Preprints
There are 2761 Preprints listed.
Butterfly abundances but not patch occupancy buffered by vegetation heterogeneity during climatic extremes
Published: 2025-12-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
As extreme climatic events are becoming more frequent and intense, we need to understand what mechanisms could buffer populations from climate change impacts to ensure their persistence. Fragmented populations may be especially vulnerable to climate change, as exemplified by species with metapopulation dynamics, whose persistence is determined by a precarious balance between frequent local [...]
Habitat connectivity shapes biodiversity outcomes in Indonesia’s community-managed forests
Published: 2025-12-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Forest Management
1. Social forestry is increasingly promoted as a means to achieve equitable resource governance while contributing to biodiversity conservation. Yet, empirical evidence on how effectively community-managed forests support biodiversity remains limited, particularly in tropical regions. 2. We assessed mammal communities in two contrasting social forestry contexts in Sumatra, Indonesia: (1) a [...]
Identification of the Cichlid Fishes of Lake Malawi/Nyasa Part 3: Rhamphochromina and others.
Published: 2025-12-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
With an estimated 800-1000 species, the cichlid fishes of Lake Malawi represent the largest known adaptive radiation of vertebrates from common ancestry in a limited geographical area, in this case a single lake. Although they represent a major system for the study of evolution, and have considerable local economic value, the presence of so many closely-related and poorly known species presents [...]
Leveraging publicly available data to facilitate urban ecology and evolution
Published: 2025-12-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
The intensifying pace of urbanization has prompted researchers to investigate its ecological and evolutionary consequences more deeply, yet logistic and monetary challenges can impose a barrier to research. Publicly available databases offer scientists from broad backgrounds an opportunity to circumvent those barriers, enhancing participation in urban ecology and evolution. In conjunction with [...]
POLLEN ANALYSIS AS A REMOTE BIOLOGICAL SENSOR: USING MELISSOPALYNOLOGY AND SURFACE SOIL DATA FOR AN INTEGRATED LANDSCAPE SCALE VEGETATION ASSESSMENT IN SOUTH INDIA
Published: 2025-12-04
Subjects: Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Life Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Plant Sciences
We use pollen assemblages from two sources, surface soil and bee pollen to characterize modern pollen spectra from contrasting landscapes, evaluate their potential as biological proxies complementing each other in reconstructing vegetation comprised of anemophilous and entomophilous plants. The bee pollen assemblages are from honeycombs and corbicular loads from Apis cerana and A. florea. We try [...]
African swine fever vs. COVID-19: only one virus mattered for wild boar hunting bags in Europe
Published: 2025-12-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Wild boar (Sus scrofa) populations have been steadily increasing across Europe in the last decades, due to the synergy between landscape modifications, the ecological plasticity of the species and global warming. However, since 2014, an increasing number of these populations have also been affected by African swine fever (ASF) and have experienced increased mortality. Moreover, in 2020 and 2021, [...]
Adaptation or plasticity? Effects of temperature on metabolic rate and life-history traits in the Australian Painted Dragon lizard.
Published: 2025-12-03
Subjects: Desert Ecology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The roles of adaptation and plasticity in shaping life-history traits have long been a subject of debate in evolutionary ecology, with the relevance of each varying by traits, populations, species, and clades. Ectothermic organisms, which obtain most of their metabolic energy from ambient heat, occupy wide geographic ranges where heat can be unevenly distributed. There is considerable potential [...]
On the spatial aggregation of condition metrics for ecosystem accounting
Published: 2025-12-03
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
In face of the ongoing nature crisis, the international community is setting targets and deciding on actions to combat the current biodiversity crises. For this to be effective they need tools to accurately describe the current situation and to monitor trends in ecosystems over time. Ecosystem condition accounts (ECA) is one such tool that use variables and indicators to describe key ecosystem [...]
New species discoveries redefine global biodiversity patterns
Published: 2025-12-03
Subjects: Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Global biodiversity patterns are fundamental to ecology and conservation. However, these patterns are based on incomplete and rapidly growing taxonomic knowledge, and the influence of new species discoveries on our understanding of global biodiversity remains poorly understood. Here we quantified how the discovery of terrestrial vertebrates from 1920 to 2020 has reshaped estimated global [...]
Predicting coral trends and attributing drivers of change from local to global scales
Published: 2025-12-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
Modern biodiversity monitoring programs are designed to assess abundance trends of keystone taxa and deliver scientific insights to inform decision-making and policy development. An important consideration when using these evidence-based frameworks is the quantification of uncertainty from trends, which determines the robustness of data-driven methods in detecting and attributing changes across [...]
Strengthening Community Engagement as a Pathway to Effective Forest Fire Management and Resilient Forests in Nepal
Published: 2025-12-03
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Natural Resources Management and Policy
Forest ecosystems are indispensable for planetary health. They provide sustenance for around a quarter of global population. Forest fire is an important ecological disturbance; however, it can cause ecological and societal harm due to anthropogenic mismanagement and natural adversities leading to long-term socio-economic and environmental consequences. Extreme wildfire events have increased [...]
The legacy of privilege: Social inheritance reverses sex differences in reproductive inequality in spotted hyenas
Published: 2025-12-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Inequalities in reproductive success among females and males shape natural and sexual selec-tion, as well as genetic diversity. A key mechanism influencing reproductive inequality in humans and other animals is the social inheritance of privilege. Using a 29-year dataset spanning eight generations of spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta), a species in which social status is maternally inherited, we [...]
An overview of passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) of terrestrial vertebrates and its significance, applications and challenges in urban and natural environments
Published: 2025-11-29
Subjects: Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Amidst a global biodiversity crisis and unprecedented levels of species loss, effective environmental monitoring is more important than ever, but traditional methods are often labour intensive and subjective. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is rapidly establishing itself as an important non-invasive, scalable and cost-effective tool for surveying sonant fauna in both natural and urban [...]
Towards a causal understanding of bidirectional effects in ecology and evolution
Published: 2025-11-28
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series
Feedback loops govern many processes in the natural world and are ubiquitous in ecology and evolutionary biology. Despite their prevalence in theory, however, feedbacks and other forms of reciprocal causation are rarely quantified by empiricists working with observational datasets. This divide has been brought to the fore by the causal revolution in the natural sciences. When researchers aim to [...]
Tagged for life? Retention rates and effects on growth and condition of tagging - a long-term field study on PIT- and Carlin tagging in European eel
Published: 2025-11-28
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Different types of tags and markers are commonly used for various fish monitoring and tracking purposes. Effects of tags and markers on fish and the retention rates can affect the interpretation of mark-recapture data on both the individual (e.g. growth and body condition) and population level (e.g. survival and pro-duction estimates), making studies of this issue important. In this study, we [...]