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Preprints

There are 2251 Preprints listed.

Using large language models to address the bottleneck of georeferencing natural history collections

Yuyang Xie, Daniel S Park, Miranda A Sinnott-Armstrong, et al.

Published: 2025-05-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Natural history collections are fundamental for biodiversity research. The broad use of them relies on the digitization effort, especially georeferencing that translates textual locality descriptions into geographic coordinates. However, traditional georeferencing approaches are labor-intensive and costly, thus georeferencing is a major bottleneck in the digitization process that prevents the [...]

The bright, the bold and the toxic: do coloration, personality, and toxicity represent an integrated phenotype in fire salamanders?

Max Mühlenhaupt, Henry J. Bohny, Maria Moiron, et al.

Published: 2025-05-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Defensive coloration such as bright colors used to advertise secondary defenses (i.e., aposematic coloration) is very common but also shows high intraspecific variation. Similarly, consistent among-individual differences in behavior (i.e., animal personality) are pervasive in the animal kingdom. Therefore, aposematism and personality could be linked to produce an optimal defensive phenotype, [...]

Acclimation to fluctuating hypoxia alters activity and escape performance, but not metabolism, in guppies

Elise Doddema, Malin Fløysand, Andrea Campos-Candela, et al.

Published: 2025-05-03
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology

Organisms living in fluctuating environments must cope with constantly changing conditions. Here we investigated how acclimation to either fluctuating or constant oxygen affects behavioural and physiological responses to hypoxia in guppies (Poecilia reticulata). Guppies were acclimated to either fluctuating hypoxia (100% of air saturation during day to 40% at night) or constant normoxia (100% of [...]

“A history of the world imperfectly kept”: Will we ever know how biodiversity has changed over deep time?

Bethany Allen, Rachel Warnock, Alexander M Dunhill

Published: 2025-05-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Evolution, Paleobiology

The fossil record is our only direct source of evidence for how life on Earth has waxed and waned over its long history. However, the fossil record is also incomplete and biased in many ways, after passing through biological, geological, and socio-economic filters. This means that we only possess snapshots of information, relating to specific places and times in Earth history, from which to try [...]

Accounting for biodiversity impacts of consumption and production: current gaps and frontiers.

Daniel Itzamna Avila-Ortega, Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Sarah Elisabeth Cornell, et al.

Published: 2025-05-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Sustainability

The way humans produce and consume material goods continues to be a primary driving force on biodiversity decline. Despite significant advances in quantifying biodiversity footprints, important differences exist across types of approaches and indicators. These include, what aspects of biodiversity are measured and how they are reported. In this scoping review, we provide an overview of [...]

Nature requires investment: applying Priority Threat Management to support biodiversity and climate targets

Abbey E Camaclang, Aranya Iyer, Chris Liang, et al.

Published: 2025-05-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy

1. Stemming biodiversity loss requires greater investment in conservation and more efficient use of available resources. Prioritizing conservation actions that yield the most biodiversity benefit for the least cost can help maximize return on investment. Actions that have co-benefits for other objectives, such as climate change mitigation, can also help mobilize additional funds for [...]

Slithering Sentinels: assessing the relevance of sea snakes as bioindicators for monitoring New Caledonia's Lagoon

David Hudry

Published: 2025-05-01
Subjects: Biology, Marine Biology

Coral reefs are vital ecosystems, rich in biodiversity and economically significant. However, they face severe threats from human activities such as climate change, pollution, and overfishing. Large-scale monitoring is crucial for their conservation. Integrative bioindicators are needed to better assess their health. Marine snakes, as high-level predators with strong site fidelity, are excellent [...]

Creating woodland through natural processes: Current understanding and knowledge gaps in Great Britain

Susannah Fleiss, Vanessa Burton, Bianca Ambrose-Oji, et al.

