Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Consensus on future research directions in the Phylum Rotifera
Published: 2026-01-09
Subjects: Life Sciences
Rotifers play key roles in aquatic ecosystems, yet significant uncertainty remains about their diversity and evolution, and basic knowledge is still lacking to address practical challenges related to global change. To identify the major knowledge gaps hindering progress, we carried out a Delphi process both online and during the 17th International Rotifer Symposium, involving more than forty [...]
TABMON – real-time acoustic biodiversity monitoring across Europe
Published: 2026-01-08
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
1. Ecological surveys are often fragmented, costly, and limited in scale, leading to large and long-standing knowledge gaps which threaten our ability to properly safeguard biodiversity. 2. Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) has promised to deliver automated biodiversity monitoring, but networks are rarely deployed on scales that can offer truly novel insights due to scalability and [...]
Active layer microbial inocula restore missing functions across thawed permafrost soils
Published: 2026-01-07
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Soil Science, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Microbial dynamics in thawing permafrost induce a climate feedback of uncertain magnitude. Estimates rely largely on incubations of experimentally-thawed permafrost soils, which may have limited microbial functionality after millennia of frost. In nature, however, seasonally-thawed active layer microorganisms may enter the underlying permafrost soil and introduce missing functions. Here we test [...]
Personality tips the scale: How individual differences in exploration shape behavioural and hormonal adjustment to different environments
Published: 2026-01-07
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Animal Studies, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Individuals show consistent differences in their behaviour across time and/or context, usually referred to as animal personality in behavioural ecology. These inter-individual differences raised the question if animals of different personalities also vary in how they adjust to certain environmental conditions. In the present study, we aimed to investigate personality-dependent adjustments to [...]
Spatial Expansion and Ecological Correlates of Invasive Crayfish Procambarus clarkii and Pacifastacus leniusculus in Mediterranean Rivers of Catalonia (NE Iberian Peninsula)
Published: 2026-01-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Invasive freshwater crayfish are among the most impactful non-native taxa in European river systems, yet quantitative assessments of their spatial expansion and environmental drivers remain scarce in Mediterranean regions. We investigated the expansion dynamics and environmental drivers of two invasive North American crayfish, Procambarus clarkii and Pacifastacus leniusculus, in rivers of [...]
Human wildlife conflict in India: Do we need to debunk popular “ecological” theories implicit in conservation management?
Published: 2026-01-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
Conservation management in India appears to be based on a set of implicit oversimplified ecological beliefs. Using a thought experiment, I demonstrate here how management based on these beliefs is bound to lead to escalating human wildlife conflict (HWC). Mitigation measures such as capture-relocation are largely being used in spite of their demonstrated ineffectiveness or even counterproductive [...]
Biophysical ecosystem variation shapes oceanic predator communication
Published: 2026-01-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
Social information is predicted to be most valuable when pursuing patchy, ephemeral resources. Such resource dynamics emerge from biophysical coupling in the pelagic ocean, suggesting links from physical forcing to resource distribution to consumers’ production of social information. We tested these hypothesized links using integrated observations of blue whale communication, distribution of [...]
Neuroethology of Corpse-Directed Behaviors in Bees
Published: 2026-01-02
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences
Across taxa, social animals inevitably encounter dying or dead conspecifics and respond in patterned ways, yet the mechanisms underlying these behaviors remain understudied. Bees offer a powerful comparative system for exploring the neuroethology of corpse-directed behaviors. Across the bee phylogeny, sociality has been gained and lost multiple times, resulting in species that range from solitary [...]
Phenotyping avian bill sizes; combining the collection of standardized still images with software to obtain observer-independent measures of avian bill shapes
Published: 2026-01-02
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Avian bill size is a morphological trait with evolutionary and ecological importance. Obtaining large-scale observer-independent measures of bill length and bill depth has proven to be challenging. We developed a device, the Bill Phenotyping Box, that allows taking standardized still images from wild small passerine birds in the field. We combine this with dedicated software that, based on a [...]
Evaluating the vulnerability of critical early life stages in plants during heat extremes
Published: 2025-12-31
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Plants, their seeds, and their gametes show remarkable resilience and responsiveness to environmental conditions. However, worsening climate change with more severe and frequent extreme climatic events, like heatwaves and hot droughts, will likely push beyond physiological limits of many species. If such events occur during important points of development and reproduction – rather than mature [...]
Current and Future Habitat Suitability for Species of Concern at the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve
Published: 2025-12-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
We modeled current habitat suitability for 45 special status species at the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve in Southern California using a suite of environmental and climate conditions and projected those models to forecast future habitat suitability at mid-century (2041-2070) under three emissions scenarios. For many species, habitat suitability at the Preserve may increase in the future [...]
Reconstructing the Holy Loch Ecosystem: The Holy Loch Food Web Project A foundational framework for a long-term ecosystem census integrating barcoding, environmental DNA, classical taxonomy, and niche architecture
Published: 2025-12-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
The Holy Loch Food Web Project has the single aim of clarifying all of the definable taxa and their associated ecological niches in our entire ecosystem comprising sea loch, saltmarsh, temperate rainforest, vegetated shingle, carr woodland and freshwater swamp. Although a simple idea, in reality, there are huge numbers of hurdles to get there. This note founds the whole project which will [...]
Engaging European Local Communities in Biodiversity Genomics Research: A Five-Step Framework for Scientists
Published: 2025-12-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
Societally relevant applications of genomic science to understanding biodiversity depend on sustained and equitable engagement with Local Communities that supports ethical practice, builds a richer knowledge base, and guides sustainable conservation decisions. Pairing genomic sequencing data with long-held local ecological knowledge offers unique opportunities to gain insights into species [...]
The state of evidence on salmon farming: an umbrella review
Published: 2025-12-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences
Background: The global expansion of salmon aquaculture has transformed marine food systems, offering economic benefits while amplifying environmental and socio-economic challenges. The shift from wild-caught to farmed salmon has led to widespread concerns, including disease transmission, genetic introgression, pollution, and conflicts with Indigenous communities. Additionally, salmon feed supply [...]
From metrics to meaning: diversity as an essentially contested concept
Published: 2025-12-24
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Life Sciences
Biodiversity is among ecology’s most widely invoked but least consistently defined concepts. Despite decades of theoretical and methodological developments, ecologists continue to disagree about what "diversity" measures and how it should be quantified. These disagreements have direct consequences to conservation science, policy making, and public engagement. We argue that this enduring debate is [...]