Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Robustness of pesticide and other environmental stressors as key drivers of stream macroinvertebrates in small agricultural catchments
Published: 2026-05-09
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Robustness of multiple stressor rankings is essential for credible ecotoxicological assessments and policy guidance. A widely cited study of 101 small agricultural streams across Germany identified pesticide mixtures as the dominant stressor for stream macroinvertebrates, but its analytical robustness has since been questioned. Using a fully reproducible workflow, we reanalysed this dataset to [...]
The social environment has little impact on inbreeding depression in a social mammal
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Inbreeding depression describes the decline in fitness caused by breeding between relatives and is now known to be widespread in natural populations. Yet, its relative strength across different fitness components and its sensitivity to social and demographic environments are poorly understood. Using nearly 30 years of life-history, behavioural, pedigree and genomic data from a wild population of [...]
The presence of generalist plants in urban greenspaces predicts pollinator diversity
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Urban greenspaces are increasingly important for pollinator conservation, yet it remains unclear whether pollinator diversity is better predicted by overall plant richness or by the presence of particular plant species with central roles in the pollination network, referred to as hub species. Using community science observations from 39 urban greenspaces in Broward County, Florida, we constructed [...]
From repeated baseline HRV monitoring to activity-and-recovery assessment in a trained dolphin: a preliminary protocol report
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Heart rate variability (HRV) may provide useful physiological information for welfare assessment in managed dolphins. Previous preliminary work proposed HRV analysis as a potential tool for evaluating welfare-related physiological states in dolphins. As a further step, this preliminary protocol report documents the development and initial implementation of a baseline-informed [...]
Invasiveness reshapes the historical pattern of carp trait evolution
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Human-mediated invasions are increasingly recognised as contemporary ecological disturbances with profound impacts on microevolutionary processes. However, whether such impacts extend beyond microevolutionary change to alter long-term evolutionary trajectories across lineages remains poorly explored. Using a global phylogenetic analysis of nearly 1,400 carp species (freshwater fishes of the [...]
Identifying knowledge gaps on simultaneous above- and belowground organism responses to global change
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Global change affects all terrestrial organisms regardless if they live above or below the ground. Even though they are strongly linked by various direct and indirect interactions, organisms can respond very differently to global change stressors, due to different features of above- and belowground compartments. Many different organism groups have shown declines in diversity, abundance or biomass [...]
Multi-scale surveillance reveals substantial egg-laying winter activity in Aedes albopictus mosquito populations across temperate Europe
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
The Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), a competent vector for dengue, chikungunya, and Zika viruses, has expanded rapidly across temperate Europe. European vector surveillance typically operates May to October, assuming winter diapause precludes activity and transmission risk. However, recent field observations suggest sustained egg-laying winter activity in southern European populations, [...]
Assessing the sensitivity and robustness of the Living Planet Index through simulated population dynamics: strengths, stability, and challenges
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Understanding population change through time is crucial for effective conservation of biodiversity. The Living Planet Index (LPI) is a key indicator for tracking global species abundance trends under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, offering a picture of population change over time. However, the sensitivity of the index to zero values or to the number of missing values in time [...]
Exploring the legal, policy, ethical and practical implications of digitisation of botanical and fungal collections
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Collections-based institutions around the world hold an extraordinary wealth of information and knowledge through the specimens and associated information that they house.. In recent years, institutions holding botanical and fungal collections have invested significant energy and resources into the digitisation of these collections to make them more accessible and better connected. Digitisation [...]
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. [...]