Published: 2025-04-30
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

1. Creating new woodlands through natural processes, as opposed to traditional tree planting, is expected to result in more structurally diverse, locally-adapted woodlands that enhance the resilience of existing treescapes. However, the outcomes of natural colonisation can be variable, and there is still considerable uncertainty around the ecological processes involved. 2. To address knowledge [...]

Sex-Specific Control and Incomplete Matings: Sperm Removal Behaviour in a Bush Cricket Species

Chiara Flaskamp, Klaus Reinhold, Tuba Rizvi

Published: 2025-04-30
Subjects: Life Sciences

In sexually promiscuous species, sperm removal behaviour (SRB) is a male strategy to increase reproductive success by displacing rival sperm prior to insemination. This behaviour may, however, impose costs on both sexes, generating sexual conflict. We investigated the sex-specific control over SRB in Metaplastes ornatus, a bush cricket species exhibiting this behaviour. We used a double mating [...]

The wind of change: mapping wind energy growth and multi-species vulnerability in the Mediterranean

Chiara Costantino, Jacopo Cerri, Ilaria Fozzi, et al.

Published: 2025-04-29
Subjects: Life Sciences

The rapid expansion of wind energy across the Mediterranean region calls for more advanced tools to assess and mitigate its impacts on biodiversity. In this study, we propose an innovative approach that integrates historical satellite imagery and ecological modelling to assess the spatiotemporal overlap between wind energy development and habitat suitability for multiple vulnerable raptor [...]

Plant pathogen profiling with the EpiPv package

Ruairi Donnelly, Israël Tankam, Chris Gilligan

Published: 2025-04-29
Subjects: Life Sciences

This study introduces a flexible framework for epidemiological profiling of insect-borne plant pathogens (IBPPs), utilizing readily available experimental data. The framework is applicable to most IBPPs transmitted by insects feeding on plant veins, with particular relevance to whitefly-borne viruses that impact cassava production in sub-Saharan Africa. The goal of the study is to provide an [...]

Bengal Basin in the Midst of the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean Littoral: A Study of the Earliest Trading Centre and the Nautical Network of Inland and Oceanic Trade originating from Ancient Bengal

Kaustav Ghosh Roy

Published: 2025-04-29
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

This study explores the pivotal role of the Bengal Basin in shaping ancient maritime and inland trade networks in South Asia. Centered on the region’s complex deltaic system and strategic coastal position, the research investigates how natural features such as the expansive Gangetic delta and extensive river networks fostered both local commerce and long-distance trade across the Indian Ocean. [...]

Seasonal upwelling and depth-driven gradients foster functional overdispersion in Southwestern Atlantic annelid assemblages

Samuel Delgado Mendes, Paulo Cesar de Paiva, Rodolfo Leandro Nascimento

Published: 2025-04-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology

Marine communities on continental shelves form through a combination of environmental filtering, biotic interaction, and dispersal-based processes. These shelves present depth-related environmental gradients from nearshore and seasonal upwelling systems, which periodically supply cold, dispersalenhancing, nutrient-rich waters, providing an ideal setting to explore spatiotemporal [...]

Facing the heat: behavioral and molecular underpinnings of climate hardiness in bumblebees

Nastacia Leigh Goodwin, Z Yan Wang

Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Behavioral Neurobiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Climate change heralds an era of increased heat waves, with an estimated 20-30 additional high heat days per year. While climate change is upon us, we still have little understanding of the organismal impacts of high heat and how to combat them. Insects, due to their short generation times and their sensitive ecological requirements, offer a powerful model for studying rapid physiological and [...]

Seeking to quantify contributions that fisheries operations can make to a global Nature Positive goal

Stefanía Ásta Karlsdóttir, Hollie Booth, Tim Davies, et al.

Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Marine Biology

Amidst global efforts to address biodiversity loss, the concept of ‘Nature Positive’ has gained traction as a societal goal aligned with the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). While the goal is increasingly being embraced by businesses and governments, there has been little investigation into how fisheries, a key sector in the global economy and a major driver of marine biodiversity loss, could [...]

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