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Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences

A Modern Reanalysis of McManus’ Genetic Model of Handedness

Tomer Oron, Rony Karstadt, Yoav Ram

Published: 2025-10-13
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

We replicate and critically evaluate McManus’ (1985) single-locus genetic model of handedness, which remains influential in laterality research. Using the original familial and twin datasets, we reproduce McManus’ parameter estimates while correcting reporting errors and miscalculations. Our reproduction confirms that the model is reproducible but reveals sensitivity to dataset inconsistencies [...]

Highly conserved regulators of environmental sensing and adaptation drive domestication in gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata)

Aristotelis Moulistanos, Alexandros Mitsis, Konstantinos Gkagkavouzis, et al.

Published: 2025-10-13
Subjects: Life Sciences

Domestication in fish involves rapid and complex changes in life-history, physiology and behaviour under human-controlled conditions. In gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata), a species with a relatively recent domestication history, we used genome-wide population comparisons to show that domestication targets a core set of highly conserved regulators of environmental sensing mechanisms. Across [...]

Ecotoxicological perspectives of microplastics

Chayan Munshi, Shelley Bhattacharya

Published: 2025-10-13
Subjects: Life Sciences

Plastic pollution has been in discussion from last few decades. However, in the recent days, microplastic (MP) contamination has become an additional issue of concern for ecotoxicologists as extensive research on MP toxicity revealed serious effects on the environment, chronically. Global data on the production and usage of plastic compounds, demonstrated a steady exponential increasing pattern [...]

Landscape heterogeneity moderates temporal changes in floral resource diversity

Elena Albertsen, Lina Herbertsson, Oskar Löfgren, et al.

Published: 2025-10-13
Subjects: Life Sciences

Floral resource diversity supports pollination function and is increasingly threatened by global environmental change. Using long-term data on native insect-pollinated plants across 200 landscapes in southern Sweden, we assessed changes in taxonomic and functional diversity over 26 years in relation to land cover heterogeneity. Species richness declined significantly, while the three functional [...]

From pipeline to network: redefining scientific success

Alexandra A.-T. Weber

Published: 2025-10-13
Subjects: Life Sciences

The traditional pipeline view of academia no longer reflects the reality of scientific careers. Reframing success as a network of paths recognizes excellence in its many forms, fostering a more inclusive, resilient, and socially engaged research culture.

Jurassic Park @ 35: Reflections on evolutionary genetics, de-extinction, and the science-society interface

C. Brandon Ogbunugafor

Published: 2025-10-13
Subjects: Life Sciences

On the 35th anniversary of the release of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, I reflect on both technical and cultural themes of the novel that resonate in the current moment. First, I offer a concise review of three evolutionary concepts—plasticity, pleiotropy, and epistasis—that complicate our efforts to engineer organisms with desirable phenotypes. I show how these ideas play out in the [...]

The relative roles of in situ diversification and lineage dispersal underlying diversity patterns at the assemblage level

Arthur Vinicius Rodrigues, Gabriel Nakamura, Leandro Duarte

Published: 2025-10-10
Subjects: Life Sciences

Speciation, extinction, and dispersal are the historical processes influencing the spatial distribution of lineages and strongly influence diversity patterns. Here, we apply a recently developed methodological approach to quantify the relative legacies in situ diversification history (i.e. diversification occurring in the biogeographical region) and historical dispersal (inferred from ex-situ [...]

Monitoring ecosystem services requires a redesign of siloed monitoring programmes

Flavio Affinito, Marie-Josee Fortin, Andrew Gonzalez

Published: 2025-10-09
Subjects: Life Sciences

1. Monitoring ecosystem services is essential for achieving sustainability and biodiversity goals, yet existing monitoring programmes are fragmented, siloed, and not designed to detect or attribute change in ecosystem services. 2. We applied the Essential Ecosystem Service Variables (EESV) framework within a social-ecological network model to integrate three decades of ecological, economic, and [...]

Resetting the rules: Sex chromosome turnover as an escape hatch for mitonuclear conflict

Rachel L Moran

Published: 2025-10-09
Subjects: Life Sciences

Mitochondrial and nuclear genomes must remain coadapted to sustain oxidative phosphorylation, yet their distinct inheritance often fosters conflict. Sex chromosomes are a key arena for these dynamics: by biasing co-transmission between nuclear-encoded mitochondrial (N-mt) genes and maternally inherited mtDNA, they can amplify or suppress mitonuclear incompatibilities. Existing syntheses emphasize [...]

Linking hosts, landscapes, and climate to advance zoonotic arbovirus forecasting

V A Askshay, Joseph Alex Baecher, Nathan Burkett-Cadena, et al.

Published: 2025-10-08
Subjects: Life Sciences

Forecasting zoonotic mosquito-borne viruses remains a critical challenge because transmission depends on dynamic, multitrophic interactions among vectors, hosts, pathogens, and the environment. Here, we integrate long-term sentinel chicken surveillance across much of Florida with environmental data to build a predictive framework for eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV), a zoonotic mosquito [...]

A systematic map of systematic reviews and meta-analyses on anthropogenic noise impact on wildlife

Anna Lenz, Ayumi Mizuno, Erick Lundgren, et al.

Published: 2025-10-08
Subjects: Life Sciences

As systematic reviews on the effects of anthropogenic noise on wildlife increasingly inform policy, a critical evaluation of this secondary evidence is essential. We assessed the coverage, methodological quality, and policy relevance of existing syntheses in this field. Following a preregistered protocol, we conducted a systematic search using Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, that [...]

Ecosystem structure can affect human health: a longitudinal study on Green Prescriptions

Alice Stocco, Pierangela Fiammetta Piras, Giuseppe Barbiero, et al.

Published: 2025-10-08
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Health Psychology, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences

The role of Nature in supporting human life, health, and well-being has been recognized and appreciated since ancient times and has recently undergone scientific investigation, which highlighted the human dependence on Nature to nurture mental and physical health. Among Nature-based interventions that aim at exposing people to the natural environment, Green Prescriptions (GRx) represent a [...]

Challenges faced by ecologists: gender-based perceptions throughout the stages of the academic career in Brazil

Ana Paula Lula Costa, Julia Rosa Matias Ciccheto, Myrna Elis Ferreira Santos, et al.

Published: 2025-10-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Although women often outnumber men in the early stages of academic careers in ecology, they remain significantly underrepresented in senior positions. In Brazil, women comprise the majority of graduate students in ecological sciences but hold fewer senior academic roles, receive less research funding, and face greater obstacles to visibility and recognition. To understand the factors contributing [...]

Mapping California woodland-chaparral ecosystems following wildfire with diverse drone images and computer vision

David Russell, Amritha Pallavoor, Gary Bucciarelli, et al.

Published: 2025-10-07
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences

Fire is a key driver of vegetation dynamics in California's woodland-chaparral ecosystems, and its role has become ever more important in recent decades as wildfire extents and frequencies increase. Understanding post-fire vegetation transitions and the likelihood of type conversion is essential for effective land management. Remote sensing represents a powerful tool to map vegetation cover and [...]

Reconciling short- and long-term predictions for ecosystem management

Marta Magnani, Mara Baudena, Leonardo Ancillotto, et al.

Published: 2025-10-07
Subjects: Life Sciences

1. Management plans grounded in scientific evidence can be used to limit the impacts of ongoing global changes on socio-ecological systems. In this framework, modeling tools play a crucial role in informing and supporting management strategies. 2. While the urgency of implementing evidence-based actions directed most scientific efforts towards short-term ecological forecasting (ranging from [...]

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