Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Humans simplified trophic structures in island lake ecosystems
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Lakes on oceanic islands are exceptionally vulnerable ecosystems and serve as natural archives of long-term environmental change, yet long-term reconstructions spanning multiple trophic levels remain rare. We reconstruct 2,000 years of ecological change across nine Azorean lakes by analysing sediment records of community composition and trophic-guild richness for aquatic producers and consumers, [...]
What’s in flower? Phenological temperature sensitivities in a restricted alpine flora
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
As climate warming continues, cues for shifts in plant reproductive timing will be a key mediator of species success. To examine the links between temperature and flowering time in the Australian alpine, we used climate records and 18,000 flowering observations spanning 12 years for 52 alpine plant species from the Snowy Mountains, Australia. We modelled three phenological traits (flowering [...]
Why we need ecology and evolution for a better understanding of misdirected behaviour
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Animal behaviour emerges from the complex interaction between internal states, as well as biotic and abiotic environmental conditions. When observed behavioural responses differ from researchers’ expectations, they are often described as “misdirected behaviour” and potentially maladaptive. However, several factors including genetic background and developmental conditions, sensory perception and [...]
Prevalence of Gastrointestinal Parasites in Goats and Sheep in Mbula Kuli, Adamawa State, Nigeria
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Gastrointestinal (GI) parasitism is a major constraint to small ruminant productivity in Nigeria, causing reduced growth, weight loss, and economic losses to herders. This study assessed the prevalence of gastrointestinal parasites in goats and sheep in Mbula Kuli, Adamawa State, Nigeria, between 2025 and 2026. A total of 110 faecal samples (40 from goats and 70 from sheep) were collected and [...]
The effect of environmental change on plastic sex-ratio strategies
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Offspring sex ratio manipulation has been widely studied, with numerous adaptive explanations proposed for biased sex ratios. While sex-ratio trends have been observed in many species, such patterns often disappear over time within populations or differ across populations. Environmental change is frequently proposed as underlying these inconsistencies, particularly for strategies relying on [...]
wildtag.ai: an open-access end-to-end offline AI-assisted desktop application for managing camera trap projects
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Bioinformatics, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Camera traps generate massive volumes of data, yet their decision-support potential is diluted by the bottleneck of manual processing. Automated classification has largely solved this, but classification alone does not remove the barriers to adoption: it must be coupled with the means to turn predictions into a verified, shareable dataset, which no existing tool does end-to-end, offline, and [...]
Uptake of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in plants: A systematic review and meta-analysis research protocol
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) transfer from contaminated environments into plants, contributing to food chain accumulation and an exposure pathway central to human health risk assessment. Regulatory risk assessments commonly use plant bioconcentration factors (BCFs) to estimate dietary exposure and support the derivation of health-based guideline values, yet they have not been [...]
Predictive movement ecology using spatial simulations
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The active movement of animals is fundamental to the structure and function of ecosystems globally. In recent years, reductions in the size and cost of animal tracking equipment have precipitated an explosion of interest in movement ecology, accelerating our understanding of the causes and consequences of animal movement. Until recently, movement ecology was largely a descriptive science. [...]
Heat tolerance in bees: a meta-analysis of ecological, evolutionary, and methodological drivers
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate change poses a growing threat to bees, which provide essential pollination services in natural and agricultural ecosystems. Although the critical thermal maximum (CTmax) is widely used to assess the vulnerability of pollinators to climate change, we lack a comprehensive understanding of the factors shaping heat tolerance across bee species globally. We conducted a systematic review and [...]
Reopening the Strait of Hormuz: from a bioinvasion super-spreader warning to species–vessel–port prioritisation
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Prolonged vessel lay-up can create an exceptional biosecurity hazard by allowing fouling assemblages to accumulate before vessels re-enter shipping networks. A recent study highlighted this risk following closure of the Strait of Hormuz and recommended pre-departure biofouling assessment, route forecasting, early detection and rapid communication. These measures address vectors and pathways, but [...]
What goes up, must come down: air–soil microbiome connectivity and its implications for ecosystem functioning
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Microbiology
Soils harbor Earth's largest reservoir of microbial diversity, yet enormous numbers of microorganisms are continuously aerosolized, transported through the atmosphere, and redeposited across landscapes. Although soil and the atmosphere have largely been studied separately, here, we propose a conceptual framework that views soils and the atmosphere as a coupled microbiome linked by bidirectional [...]
Heatwave-mediated maternal effects: heat stress in late but not early pregnancy has carry over effects on offspring phenotype
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Heatwaves are extreme climatic events driven by climate change that profoundly affect animal survival and reproduction. Although evidence for the direct effects of heatwaves on reproduction is increasing, much less is known about whether heatwaves during pregnancy generate maternal effects on offspring, and whether these effects depend on the timing of exposure. Pregnancy is a metabolically [...]
Cell-autonomous immunity and the endosymbiotic theory: Septins at the origin?
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Biology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The origin of complex eukaryotic cells remains a long-standing mystery. Endosymbiosis gave rise to mitochondria and chloroplasts, the bacteria-derived organelles that underpin eukaryotic productivity. Early eukaryotes had to establish these partnerships while avoiding pathogens, using limited ancestral tools. Septins are cytoskeletal GTP-binding proteins best known for roles in cytokinesis, yet [...]
The Cohort Net Reproductive Rate: an empirically grounded approach to R0 for structured populations and epidemics
Published: 2026-08-27
Subjects: Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Population Biology
The net reproductive rate, or per-generation population growth rate R0, is a key concept for population and epidemic dynamics, because persistence versus extinction is often determined by the sign of R0−1. Because it is defined as generation-to-generation growth, it is hard to assess empirically for structured populations or epidemics where generations overlap, and is usually estimated by [...]
How many ways are there to be a phage?
Published: 2026-08-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Virology
The search for predictive rules for how microbiomes assemble and function rarely include their most abundant members: phages. Nearly a century of phage research has yielded few ecological principles for the impacts of phages within microbial communities – sequencing surveys resolve phage presence but not phage activity, while mechanistic studies of relatively few model phages provide insights [...]