Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Species recognition in herbaria and standing trees using an accessible portable spectrometer
Published: 2026-07-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
Species identification in hyperdiverse regions such as the Amazon forest, is time-consuming and often prone to errors. In light of the current rapid biodiversity loss, developing fast and low-cost methods to support species identification in both field and herbarium samples is fundamental to improve the quality of tropical forest inventories. We tested two spectrometers - the high-performance [...]
Swept ashore: Transoceanic dispersals and the biogeographic origins of Australian gekkonid lizards
Published: 2026-07-20
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences
Oceanic dispersal is a rare mode of long-distance dispersal where taxa colonize disconnected islands or continents, sometimes resulting in new radiations. Australia has been isolated from other continental landmasses during the last 45 million years, and overwater colonisation has played a critical role in shaping its contemporary biota. Here, we investigate the biogeographic origins of [...]
Quiet stewardship and deer return times: sound continuity, not fuel, predicts white-tailed deer avoidance of stewardship machines in a multi-year steward-conducted camera census
Published: 2026-07-18
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Recreation and routine land management can alter wildlife behavior even where they do not reduce abundance, and the acoustic component of human activity is difficult to isolate from human presence itself. Within a single restored prairie–savanna, the same trail network is worked on foot, on a silent electric utility vehicle (UTV), and behind gas engines (a gas ATV and a mower), with all vehicle [...]
Extant native and alien herbivores and carnivores retain substantial capacity to restore late-Quaternary trophic structure
Published: 2026-07-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Global ecosystem restoration seeks to recover ecological functions and trophic integrity. However, late-Quaternary extinctions and range contractions of large mammals have simplified modern ecosystems. The extent to which trophic structure can be rebuilt by surviving species remains unclear. We assess the capacity of extant native and already-introduced alien large herbivores and carnivores to [...]
The Case for Prioritizing West Marin as a Beaver Relocation Site
Published: 2026-07-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) Beaver Restoration Program (BRP) must allocate a limited number of translocations across many candidate watersheds. This paper argues that West Marin, the coastal watershed anchored by Lagunitas Creek, warrants placement in the top tier of the CDFW's prioritization model. West Marin is the rare site that is at once highest-value, lowest-risk, [...]
Individual repeatability in dietary specialisation across years and competitive regimes in wild birds
Published: 2026-07-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
Dietary variation reflects fitness trade-offs shaped by environmental conditions and individual traits. According to optimal foraging theory, individuals should specialise when profitable prey is abundant, yet empirical evidence remains limited. We hypothesised that specialisation is driven by individual personality and competition intensity. Following the pace-of-life syndrome (POLS) framework, [...]
Replication and generalization in evolutionary ecology
Published: 2026-07-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
Several authors have expressed concern about replicability in evolutionary ecology. But what does replicability mean in this field, and how can replication enable generalization? Evolutionary ecologists investigate probabilistic processes across a vast diversity of unique historical entities. I argue that the aims and subject matter of evolutionary ecology complicate inference and necessitate [...]
The highly pathogenic H5N1 outbreak did not increase mortality rates of adult Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica) in Newfoundland, Canada
Published: 2026-07-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Heart Rate and R–R Interval Recording in a Bottlenose Dolphin: Toward a Keeper-Led Framework for HRV-Based Welfare Assessment
Published: 2026-07-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Monitoring physiological states in managed animals is important for health management and welfare assessment. Heart rate variability (HRV) may provide welfare-relevant information on autonomic regulation, but practical keeper-led approaches for obtaining cardiac data during routine husbandry remain limited in zoos and aquariums. To address this gap, we propose a keeper-led framework in which [...]
Within- and across-genus scaling of vessel diameter reveals consistent hydraulic responses to rainfall
Published: 2026-07-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
· Xylem vessel diameter and lumen fraction are expected to track water availability via the hydraulic safety–efficiency trade-off yet observed trait–rainfall relationships are weak and inconsistent. This discrepancy may partly reflect the conflation of within- and across-lineage effects in comparative datasets. · We tested this possibility by analysing hydraulically weighted vessel [...]
Why trait gradients across environments differ within species and across communities: Insights from a theoretical model
Published: 2026-07-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Trait-environment relationships within plant species are both flatter on average and more variable than community-mean trends, yet the mechanisms driving this variation remain poorly understood. Classic theory attributes this flattening to maladaptive gene flow, but the theory has been underused and its scope, in particular how multiple factors interact to shape trait slopes, remains largely [...]
Origin of Zygnematophyceae algae from mitotically dividing anydrophyte zygotes
Published: 2026-07-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
It is now generally accepted that Zygnematophyceae evolved from the multicellular common ancestor with Embryopyta - Anydrophyta - by reduction to unicellular state. Here we propose and discuss possible scenarios how this reduction might have proceeded - either via stepwise evolutionary reduction or via an abrupt life-cycle reduction, establishing a single cell lineage and rendering a number of [...]
Social complexity does not lead to more stable demographic histories across bird species
Published: 2026-07-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Species’ responses to environmental variability can include evolutionary changes in social behaviours, leading to variation among species in characteristics including their mating systems, care systems (e.g., cooperative breeding), the rate of group formation, and the strength of interaction between individuals. These social traits can influence the physiology of individuals, potentially [...]
Food resources shape bird assemblages, rendering trophic structure globally convergent
Published: 2026-07-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Species persist only when energy resources are available and organisms have traits to exploit them. Because resources such as fruit or carrion differ in abundance and diversity, general principles of energy flow and niche theory should shape differences in species richness among trophic guilds within assemblages. Yet, this hypothesis remains empirically untested. Here, we analyze 31,251 local [...]
Climate isolation and percolation as drivers of terrestrial vertebrate richness
Published: 2026-07-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences