Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Evolution of frugivory across a large radiation of non-seed-dispersing animals
Published: 2026-09-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
The origin of Angiosperm fleshy fruits, a novel nutritious resource, has led to the evolution of frugivory in a wide range of animals. While the (co)evolutionary dynamics between fruits and seed dispersers has received much attention, the evolution of frugivory in non-seed-dispersing animals remains overlooked. Here, we elucidate the macroevolution of frugivory in a large radiation of an insect, [...]
Trait-based functional indices reveal contrasting carbon-storage and biodiversity-support potential across urban tree species and parks in Bogotá
Published: 2026-09-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
Urban expansion increasingly challenges the capacity of cities to maintain ecological functions, while urban trees are expected to contribute to climate regulation and biodiversity conservation. However, urban forest management often lacks functionally explicit information linking species characteristics to their ecological potential and spatial variation across urban green spaces. Here, we [...]
Does tolerance to fast warming predict tolerance to slow warming in fishes?
Published: 2026-09-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Critical thermal maximum (CTmax) is widely used to quantify upper thermal limits in fishes, but its ecological relevance has been questioned because standard protocols use fast warming rates (0.3°C min-¹; 18°C h-¹) that rarely occur in nature, where thermal stress more typically unfolds over hours to days. Whether CTmax under fast warming predicts warming tolerance to slower, ecologically [...]
Temperature drives transcriptomic shifts in amphibian skin bacterial communities with consequences for fungal pathogen control
Published: 2026-09-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Genomics, Life Sciences
The chytrid fungi Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) and Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal) are two of the largest threats to amphibian populations worldwide. While the amphibian skin microbiome can inhibit these fungal pathogens, microbial composition varies substantially across host and environmental contexts. In addition, habitat-wide mitigation methods that capitalize on the thermal [...]
Traditional Ecological Relationship Family sharing an abundant home within nature requires recurring mutual adaptation rather than the extraction of knowledge by passing visitors
Published: 2026-09-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Relationship, not knowledge, is the unit for understanding people within nature; family is the fundamental form holding what is of value about life in a place — the residue and repository of a relationship kept across generations from the inside. Ecological science accumulates a wealth of knowledge from the outside; a family in relationship with nature is concerned with surviving, sustaining [...]
Identification of the Cichlid Fishes of Lake Malawi/Nyasa Part 2: Pseudotropheina (the ‘mbuna’ sub-radiation).
Published: 2026-09-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
With an estimated 900-1000 species, the cichlid fishes of Lake Malawi represent the largest known adaptive radiation of vertebrates from a single common ancestor in a limited geographical area, in this case a single lake. They provide an outstanding opportunity to study the rapid diversification of form and function on a limited genetic background and to attempt understand why lineages vary so [...]
Bridging the science-business gap: from biodiversity measurement to action
Published: 2026-09-14
Subjects: Business, Life Sciences
Biodiversity is the living fabric of our planet, and its loss poses growing risks to human well-being, ecological resilience, and business profitability. Yet businesses often lack the information and incentives to align decisions with nature stewardship. We argue that several conditions are essential to sustain biodiversity and a habitable planet. First, monitoring multiple components of [...]
Fire modulates millennial plant community assembly
Published: 2026-09-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
How ecological communities maintain resilience under recurrent disturbance remains unclear because the processes governing persistence often unfold over centuries to millennia. Using fossil pollen and charcoal records spanning up to 14,000 years from mountain ecosystems in Europe and Africa, we reconstructed temporal networks of community predictability to investigate the role of fire in [...]
Alternative proteins are likely essential for biodiversity conservation
Published: 2026-09-14
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Animal-sourced foods play a major role in four of the five greatest drivers of biodiversity loss, and the conservation community must do more to address the threats that animal-sourced foods pose. While a variety of tools can help address the problems posed by animal-sourced foods, conservation must prioritize strategies that enable sustainability gains at scale to achieve global consensus goals [...]
Environmental water management and H5 bird flu in waterbirds: Context and scenarios for decision-making
Published: 2026-09-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The impact of animal viruses has dramatically increased over the last decade globally, exemplified by the disruption caused by the recent panzootic of high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b (H5 bird flu), which has caused the deaths of millions of wild birds and mammals, as well as domestic animals such as poultry. Wild waterbirds play a role in the spread of H5 bird flu [...]
Integrating morphometric and spectral evidence for species discrimination in Amazonian trees: a case study of Carapa (Meliaceae)
Published: 2026-09-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Reliable species-level identification of Amazonian trees from herbarium and field material is essential for conservation, management, and economic use of non-timber forest products, yet overlapping morphology and inconsistent identifications often hinder it. Using three Amazonian species of Carapa (C. guianensis, C. surinamensis, and C. vasquezii) as a case study, we tested whether leaf [...]
The coefficient of variation of body mass (and other traits)
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Variation is a fundamental property of populations and provides the raw material upon which evolutionary processes can act. The coefficient of variation, defined as the standard deviation divided by the arithmetic mean, is widely used in evolutionary biology to quantify relative variation, for example to draw conclusions about the strength of selection. However, comparing coefficients of [...]
Evaluating vibroacoustic sensor performance and vibration attenuation: implications for soil biodiversity sampling
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Entomology, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Earth’s biodiversity is undergoing substantial changes in response to anthropogenic stressors, creating a need for efficient methods of assessing biodiversity, particularly in soil ecosystems where sampling remains challenging. Soil vibroacoustics - the use of substrate-borne vibrations or sounds to quantify or detect below-ground biological activity – offers a potentially rapid and scalable [...]
Heterogeneity in Microbial Systems: Scales, Drivers, and Consequences
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
Heterogeneity is a fundamental, multi-scale organizing principle of microbial life, transcending its historical treatment as mere statistical noise. This review synthesizes recent advances to construct a unified framework for understanding microbial heterogeneity across hierarchical scales—from molecular and cellular phenotypic diversity, through strain-level genomic micro-diversity, to [...]
The Little Reptilian Lion: A Literature Review and Field Perspective on the Behavioral Ecology of Agama picticauda (Peter's Rock Agama)
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Life Sciences, Zoology
Agama picticauda (Peter's Rock Agama) is one of West Africa's most abundant and visually striking lizards, yet remains profoundly understudied at the level of behavioral ecology. This review draws on published literature and extended personal field observation of wild populations in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, to document the species' behavioral complexity and argue for dedicated long-term research. [...]