Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Ecosystem condition assessments: A context-specific workflow to integrate local expert knowledge and remote sensing
Published: 2026-04-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Despite decades of conservation science, we still struggle with a deceptively simple question: how do we know if an ecosystem is in good or poor condition? We present a reproducible, six-step workflow for assessing ecosystem condition using remote sensing, ecological knowledge, and expert validation. The approach is designed to be applied consistently across diverse biomes, while remaining [...]
Evolutionary arms race between transposable elements and human genes: telomere-to-telomere genome comprehensive analysis identifies young L1 clusters in the interferon-alpha domain
Published: 2026-04-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Transposable elements (TEs) have played a central role in major evolutionary transitions across the human lineage, from eukaryogenesis to the emergence of the eutherian placenta, and are currently reactivated in cancer and autoimmune diseases. The availability of the complete telomere-to-telomere (T2T) human genome assembly enables comprehensive investigation of TE contributions to gene [...]
Resource abundance can buffer trophic mismatch in a caterpillar-passerine food-chain
Published: 2026-04-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Phenological mismatch occurs where variation in the magnitude of the response to environmental cues among species disrupts previously synchronised interspecific interactions, posing a risk to ecosystems as the climate changes. Understanding how ecological and environmental factors modulate the fitness effects of mismatch is essential for forecasting its impacts. Here, we analyse trophic mismatch [...]
Aliens Are Likely to Be Smart But Not “Intelligent”: What Evolution of Cognition on Earth Tells Us about Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Published: 2026-04-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
How likely is it that we will find aliens like the ones in so many science fiction stories–people who possess self-awareness and cognitive ability comparable to ours, but who arose from an independent evolutionary origin? Here I make the argument that if life has evolved on other planets, it may well eventually acquire complexity equivalent to that found on Earth. The resulting lifeforms may be [...]
Human Homosexuality, Transsexuality and Evolution: A Critical Appraisal
Published: 2026-04-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
Homosexual behavior occurs naturally in many species of mammals. Among primates, homosexuality is an evolutionary innovation originating when the anthropoid lineage split from the prosimian linage, becoming prominent in socially complex old world primates. Many species possess multiple genders: multiple morphs within each sex. Homosexual behavior and transgender expression occur across all [...]
Amphibian communities are structured by local habitat quality in garden ponds and spatial factors in urban ponds
Published: 2026-04-15
Subjects: Life Sciences
Amphibians are among the most threatened vertebrates, and urbanisation contributes to their decline through habitat loss, fragmentation, pollution, and the spread of invasive species. At the same time, urban freshwater habitats, such as ponds, can serve as important refuges within highly modified landscapes. While the role of urban ponds in supporting freshwater biodiversity is increasingly [...]
Sample size shapes metabarcoding-driven biodiversity assessments across body sizes in soil
Published: 2026-04-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Life Sciences
Understanding how sample size influences biodiversity detection across taxonomic groups differing in body size is critical for designing robust and cost-efficient metabarcoding studies of soil eukaryotes. Using a soil mass gradient (0.25-32 g) combined with a universal 18S rRNA metabarcoding approach, we quantified how sample mass shapes diversity estimates across eukaryotic taxa. Diversity [...]
Silver spoon effect: Natal noise exposition is associated with telomere dynamics in adult birds
Published: 2026-04-14
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology
Anthropogenic noise disturbance on wildlife is of growing concern. Environmental noise exposure during incubation can negatively impact fitness in wild birds. Here, we hypothesised that chronic noise introduces stress through oxidative damage to embryos, reflected in short-term fitness reduction and long-term physiological changes. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the effects of chronic [...]
Older forests recover faster: leaf litter arthropods reveal post-perturbation recolonization dynamics
Published: 2026-04-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Understanding how ecological communities recover from disturbance is central to predicting ecosystem resilience, particularly in tropical forests where biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are tightly linked. Such landscapes are dominated by secondary forests that have experienced, and continue to experience, disturbances of varying intensity. Leaf litter arthropods play a crucial role in [...]
The Evolution of Interdependent Cell Cycles During the Transition to Multicellularity
Published: 2026-04-13
Subjects: Biology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
In the evolution of complex multicellular organisms, cells that were once autonomous became obligately dependent on one another for survival and reproduction. Despite its importance, the process by which autonomous cellular machinery was restructured into obligately interdependent networks is poorly understood. Addressing this gap requires a framework that clearly categorizes the different levels [...]
Anti-obesity therapeutics potential of plant genetic resources of Bangladesh and their conservation at Bangladesh Agricultural University Botanical Garden
Published: 2026-04-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Obesity, a global health issue affecting 650 million people, leads to chronic diseases and health impairments. Anti-obesity drugs are expensive and may cause side effects, raising significant concerns. One hundred eighty-eight medicinal plant species from 157 genera and 62 families in Bangladesh exhibit anti-obesity activity. Fabaceae (syn. Leguminosae) is the largest family, consisting of 25 [...]
An energetic unification of ecological theory
Published: 2026-04-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Ecological communities can persist for long periods despite strong competition and environmental variability, yet they can also reorganize or collapse abruptly after seemingly modest change. Explaining persistence, diversity, and collapse has produced several major traditions in ecology, including species-interaction models, consumer--resource theory, coexistence theory, feasibility analysis, and [...]
Microplastics and forest fungi: A review and call for comprehensive research
Published: 2026-04-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Fungi are the main drivers of the global carbon and nutrient cycle and act as ecosystem engineers in forest ecosystems by regulating primary production and decomposition. Moreover, fungi are among the most diverse organisms in forest ecosystems and affect almost all forest microhabitats, from the canopy to the soil. In contrast to aquatic and agricultural ecosystems, forest ecosystems have [...]
When does sampling uncertainty matter in matrix population models? Evidence from published projection matrices
Published: 2026-04-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
1. The collation of thousands of population projection matrices in the COM(P)ADRE Matrix Databases has enabled large-scale comparative analyses in ecology, evolution, and demography. A persistent challenge is that transition rates are estimated from finite samples, yet the resulting sampling uncertainty is rarely reported and typically ignored in downstream analyses. Although sampling uncertainty [...]
Why are embodied social signals concentrated towards the rostral region? — The rostrum concentration hypothesis
Published: 2026-04-09
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biological Psychology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Although frequently embodied, the relationship of animal social communication with body layout has rarely been investigated from a unified cognitive perspective. Across animal taxa, socially relevant signals, ranging from facial expressions and gaze to colouration and morphology, are strikingly concentrated towards the anterior region of the body. Here, we propose the Rostrum Concentration [...]