Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Modeling Mosquito Dynamics and West Nile Virus Risk in Canada: A Systematic Mapping Review of Approaches and Research Gaps
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Mosquito population dynamics are strongly shaped by environmental conditions and are central to mosquito-borne disease risk. In Canada, West Nile virus (WNV) remains the dominant mosquito-borne viral disease of public health concern, while climate change may alter mosquito distributions, seasonal activity, and the risk of WNV and other emerging mosquito-borne diseases. This systematic mapping [...]
A circulation-based hypothesis for vertebrate body plan evolution and endothermy
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
The emergence of novel vertebrate body plans and endothermy remain central questions in evolutionary science. Although gene regulatory networks provide powerful explanatory frameworks, the contribution of systemic physiology to vertebrate evolution warrants further investigation. Here, a hypothetical circulation-based model is proposed that integrates the redox and magnetic properties of blood [...]
Sleep as Obligate Phenotypic Switching: An Ultimate Explanation for Temporal Niche Partitioning
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Why does natural selection mandate an involuntary, internally generated state change rather than permit flexible behavioral inactivity? Existing theories explain what sleep accomplishes – synaptic homeostasis, metabolite clearance, energy conservation – but these are proximate mechanisms, not ultimate explanations: themselves products of selection, yet adaptations acquired by the sleeping state [...]
Noise as a global change driver: a meta-analysis of its fitness consequences for birds
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
Anthropogenic noise is a widespread yet underappreciated global pollutant. Despite mounting evidence that noise may affect the physiology and behaviour of birds, its consequences for fitness, and thus its capacity to impact population and evolutionary processes, remain unclear. Here, we conduct a pre-registered systematic review and meta-analysis of the causal effects of anthropogenic noise on [...]
Reef fish biodiversity guarantees productivity
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Biodiversity loss on coral reefs may threaten their functioning and services to humanity. However, the impacts of biodiversity change on reef fish productivity, a key function that sustains millions of humans, are not well understood. Here, we compiled a global dataset of coral reef fish surveys to examine whether assemblage biodiversity promotes productivity, in both space and time. Diversity [...]
Signals of ecological decline and increasing genomic inbreeding in Western Hudson Bay polar bears
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate change is a leading cause of population declines. Predicting the evolutionary consequences of such declines can be challenging for long-lived species because slow generation times and the overlap of individuals from multiple generations within a population can obscure signals of genetic diversity losses. We integrated four decades of environmental, demographic, and genomic data from the [...]
Weeds are plants of human-modified environments, not plants out of place
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
The question “What makes a plant a weed?” has persisted in both the agricultural sciences and plant ecology and evolution for well over a hundred years. Various authors—agriculturists focused on crop yield, ecologists examining community assembly, and plant biologists interested in adaptation—have each defined the term weed. However, these definitions, developed from unique vantage points, have [...]
Rethinking success and quality in ecological forecasting
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Ecological forecasts are increasingly required to inform science, policy and action in the face of rapid environmental and societal change. However, differences in how developers and end-users judge the value of ecological forecasts may limit their utility and uptake in real-world decision-making. Here, we use a participatory approach to propose a novel, holistic framework for the evaluation of [...]
Polar bear conflict risk behaviour is shaped by maternal, individual, and environmental effects, not heritability
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
As ecosystems transform under the combined pressures of climate change and human activity, interactions between humans and wildlife are becoming increasingly common. Human-wildlife conflict is often managed by either targeting repeatedly involved individuals or modifying the conditions that make conflict more likely. Choosing which approach to emphasize depends partly on whether individual [...]
Spatial crime scripting and meso-level analyses of illegal pangolin trade
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Human-related threats such as poaching and illegal trade remain the dominant risk to pangolin conservation. Using crime science focused on illegal pangolin hunting, we compare expert vs. community member’s spatio-temporal knowledge about the different stages of pangolin poaching and trade process at a national scale; explore spatial trajectories between stages; and explore spatial predictors of [...]
Globalizing recreational fisheries should not globalize non-native species
Published: 2026-10-28
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Life Sciences
Recreational fishing continues to expand globally, generating substantial economic, cultural, and social benefits. Yet with this globalization in fishing opportunities comes more diverse pathways for biological invasions. Major concerns are surfacing that the intentional stocking of non-native fishes to initiate or enhance recreational fisheries may facilitate the unsanctioned spread of the [...]
Not All Shrubs are Equal: The Outsized Ecological Consequences of Ericaceous Shrub Encroachment on Communities and Ecosystem Processes
Published: 2026-10-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Shrubs are functionally important and found across various ecosystems. Over the past few decades, shrubs have been expanding their ranges and encroaching within grassland, temperate, boreal, and tundra ecosystems. Because of this range expansion and their functional importance, shrubs are altering abiotic factors, biotic interactions, and ecosystem processes. However, shrubs of the Ericaceae [...]
CHIRAL FLEXIBILITY IN INSECT PHEROMONES: WHY DO SOME SPECIES TOLERATE THE WRONG STEREOISOMER?
Published: 2026-10-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Many insect pheromones are chiral, and receivers respond to non-natural stereoisomers in strikingly different ways: some are completely inhibited by a few per cent of the antipode, some ignore it, some require both enantiomers, and at least one responds more strongly to stereoisomers it does not produce. These response types were catalogued two decades ago, and the most common of them, a [...]
Rethinking bias in biodiversity science: sources and solutions
Published: 2026-10-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Bias is increasingly a central concern in biodiversity science, yet the term is used inconsistently. A key source of confusion is the failure to distinguish clearly between the dimension in which bias manifests (e.g. spatial or taxonomic) and/or the stage of the observation process that gives rise to it. This distinction matters because the appropriate method for mitigating bias depends primarily [...]
Rainfall increases similarity in plant species composition between grazed and ungrazed sites in a tropical semi-arid grassland
Published: 2026-10-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. In peninsular India, semi-arid grasslands support marginal farmers and rich endemic biodiversity, yet are commonly designated as wastelands, and fragmentation has caused heavy grazing by domestic and wild mammals. The impacts of unmanaged grazing and increasingly variable monsoon rainfall on the plant community are unknown. 2. We studied an ancient tropical semi-arid grassland in a drought [...]