Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Wildlife Responses to a Resident a Family: A Three-Year Camera Census on Restored Prairie–Savanna (2024–2026)
Published: 2026-09-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
A steward-conducted trail-camera census on a restored prairie–savanna complex in Washburn County, Wisconsin, labeled every frame from ten cameras at nine fixed stations for 2024, 2025 and January–June 2026 (11,820 frames; 11,135 estimated wildlife individuals; 1,027 frames of the resident family). White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) made up 67–83% of wildlife individuals in each year. [...]
Wolf–Deer and Guild Camera-trap Detections Across Wisconsin’s Statewide Wolf Range (2018–2025), Resolved by Deer Class: Buck Selection in the Hard-Antler Season, Bears and Fawns, and Class-Specific Reference Values for Displacement
Published: 2026-09-29
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
A statewide analysis of wolf-enriched Snapshot Wisconsin camera data (Vraniak 2026d) reported four things: wolves following deer, a temporary rise in that following after the February 2021 wolf harvest, displacement of deer by wolves, and avoidance of people across five co-occurring species. All of it treated deer as a single class. This companion resolves the deer into antlered bucks, antlerless [...]
Reservoir, sink, or reactor? Repositioning marine sponges as candidate indicators for coastal antimicrobial resistance monitoring
Published: 2026-09-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) spreads through the environment, and in coastal areas it is investigated mainly in water and sediment. These matrices capture antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) passing through them but may fail to retain that information over time because of the dynamics inherent in these ecosystems. Filter-feeding invertebrates are obvious candidates for the role, and bivalves [...]
Population density, cooperation, and the evolution of toothed whale societies
Published: 2026-09-29
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences
Odontocete societies come in two primary forms: stable matrilineally-based groups, often with bonds between groups, and labile associations among related and unrelated females in a ‘fission-fusion’ grouping pattern. There is no general theory to explain why these differing strategies evolved. Primate models of social bond evolution, based on cooperation in food competition, lack utility for [...]
Common, consequential, and actively maintained: a neo-balance view of genetic variation
Published: 2026-09-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
A fundamental and still unfinished task of evolutionary biology is to understand the nature of genetic variation and the evolutionary forces that shape it. The traditional approach to this problem is through retrospective inference from patterns in contemporary, static DNA sequence data. The prevailing view that emerged from these studies and from theoretical research is that segregating genetic [...]
Canyoning simplifies benthic macroinvertebrate communities in Mediterranean canyons: evidence from Sierra y Cañones de Guara Natural Park
Published: 2026-09-28
Subjects: Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Recreational activities in freshwater ecosystems are increasing worldwide, yet their ecological consequences remain poorly understood. Canyoning is one of the most popular nature-based sports in Mediterranean rivers, but quantitative assessments of its effects on aquatic communities are scarce, particularly in protected areas where conservation and recreation coexist. Here, we evaluated how [...]
A synthesis of bird biodiversity studies in geographically isolated wetlands reveals research synergies and opportunities
Published: 2026-09-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Geographically isolated wetlands represent integral foraging and breeding habitat for many bird species across the United States, yet few studies have attempted to synthesize existing research to quantify generalizable relationships between bird biodiversity and geographically isolated wetlands. We conduct a systematic review of bird biodiversity in geographically isolated wetlands of the [...]
TaxonBodyMassML: Taxonomy-informed prediction of body mass using gradient-boosted trees
Published: 2026-09-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Body mass is a key ecological trait governing metabolic rates, life-history characteristics, interaction strengths, and community structure and dynamics. Despite its centrality to ecology and ecological modelling, direct body mass measurements exist for only a small fraction of all scientifically described species. 2. We present TaxonBodyMassML, a machine-learning tool to predict the body [...]
Patterns of wind dispersal within a forest canopy: An epiphyte perspective
Published: 2026-09-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Plant dispersal theory has largely been developed from a terrestrial perspective, in which interception by vegetation is considered a loss, and success is defined by arrival at suitable ground-level habitat. True epiphytes—non-parasitic plants structurally dependent on a host throughout their lives—represent a striking reversal of this framework: their diaspores must be intercepted by suitable [...]
Building from biodiversity assessment to place-based conservation action across scales of information and governance.
Published: 2026-09-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Scientific assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services are challenged by the need to examine systemic drivers of change while maintaining support in a polarized political climate. Recent US national policy shifts that reduce federal support for scientific assessments underscore the necessity of a broad-based, resilient, and scalable assessment framework with sustained engagement of [...]
Disentangling the drivers of parasite occurrence in a native and a non-native small mammal across a land-use gradient
Published: 2026-09-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Parasitology
Land-use change can reorganize host--parasite systems by altering environmental conditions, host communities, and transmission pathways. Yet parasite occurrence remains difficult to predict as it is shaped simultaneously by the environment, host identity, individual host attributes, the within-host microbiome, and parasite biology. We integrated these components within a single framework for two [...]
Regional range restriction, not national endemism, predicts plant extinction risk: operationalising Conservation Imperatives for under-assessed tropical floras
Published: 2026-09-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
Abstract Aim: Tropical African flora is potentially threatened, yet species-level conservation priority-setting is rare in under-assessed floras. We tested whether range restriction drives extinction risk and operationalised the Conservation Imperatives at species level. Location: Rwanda, Albertine Rift biodiversity hotspot, eastern Africa. Methods: We applied this workflow to 367 IUCN-assessed [...]
We Have Never Been Hosts: Microbial Niche Weaving and the Evolution of Multicellular Life
Published: 2026-09-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
Microorganisms are commonly understood as associates of multicellular hosts: organisms that first exist as biological individuals and are subsequently colonized by microbial communities. Here, we challenge this temporal and ontological ordering by distinguishing microbial presence from microbial influence. Microbial activity can shape biological processes without persistent physical association, [...]
Evolutionary potential of natal dispersal in multiple blue tit populations while accounting for spatial autocorrelation among relatives
Published: 2026-09-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
Natal dispersal is a key driver of ecological and evolutionary dynamics in populations. However, our understanding of genetic mechanisms underlying inter-individual variation in dispersal behaviour is still incomplete, despite their crucial role in the evolutionary potential and persistence of wild populations. Here, we investigate the genetic basis of natal dispersal distance in four blue tit [...]
Global Evidence for Biotic Differentiation Amid Contrasting Freshwater β-Diversity Responses to Human Impacts
Published: 2026-09-24
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Human pressures are reshaping freshwater biodiversity worldwide, yet the generality of biotic homogenization and the contexts in which differentiation instead emerges remain unresolved. These contrasting responses reflect decreases or increases in spatial β-diversity, respectively, as local assemblages within a region become more similar or more distinct in community composition. We conducted a [...]