Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Acclimation to fluctuating hypoxia alters activity and escape performance, but not metabolism, in guppies
Published: 2025-05-03
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Organisms living in fluctuating environments must cope with constantly changing conditions. Here we investigated how acclimation to either fluctuating or constant oxygen affects behavioural and physiological responses to hypoxia in guppies (Poecilia reticulata). Guppies were acclimated to either fluctuating hypoxia (100% of air saturation during day to 40% at night) or constant normoxia (100% of [...]
Creating woodland through natural processes: Current understanding and knowledge gaps in Great Britain
Published: 2025-04-30
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Creating new woodlands through natural processes, as opposed to traditional tree planting, is expected to result in more structurally diverse, locally-adapted woodlands that enhance the resilience of existing treescapes. However, the outcomes of natural colonisation can be variable, and there is still considerable uncertainty around the ecological processes involved. 2. To address knowledge [...]
Sex-Specific Control and Incomplete Matings: Sperm Removal Behaviour in a Bush Cricket Species
Published: 2025-04-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
In sexually promiscuous species, sperm removal behaviour (SRB) is a male strategy to increase reproductive success by displacing rival sperm prior to insemination. This behaviour may, however, impose costs on both sexes, generating sexual conflict. We investigated the sex-specific control over SRB in Metaplastes ornatus, a bush cricket species exhibiting this behaviour. We used a double mating [...]
The wind of change: mapping wind energy growth and multi-species vulnerability in the Mediterranean
Published: 2025-04-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
The rapid expansion of wind energy across the Mediterranean region calls for more advanced tools to assess and mitigate its impacts on biodiversity. In this study, we propose an innovative approach that integrates historical satellite imagery and ecological modelling to assess the spatiotemporal overlap between wind energy development and habitat suitability for multiple vulnerable raptor [...]
Plant pathogen profiling with the EpiPv package
Published: 2025-04-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
This study introduces a flexible framework for epidemiological profiling of insect-borne plant pathogens (IBPPs), utilizing readily available experimental data. The framework is applicable to most IBPPs transmitted by insects feeding on plant veins, with particular relevance to whitefly-borne viruses that impact cassava production in sub-Saharan Africa. The goal of the study is to provide an [...]
Facing the heat: behavioral and molecular underpinnings of climate hardiness in bumblebees
Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Behavioral Neurobiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Climate change heralds an era of increased heat waves, with an estimated 20-30 additional high heat days per year. While climate change is upon us, we still have little understanding of the organismal impacts of high heat and how to combat them. Insects, due to their short generation times and their sensitive ecological requirements, offer a powerful model for studying rapid physiological and [...]
Code review in practice: A checklist for computational reproducibility and collaborative research in ecology and evolution
Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Ensuring that research, along with its data and code, is credible and remains accessible is crucial for advancing scientific knowledge—especially in ecology and evolutionary biology, where the climate crisis and biodiversity loss accelerate and demand urgent, transparent science. Yet, code is rarely shared alongside scientific publications, and when it is, unclear implementation and insufficient [...]
Foliar spectral signatures reveal adaptive divergence in live oaks (Quercus section Virentes) across species and environmental niches
Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
Genomic tools have transformed our understanding of species and population genetic structure in landscapes. However, discerning the impacts of neutral and adaptive evolutionary forces remains challenging, largely due to the scarcity of tools capable of measuring a broad spectrum of phenotypic traits. We used spectroscopic data from preserved leaves to test for adaptive divergence among [...]
Large female northern pike (Esox lucius) do not connect spawning areas across a lagoon network in the southern Baltic Sea
Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
Exceptionally large individuals may serve as keystone connectors among subpopulations and habitats, a role recently demonstrated in large Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) in Norway. To examine whether this pattern extends to other coastal fish species, we analysed capture-mark-recapture data for over 5,800 coastal northern pike (Esox lucius) and acoustic tracking data from 317 pike individuals, using [...]
The case for octopus sentience: a follow-up to Simone’s “Are octopuses sentient beings?”
Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Recently, a paper published in a Brazilian malacology online journal argued against the existence of sentience in octopuses based on disputable arguments – the presence of cannibalistic behavior, absence of sociality and parental care, short lives, size and complexity of the nervous system and intelligence. This response discusses a different perspective on the issue of octopus sentience, [...]
Understanding niche conformance in fire salamander larvae: Insights from reciprocal transplant experiments
Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Life Sciences, Zoology
Amphibians are in particular vulnerable to (climatic) changes in their habitat as they are highly dependent on precipitation and temperature. The larval stage can be considered the most critical life stage in the ontogeny of most amphibians as predation is very high, and larvae are restricted to their natal aquatic habitat. The same applies for larvae of the fire salamander (Salamandra [...]
MUSEUMS SHOULD CURATE BEYOND THE NATURAL: DOMESTIC BREEDS OFFER UNIQUE INSIGHT INTO EVOLUTIONARY PROCESSES & HUMAN CULTURE
Published: 2025-04-23
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Life Sciences
This short communication proposes that natural history museums should consider expanding their mission by intensively collecting and curating domesticated, hemerophilic, and genetically engineered animals, plants, and fungi to improve the study of evolutionary biology and anthropology, as well as mitigate against future climatic and economic challenges.
Long exposure to extreme heat magnifies the decoupling between bacterial resistance and recovery
Published: 2025-04-22
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate change is intensifying the duration of heat waves and threatening community stability. Using soil Pseudomonas communities, we investigated how different heat pulse durations impact resistance (immediate response) and recovery (post-stress response). We first assessed thermal performance traits across six species (16 strains) and found no trade-off between growth rate and heat resistance. [...]
Computer Vision Models Offer Scalable Species Detection From Social Media Photographs
Published: 2025-04-22
Subjects: Life Sciences
Social media platforms have emerged as a promising source of data for biodiversity monitoring, due to the vast amounts of user-generated visual content. However, the unstructured and noisy nature of social media data poses challenges for accurate species identification. Foundation vision models present an innovative methodology for identifying a large diversity of species from photographs, [...]
Linking Pattern to Process in Metacommunities: Challenges and Opportunities
Published: 2025-04-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
Ecological communities, and especially metacommunities, are complex and dynamic entities. Resolving the processes and mechanisms that shape these systems remains a central challenge in ecology. This challenge is compounded by the increasing entanglement of mechanisms, processes, and emergent patterns of biodiversity as scales of space, time, and biological organization expand. Here, we define and [...]