricardo Kriebel, Diana D Jolles, Michael C. Orr, Alice C. Hughes
Foraging behavior frequently plays a major role in driving the geographic distribution of animals. Buzzing to extract protein-rich pollen from flowers is a key foraging behavior used by bee species across at least 83 genera (these genera comprise ~58% of all bee species). Although buzzing is widely recognized to affect the ecology and evolution of bees and flowering plants (e.g., buzz-pollinated flowers)
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Ectomycorrhizal fungi are influenced by ecoregion boundaries across Europe bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Guillaume Delhaye, Sietse van der Linde, David Bauman, David C. L. Orme, Laura M. Suz, Martin I. Bidartondo
Aim: Ecoregions and the distance decay in community similarity are fundamental concepts in biogeography and conservation biology that are well supported across plants and animals, but not fungi. Here we test the relevance of these concepts for ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi in temperate and boreal regions. Location: Europe. Time period: 2008 - 2015. Major taxa studied: Ectomycorrhizal fungi. Methods:
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Adaptive trade-offs between vertebrate defense and insect predation drive ant venom evolution bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Axel Touchard, Samuel D Robinson, Hadrien Lalague, Steven Ascoet, Arnaud Billet, Alain Dejean, Nathan J Tene, Frederic Petitclerc, Valerie Troispoux, Michel Treilhou, Elsa Bonnafe, Irina Vetter, Joel Vizueta, Corrie S Moreau, Jerome Orivel, Niklas Tysklind
Stinging ants have diversified into various ecological niches, and several evolutionary drivers may have contributed to shape the composition of their venom. To comprehend the drivers underlying venom variation in ants, we selected 15 Neotropical species and recorded a range of traits, including ecology, morphology, and venom bioactivity. Principal component analysis of both morphological and venom
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Cross-continental variation of herbivore resistance in a global plant invader bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Peipei Cao, Zhiyong Liao, Lei Zhang, Shengyu Wang, Jingwen Bi, Yujie Zhao, Madalin Parepa, Tiantian Lin, Yaolin Guo, Oliver Bossdorf, Christina L. Richards, Stacy B. Endriss, Jihua Wu, Ruiting Ju, Bo Li
Successful plant invasions are often explained with adaptation to novel environments. However, invasive species often occupy broad niches within their native and introduced ranges, and a true understanding of microevolution during invasion therefore requires broad sampling of ranges, ideally with a knowledge of introduction history. We tested for genetic differentiation in herbivore resistance among
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Nitrogen niche partitioning between tropical legumes and grasses conditionally weakens under elevated CO2 bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-10 Amber C. Churchill, Haiyang Zhang, Gil won Kim, Karen L. M. Catunda, Ian C. Anderson, Forest I. Isbell, Ben Moore, Elise Pendall, Jonathan M Plett, Jeff Powell, Sally A. Power
Plant community biodiversity can be maintained, at least partially, by shifts in species interactions between facilitation and competition for resources as environmental conditions change. These interactions also drive ecosystem functioning, including productivity, and can promote over-yielding- an ecosystem service prioritized in agro-ecosystems, such as pastures, that occurs when multiple species
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Urban Cepaea nemoralis snails are less likely to have nematodes trapped within their shells bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-10 Maxime Dahirel, Hannah Reyné, Katrien De Wolf, Dries Bonte
Urbanisation is a major human-induced environmental change which can impact not only individual species, but also the way these species interact with each other. As a group, terrestrial molluscs interact frequently with a wide diversity of parasites, yet the way these interactions vary across space and in response to environmental pressures is poorly documented. In this study we leveraged a recently
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Sex-specific sub-lethal effects of low virulence entomopathogenic fungi may boost the Sterile Insect Technique bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-10 david duneau, Romain Gallet, Maureen Adhiambo, Emilie Deletre, Anais Chailleux, Fathiya Khamis, Sevgan Subramanian, Thierry Brevault, Simon Fellous
