Preprints
There are 3510 Preprints listed.
How (not) to study insect microbiota in the age of high-throughput sequencing
Published: 2026-08-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences
The recognition of microbiota as a critical component of insect biology and evolution has driven a rapid expansion of insect-microbe interaction research. Yet while high-throughput sequencing has democratized access to microbial community profiling, it has also normalized low-resolution, artifact-prone approaches that often yield limited biological insights. Insects pose distinct challenges for [...]
Dark invasions as cryptic components of biological invasions
Published: 2026-08-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Understanding and managing biological invasions typically requires knowledge of species records, known impacts, recognized pathways and definitions of non-native status, yet this information is rarely complete or without uncertainties. We develop the concept of dark invasions to describe a suite of hidden or underacknowledged aspects of biological invasions that are rarely quantified because [...]
Specimen preservation affects herbarium-derived leaf traits, reflectance spectra, and predictive models
Published: 2026-08-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
• Herbaria are increasingly used as sources of functional trait data and reflectance spectra used in models for trait prediction and species classification. However, it is currently unknown how leaf preservation protocols may affect these data. • Using a factorial experimental design, we tested how alcohol preservation, drying intensity, and their interaction affected foliar traits (leaf mass per [...]
Daphniids avoid Utricularia on a horizontal plane
Published: 2026-08-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
Besides animal predators, carnivorous plants, such as the littoral bladderwort Utricularia vulgaris, also strongly impact cladoceran communities by efficiently capturing passing planktonic animals, including small daphniids, in their bladder traps. Therefore, we hypothesized these animals should avoid direct contact with these carnivorous plants. We measured the distance Ceriodaphnia and [...]
Influence of Selected Urban Tree Species on Soil Microbial Activity, Litter Decomposition, and Soil Chemical Properties in Akure, Southwestern Nigeria
Published: 2026-08-05
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Urban trees shape belowground ecological processes through litter deposition, root exudation, and interactions with soil microbial communities, yet species-specific effects are rarely incorporated into urban green-space management. This study evaluated the effects of five common urban tree species (Eucalyptus globulus, Azadirachta indica, Thuja occidentalis, Prunus dulcis, and Buddleja globosa) [...]
GRACE Resurvey of Central European Grassland Vegetation to study the Impacts of Country-Level Landscape Dynamics on Biodiversity
Published: 2026-08-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany, Life Sciences
Grasslands harbor high species diversity and are strongly influenced by local management and land-use histories. In countries of Central Europe, these ecosystems were severely impacted by different agricultural policies on both sides of the former Iron Curtain in the second half of the 20th century,, reshaping grassland extent and habitat quality. These land-use changes turned border regions into [...]
Assessing veracity of web-based citizen science projects: An audit study of eBird
Published: 2026-08-05
Subjects: Research Methods in Life Sciences
1. Uncertainty in data accuracy and lack of diversity among participants are two common concerns in citizen science projects. But what if the methods used to simultaneously maximize data quality and user participation lead to unbalanced user experiences and biased data? While many studies focus on advancing techniques for analyzing large and noisy datasets, methods are needed to test the veracity [...]
Life-history traits do not always evolve in response to changing thermal environments
Published: 2026-08-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Integrative Biology, Zoology
Quantifying animals' capacity to evolve in response to changing environments is central to predicting ecological responses to climate change. However, empirical evidence for evolutionary responses to changing temperatures remains mixed, and we know little about how selection alters trait variance or generates trade-offs among traits. Here, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of 44 [...]
Beyond single species seed orchards: A multi-species framework for tropical tree breeding and forest management
Published: 2026-08-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Conventional forest tree breeding has largely focused on species that perform well in monoculture systems, where genetic evaluation, seed production, and management can be optimized under uniform conditions. While this approach has delivered substantial genetic gains, it does not adequately address the growing demand for forests that function as diverse, climate resilient ecosystems. Most [...]
Somatic evolution of metabolic reprograming: mutation limited or selection limited?
Published: 2026-08-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Somatic mutations can potentially be responsible for metabolic reprogramming, but the crucial question is whether the evolution would be mutation limited or selection limited. Mathematical and statistical considerations make the case for selection limited evolution stronger, e.g. somatic evolution of cancer is shown to be selection limited than mutation limited. Although some insights are [...]
Wolf–Deer Movement After the 2021 Wolf Harvest, by North-South Gradient and Proximity to Towns using a Five-County Camera Record (2018–2025)
Published: 2026-08-03
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Previous analysis of a wolf-enriched extract of the Snapshot Wisconsin camera network for five northwestern counties (Barron, Burnett, Bayfield, Douglas, and Sawyer; 525 cameras, 294,031 camera-days, 634,214 detections, 2018–2025; 1,856 wolf detections on 197 cameras) established patterns in the way gray wolves (Canis lupus) follow, select which class of deer to follow, and how strongly they [...]
An Interpretable Machine Learning Framework for River Water Hardness Classification
Published: 2026-08-03
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Sustainability
Determining water hardness in the field currently relies on laboratory Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) titration or single-proxy electrical conductivity (EC) measurements, both of which have significant limitations. This study investigates whether routine in situ physicochemical parameters can accurately classify river water hardness without laboratory analysis. Using samples from a river [...]
Bias and complementarity in species occurrence data from citizen science, museum, and social media collections
Published: 2026-08-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Effective biodiversity policy and spatial planning depend on species occurrence data. Yet data that informs conservation decisions typically originate from heterogeneous sources that potentially introduce systematic biases that shape downstream ecological inference and policy outcomes. To explore these potential biases, we analysed reptile location data from Bangladesh and India – a mega-diverse [...]
A scalable multi-resolution framework for connectivity-based biodiversity indicators
Published: 2026-08-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Landscape connectivity links local habitat condition to broader ecological processes including dispersal, recolonisation, range shifts, and species persistence, that underpin biodiversity responses to land-use and climate change. Several established biodiversity indicators — habitat connectedness (including as an input to the Biodiversity Habitat Index, BHI), Protected Area Connectedness Index [...]
Reconstructing the Early Evolution of Insect-Bacterial Mutualism through Natural Symbiotic Systems, Experimental Evolution, and Symbiosis Engineering
Published: 2026-08-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
The evolutionary transition from free-living bacteria to mutualistic symbionts remains a central question in symbiosis research. Traditionally, this process has been inferred from comparative analyses of extant symbiotic systems, which provide evolutionary snapshots but offer limited insight into the processes connecting them. Recent studies of the stinkbug Plautia stali and its bacterial [...]