Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Incorporating traits into consumer-resource models for a mechanistic trait ecology
Published: 2026-07-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
Traits provide a powerful way to infer community assembly processes, responses to environmental perturbations, and coexistence mechanisms, although most work has focused on plants and has not incorporated the role of trophic interactions. Here, we briefly review the main goals of trait-based ecology and highlight recent examples that use traits to study insect communities, specifically focusing [...]
Insects as agents of national security: entomological biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse in agriculture and forestry threaten geopolitical stability
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Biosecurity, Entomology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
1. In early 2026, the UK Government published a report assessing how global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse represent systematic threats to UK national security through cascading impacts to food security, land use and climate-related feedbacks. 2. Recontextualising biodiversity and ecosystem health as determinants of national security offers a novel perspective on long observed [...]
Partitioning environmental and philopatric drivers of nest site selection in an estuary-endemic turtle (Malaclemys terrapin)
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Abstract 1. Oviposition site selection is a critical maternal effect with direct implications for population-level adaptation to environmental change. This process is driven by a complex interplay of environmental, density-dependent, and social factors whose relative contributions to site selection are rarely quantified simultaneously. Natal philopatry, for example, is a maternal effect that can [...]
Anatomical responses of Cedrus libani (Lebanon Cedar) wood to mechanical stress
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Wood (secondary xylem) is a source of information about events that occurred during their lifespan. The aim of our research was to provide the pattern of modification of Lebanon cedar wood under the influence of mechanical stress, as a result of binding its trunk with string or wire. The wood samples were taken from a young Cedrus libani (14 years old - evaluated based on the number of growth [...]
Avian epigenetic clocks: state of the art and call to action
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
DNA methylation-based epigenetic clocks are powerful biomarkers of chronological and biological age, estimating age from CpG-specific methylation patterns that integrate developmental history, environmental exposure, physiological stress, and stochastic epigenetic change. Despite rapid advances in mammals, avian epigenetic clocks remain scarce, limiting comparative inference and our understanding [...]
A global evidence synthesis of outcomes of urban bird conservation interventions
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Ornithology
Avian populations face high concentrations of threats in urban areas. Understanding the outcomes of urban conservation interventions to tackle these threats could inform more effective evidenced-based approaches. Using an evidence synthesis and meta-analysis of peer-reviewed literature on conservation interventions to tackle four leading causes of urban bird mortality in urban areas (cat [...]
Convergent biosynthesis of psilocybin in an ectomycorrhizal lineage: is the psychoactive end-product the selected trait?
Published: 2026-07-01
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
The fungivore-deterrence hypothesis, that psilocybin evolved as a chemical defence against arthropod fungivores via 5-HT receptor agonism, has become the working consensus in fungal chemical ecology, despite resting on a phylogenomic pattern of horizontal gene transfer among saprotrophs and remarkably little direct experimental evidence. Recent biochemistry shows that the ectomycorrhizal Inocybe [...]
Bridging nutritional geometry and network ecology to quantify the robustness of nutritional networks
Published: 2026-07-01
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Nutrition, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Understanding the robustness and resilience of ecological networks is key to managing ecosystems and mitigating biodiversity loss. Simple models of network robustness simulate species losses across ecological networks but lack physiological realism, asserting that species persist if they interact with another organism. This neglects the nutritional consequences of resource loss and nutrition as a [...]
Taming the dragon: genetic variation in wild and domesticated Antirrhinum majus
Published: 2026-06-30
Subjects: Botany, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Horticulture, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Domesticated species and their wild relatives provide powerful case studies for examining the processes that shape rapid diversification. Here, we conduct a population genetic analysis of 31 domesticated varieties and 33 natural populations of the common snapdragon, Antirrhinum majus, a species in which closely related flower colour varieties form hybrid zones and display extensive variation in [...]
Droughting results in lower than genomically predicted susceptibility to myrtle rust in Melaleuca quinquenervia
Published: 2026-06-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
• Ecological restoration often involves founding or supplementing plant populations. To support long-term resilience of these populations, we aim to promote their capacity to respond to known and unknown challenges of climate and disease. In this study, we set out to inform restoration by characterising the interacting effects of climate and disease stress on a foundation tree species. • [...]
Estimating breeding success in Newfoundland Atlantic puffin colonies: A methodological comparison
Published: 2026-06-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica) colonies in the Eastern Atlantic have been experiencing decades of declining numbers, trends revealed by the presence of breeding success monitoring programs. Collecting such data is challenging because puffins have their nest inside burrows, which are usually assessed by hand or burrowscopes. However, it is not clear how comparable the results from these two [...]
Best analytical practices for estimating consumer reliance on basal food sources using bulk stable isotopes
Published: 2026-06-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Bulk stable isotopes have been utilised by ecologists for decades to trace the assimilation of basal food sources across trophic positions. However, there is a lack of guidance on the post-laboratory analytical workflow, leading to inconsistencies in how isotopic data are processed and interpreted. 2. We provide a comprehensive description of this necessary post-laboratory analytical [...]
Joint species distribution modelling of insect microbiota: Time to jump onto a new opportunity
Published: 2026-06-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
How microbes influence insects, each other and vice versa, is a topical question in insect science. With this contribution, we highlight joint species distribution models (JSDMs) as a statistical framework particularly well suited for resolving it. While JSDM has been widely applied to micro-biota of organisms other than insects, only a handful of studies have applied them thus far to insect [...]
Applying participatory, integrated, and biodiversity-inclusive spatial planning across realms: insights from three European social-ecological systems
Published: 2026-06-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Over the past two decades, a large body of knowledge on decision-support frameworks has evolved facilitating decision makers to plan for reaching biodiversity goals articulated in international policy agreements. Here, we adapted a structured decision making framework to operationalize Participatory, Integrated, and Biodiversity-Inclusive Spatial Planning (PI-BISP), providing a practical pathway [...]
Invasion impacts vary across the diel cycle: hemipterans supercharge ant ecosystem functions and restructure local invertebrate communities
Published: 2026-06-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
Biological invasions threaten biodiversity and ecosystem functions, often causing cascading effects across trophic levels. Yet how these impacts vary over the fundamental day–night cycle remains largely overlooked. On Barrow Island, a high-conservation-value reserve off northwestern Australia, we examined how infestations of the non-native scale insect Saissetia miranda (Hemiptera: Coccidae) on a [...]