BACKGROUND: The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is a species-specific method for controlling insect pests. Recent studies have explored the combination of SIT with entomopathogenic microorganisms, known as boosted-SIT, to enhance its effectiveness. This study aimed to evaluate the potential of the entomopathogenic fungi, Metarhizium anisopliae, in boosting the SIT for managing the oriental fruit fly
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metaRange: A framework to build mechanistic range models bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-10 Stefan Fallert, Lea Li, Juliano Sarmento Cabral
Mechanistic or process-based models offer great insights into the range dynamics of species facing non-equilibrium conditions, such as climate and land-use changes or invasive species. Their consideration of underlying mechanisms relaxes the species-environment equilibrium assumed by correlative approaches, while also generating conservation-relevant indicators, such as range-wide abundance time-series
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Dynamic energy budget model for a bumble bee colony: Predicting the spatial distribution and dynamics of colonies across multiple seasons bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-10 Pau Capera-Aragones, Joany Marino, Amy Hurford, Eric Foxall, Rebecca C. Tyson
Bumble bees are important pollinators of many crops around the world. In recent decades, agricultural intensification has resulted in significant declines in bumble bee populations and the pollination services they provide. Empirical studies have shown that this trend can be reversed, however, by enhancing the agricultural landscape with natural habitat, such as adding wildflower patches adjacent to
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To prosper, live long: understanding the sources of reproductive skew and extreme reproductive success in structured populations bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-09 Robin E. Snyder, Stephen P. Ellner
In many species, a few individuals produce most of the next generation. How much of this reproductive skew is driven by variation among individuals in fixed traits, how much by external factors, and how much by random chance? And what does it take to have truly exceptional lifetime reproductive output (LRO)? In the past, we and others have partitioned the variance of LRO as a proxy for reproductive
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Genomic fingerprints of the world's soil ecosystems bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-09 Emily B Graham, Vanessa A Garayburu-Caruso, Ruonan Wu, Jianqiu Zheng, Ryan McClure, Gerrad Jones
Despite the explosion of soil metagenomic data, we lack a synthesized understanding of patterns in the distribution and functions of soil microorganisms. These patterns are critical to predictions of soil microbiome responses to climate change and resulting feedbacks that regulate greenhouse gas release from soils. To address this gap, we assay 1512 manually-curated soil metagenomes using complementary
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Insights on the effect of mega-carcass abundance on the population dynamics of a facultative scavenger predator and its prey bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-09 Mellina Sidous, Sarah Cubaynes, Olivier Gimenez, Nolwenn Drouet-Hoguet, Stephane Dray, Loic Bollache, Daphine Madhlamoto, Nobesuthu Adelaide Ngwenya, Herve Fritz, Marion Valeix
The interplay between facultative scavenging and predation has gained interest in the last decade. The prevalence of scavenging induced by the availability of large carcasses may modify predator density or behaviour, potentially affecting prey. In contrast to behavioural mechanisms through which scavenging affects predation, the demographic effects of facultative scavenging on predator and prey populations
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Insects visit Fusarium xyrophilum pseudoflowers on the host Xyris surinamensis (Xyridaceae) and carry fungal DNA on their bodies bioRxiv. Ecol. Pub Date : 2024-03-08 Terry J Torres Cruz, Tristan M Cofer, Laura M Kaminsky, Lauren A Re, Alexis Vaughn, Jack R Johnson, James H Tumlinson, Imane Laraba, Robert H Proctor, Hye-Seon Kim, Terrence H Bell, M Catherine Aime, Michael J Skvarla, David M Geiser
The fungus Fusarium xyrophilum produces flower-like structures (i.e., pseudoflowers) that were recently discovered on yellow-eyed grasses (Xyris spp.) in Guyana. It is unknown whether these pseudoflowers, which are composed entirely of fungal tissue, are true mimics that attract insects as a means of fungal dispersal. We evaluated the potential of F. xyrophilum to affect insect visitation patterns