Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Status of Large Carnivores and Wild Ungulates in North and South Balaghat Forest Divisions
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
The Balaghat forest circle, comprising the North and South Balaghat Forest Divisions in Madhya Pradesh, forms a vital component of the Central India Landscape. Strategically positioned between the Kanha and Pench Tiger Reserves, the region serves as a critical corridor for tiger (Panthera tigris) dispersal and long term genetic connectivity and therefore contributes significantly to the stability [...]
Pinpointing Fragility: Integrating Resilience Indicators into Risk Evaluation
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Ecosystems globally are increasingly threatened by climate change and human pressures, yet current ecosystem risk assessments predominantly emphasize exposure to stressors while overlooking intrinsic ecosystem resilience—the capacity to absorb and recover from disturbances. Here, we advocate for an integrated framework that explicitly incorporates resilience into ecosystem risk assessments and [...]
Record of male Dugong (Dugong dugon, Müller, 1776) in East Halmahera North Maluku Indonesia
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Dugong (Dugong dugon Müller, 1776) of the Order Sirenia is the only species of marine mammal in the family Dugongidae that inhabits tropical and subtropical waters of the Indo-Pacific (Nishiwaki and Marsh, 1985). Due to its slow life history and threats to its population, this species is listed as "Vulnerable" (VU) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (Marsh and Sobtzick, [...]
The evolutionary link between food, condiments and medicine
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Anthropology, Biodiversity, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Food Science, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The deep relationship between humans and plants is of great interest to ethnobotanists, human ecologists, and evolutionary biologists. Humans have incorporated thousands of plant species into both traditional medicine and our diets, as foods and condiments. Many of these provide not only calories but also micronutrients and other bioactive compounds that contribute to health [1]. The boundaries [...]
Distinguishing Between Fertilisation Failure and Early Embryo Death in Failed Sea Turtle Eggs
Published: 2026-05-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Does the substrate on which cryptogams grow matter for limno-terrestrial meiofauna?
Published: 2026-05-04
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Cryptogam habitats support a wide range of limno-terrestrial meiofauna, but the factors that shape their communities are still not well understood. The physical substrate that cryptogams grow on (e.g., soil, the base of a tree, or its trunk) can influence local moisture, temperature, and nutrient conditions, yet its role in structuring meiofaunal assemblages has rarely been tested systematically. [...]
Sounding out the river: an end-to-end framework for monitoring bioacoustic events and sediment movement in freshwater soundscapes
Published: 2026-05-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Despite rivers’ cornerstone place in global biodiversity and the key ecosystem services they provide to human societies, their soundscapes are severely understudied. Three challenges are in part responsible for this gap: the active nature of rivers complicates deployment logistics, their structural noise hinders the detection of significant events, and occuring sounds are largely [...]
Resprouting responses to light environment and cutting season differ across resprouting stages and leaf habit in a heavy-snow Japanese beech forest.
Published: 2026-05-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Resprouting is a key mechanism of recovery after aboveground damage and strongly influences forest regeneration and dynamics. This is also true in heavy-snow Japanese beech forests, where canopy-gap formation and snow pressure damage woody species. Understanding how light environment and disturbance season shape resprouting is therefore essential for interpreting life-history strategies and [...]
Sex differential effects of developmental heat stress on life-history and reproductive traits
Published: 2026-05-01
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Global warming has led to increased mean global temperatures with projections suggesting continued warming throughout this century, posing an escalating threat to biological systems worldwide. Ectotherms are most vulnerable to this change as heat stress conditions can have severe implications on their development, mating interactions, and fitness. However, the sex-specific effects of [...]
Synthesis of Anthropogenic Impacts on Birds - Systematic Map and Bibliometric Analysis of Meta-Analyses
Published: 2026-05-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Anthropogenic environmental change is a major driver of global bird declines, affecting species across continents, ecosystems, and life-history strategies. As such, it has drawn much attention in both primary research studies and meta-analyses. Because meta-analyses influence scientific consensus and conservation policy, it is essential to evaluate the representativeness and transparency of this [...]
The significance gap: statistical significance rates decrease from primary literature to effects used in ecological meta-analyses
Published: 2026-05-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Warm Temperate Northwest Pacific
Published: 2026-05-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Warm Temperate Northwest Pacific is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes intertidal forests and shrublands of the marine ecoregions of the East China Sea, that extend across China, Taiwan and South Korea. The Warm Temperate Northwest Pacific mangrove province mapped extent in 2023 was 6.83 km2, representing 0.0038% of the [...]
Achieving Target 1 through effective spatial planning underpins the long-term success of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Global Biodiversity Framework
Published: 2026-04-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
The first target of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF) mandates signatory nations of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to address biodiversity loss across all regions within their national jurisdictions by 2030 by implementing Participatory, Integrated, and Biodiversity-Inclusive Spatial Planning (BISP). Delivering Target 1 through coordinated, inclusive [...]
Lead and slant on the geometry of coiling in gastropods
Published: 2026-04-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Molluscan shells have been studied with various geometric models. Here I show that lead angle, the defining slope of a conical helix, emerges as a more useful parameter in morphometric analyses and (adaptationist) interpretation of covariation in coiling parameters. The widely used apical semiangle becomes redundant and uninformative, a passive consequence of taxon-specific lead angles and [...]
Learning, motivation, and social interaction in modern dolphin training
Published: 2026-04-30
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Dolphin training is widely practiced in zoological facilities for performance, husbandry, research, and daily management, yet many of its practical principles remain insufficiently formalized in the scientific literature. This Perspective aims to provide a citable academic framework for modern dolphin training by synthesizing trainer-based practical knowledge within established concepts from [...]