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Drifting in the abyss: an in-situ observation of swimming in Psychropotes (Psychropotidae, Elasipodida, Holothuroidea)NARA Subscribed
Holothuroids are conspicuous members of megabenthic assemblages, particularly in the deep sea. Some are capable of swimming and while this behaviour was once considered uncommon, deep-sea exploration and technological advances have increased the number of such observations. Swimming or drifting is now regarded to be a potentially common adaptation to deep-sea life that enables long distance dispersal at a low energetic cost an...
Against a background of the climate and biodiversity crises, there is an urgent need for robust and citable biodiversity information for policy and management decisions. Species are fundamental units of biodiversity and underpin communication in biology. Delineating, describing, and naming species provide the foundation for tracking biodiversity. Taxonomists recognise over 2 million described species, the scientific names of w...
Pollinators receive considerable interest due to their fundamental role in ecosystem functioning and human well‐being. Unlike farmlands, studies of urban pollinator‐promoting interventions are scarce and have not been synthesised, hampering policy implementation. To fill this gap, we compared pollinator‐promoting interventions (treatment) with conventionally managed (control) sites regarding vegetation, floral resources, and p...
Motivation Here, we make available a second version of the BioTIME database, which compiles records of abundance estimates for species in sample events of ecological assemblages through time. The updated version expands version 1.0 of the database by doubling the number of studies and includes substantial additional curation to the taxonomic accuracy of the records, as well as the metadata. Moreover, we now provide an R packag...
Despite its remoteness, the deep sea is not spared from the impact of human activities. The emergence of industrial-scale deep-sea mining of polymetallic nodules on the abyssal plains (4-5 km depth) of the Clarion-Clipperton fracture zone in the equatorial Pacific is potentially the most threatening undertaking at present time. A primary aspect that must be comprehensively assessed in order to safeguard these abyssal benthic c...
Informed recovery of the European eel ( Anguilla anguilla ) requires reliable information on stock dynamics and effects of management. No global European eel stock model is presently available, so demographic or extrapolation models are used to estimate eel production at local sub‐stock levels. Model inputs are often difficult to estimate and highly uncertain, which can affect accuracy of predictions. A sensitivity analysis wa...
Motivation Pollinators play a crucial role in maintaining Earth's terrestrial biodiversity. However, rapid human‐induced environmental changes are compromising the long‐term persistence of plant‐pollinator interactions. Unfortunately, we lack robust, generalisable data capturing how plant‐pollinator communities are structured across space and time. Here, we present the EuPPollNet (European Plant‐Pollinator Networks) database,...
Developing climate‐proof forage grasslands does not only require developing plant communities that are soil drought resistant, but also adept at buffering elevated atmospheric temperatures to minimize heat stress for plant and soil. Previous studies indicate that the emerging trend towards rainfall regimes with longer dry and wet spells negatively affects forage grass performance (i.e., greater physiological plant stress and y...
Continent‐Wide Drivers of Spatial Synchrony in Breeding Demographic Structure Across Wild Great Tit PopulationsNARA Subscribed
Variation in age structure influences population dynamics, yet we have limited understanding of the spatial scale at which its fluctuations are synchronised between populations. Using 32 great tit populations, spanning 4° W–33° E and 35°–65° N involving > 130,000 birds across 67 years, we quantify spatial synchrony in breeding demographic structure (subadult vs. adult breeders) and its drivers. We show that larger clutch sizes...
Marked Variability in Distance‐Decay Patterns Suggests Contrasting Dispersal Ability in Abyssal TaxaNARA Subscribed
Aim We assess the role of spatial distance and depth difference in shaping beta diversity patterns across abyssal seascape regions. We measured the decrease of faunistic similarity across the northeast Pacific seafloor, to test whether species turnover rates differ between deep and shallow‐abyssal biogeographical provinces and whether these patterns vary across functionally or taxonomically different biotic groups. Location Ab...
Capture-mark-recapture methods (CMR) are a commonly used tool in species conservation and management for the estimation of demographic parameters in a population. However, biases in these estimates can occur due to the heterogeneity in processes influencing recapture data or the experimental design. We outline an approach to quantify and identify ways to reduce this bias through both experimental design and data analysis, usin...
Effect of Electrode Distance and Size on Electrocorticographic Recordings in Human Sensorimotor CortexNARA Subscribed
Subdural electrocorticography (ECoG) is a valuable technique for neuroscientific research and for emerging neurotechnological clinical applications. As ECoG grids accommodate increasing numbers of electrodes and higher densities with new manufacturing methods, the question arises at what point the benefit of higher density ECoG is outweighed by spatial oversampling. To clarify the optimal spacing between ECoG electrodes, in th...
Explaining the maintenance of genetic variation in fitness‐related traits within populations is a fundamental challenge in ecology and evolutionary biology. Frequency‐dependent selection (FDS) is one mechanism that can maintain such variation, especially when selection favours rare variants (negative FDS). However, our general knowledge about the occurrence of FDS, its strength and direction remain fragmented, limiting general...