Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
A systematic review on the effectiveness of salmonid spawning habitat improvements, and recommendations to potentially increase productivity of depressed Newfoundland Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) populations
Published: 2026-05-22
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
When dangerous predators are ignored: antipredator responses in temporary-pond amphibians
Published: 2026-05-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Antipredator behaviour is recognised as a key factor of reintroduction success, yet it remains poorly considered in conservation practice. Despite their conservation relevance, little is known about antipredator behaviour in Pelobatidae tadpoles, among which the endangered Italian lineage of common spadefoot toad Pelobates fuscus has been the target of several captive breeding and reintroduction [...]
Synthetic biology as an empirical tool for evolutionary theory
Published: 2026-05-22
Subjects: Life Sciences
Evolutionary biology has traditionally inferred process from patterns in extant organisms and the fossil record, leaving many foundational questions constrained by their historical nature. Over the past two decades, synthetic and high-throughput approaches — including deep mutational scanning, genome editing, ancestral sequence reconstruction, engineered mutators, and random-sequence assays — [...]
A fine-grained behavior-based approach to estimating the probability of collision between moving vehicles and birds
Published: 2026-05-22
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Collisions between animals and vehicles contribute to biodiversity loss, threaten human safety, and have economic consequences. Escape responses of wildlife to vehicles are a critical factor in determining whether a collision occurs. However, presently species-specific vulnerability estimates do not consider the species escape behavior, potentially resulting in inaccurate mortality estimates. [...]
The holobiont is not a useful model for most host-microbiome interactions
Published: 2026-05-20
Subjects: Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Evolution, Life Sciences
The holobiont concept refers to a host and associated microbes. It has been critiqued over the last decade, primarily based on the argument that individual holobionts are not an appropriate level for analyzing multi-generation host dynamics, as most microbes are acquired from the environment. Several responses were given to this and other criticisms. The main response has been that the holobiont [...]
Multi-eared Listening: Pathways to Equitable Partnerships in a Transdisciplinary Ecoacoustics
Published: 2026-05-20
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Life Sciences
Multi-Eared Listening is a call to integrate Indigenous, local, and Western scientific knowledges in a transdisciplinary ecoacoustic research. Following the Mi’kmaw principle of Two-Eyed Seeing, Multi-Eared Listening, points to the importance of braiding epistemologies in ecoacoustic research and conservation. Case studies from Ecuador, Ghana, Indonesia, Australia, and transnational sound art [...]
Colossal Disinformation
Published: 2026-05-20
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
I have a position: de-extinction is almost impossible, however, deëxtinction, a word invented by the world’s first “de-extinction” company Colossal Laboratories & Bioscience’s can be (Max 2025); hereafter Colossal, which they define as the creation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that appear and act like extinct species, is possible. It’s branding, not science. I and other critics of [...]
The roles of density dependence, developmental asynchrony, and niche traversal costs in shaping the evolution of ontogenetic complexity
Published: 2026-05-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Most organisms undergo some degree of niche transition throughout their life cycles, which are typically accompanied by morphological, physiological, and/or behavioral changes. Ontogenetic complexity generally refers to the magnitude and abruptness of these changes. Evolutionary theory has described how various genetic properties facilitate and constrain the evolution of ontogenetic complexity, [...]
A Protocol for Standardizing Measurements and Enabling Global Harmonization of Herbarium Leaf Reflectance Spectra
Published: 2026-05-20
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Reflectance spectroscopy offers a powerful approach to integrate high-throughput phenotypic data from herbarium specimens into the digital landscapes of ecology, evolution, and systematics. Because inconsistencies in instrumentation and measurement practices can increase noise and limit dataset compatibility, the International Herbarium Spectral Digitization Working Group (IHerbSpec) has [...]
Cheating and imperfect vaccines as drivers of bacterial evolution
Published: 2026-05-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Cheating is an ubiquitous evolutionary strategy, appearing everywhere throughout the tree of life. Among bacteria, cheating appears mostly through the consumption of public good without participation in their production. Some vaccines, because they specifically target these public goods, may alter the eco-evolutionary dynamics of cheating in bacterial populations of pathogenic species such as [...]
Oak masting remains stable despite climate warming
Published: 2026-05-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Climate warming alters tree reproduction, but long-term tests of how it affects the large, synchronised interannual fluctuations in seed production known as masting remain rare. Theory predicts that climate-driven declines in masting should be most likely when species combine high reproductive sensitivity to weather cues with rapid climatic change during the corresponding cue windows. We tested [...]
Parasites and forage as determinants of body condition and population size in an imperiled ungulate.
Published: 2026-05-20
Subjects: Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Parasitology, Population Biology
Rapid environmental changes are resulting in widespread changes in population size, health, and physiology of wildlife, especially at northern latitudes where the impacts of climate change are more pronounced. Barren-ground caribou (Rangifer tarandus groenlandicus) have declined across much of their range in recent decades, and while the ultimate causes are unknown, western science and local [...]
Designing for nature doesn't cost the Earth
Published: 2026-05-19
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Urban Studies and Planning
1. A key barrier to the development of nature positive cities is the unknown cost of implementing novel urban design elements. Strict budgets and government approval processes make it challenging for developers to trial new approaches, meaning most developments rarely deviate from ‘business-as-usual’ (BAU). Further research is urgently needed to overcome this barrier to innovation and help [...]
Towards comparability among state-and-transition models: A set of generalised templates linked to ecosystem condition
Published: 2026-05-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
Growing commitments to environmental sustainability and nature conservation by industry, government and communities globally have led to a pressing need for consistent methods to characterise and quantify outcomes of land use and ecological restoration. State-and-transition models (STMs) are widely used to describe and communicate knowledge about ecosystem dynamics and are increasingly applied in [...]
Expanding the sentinel approach through multimodal integration: resolving underlying ecological processes with eDNA and computer vision
Published: 2026-05-19
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Sentinel approaches provide a semi-controlled method for quantifying in-field ecological interactions and processes while reducing bias and labour. They are, however, limited by difficulties ascribing taxonomic identities, behavioural context and temporal resolution to interacting agents. The integration of additional sources of data, including the analysis of DNA left behind on sentinel objects [...]