Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Fire modulates millennial plant community assembly
Published: 2026-09-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
How ecological communities maintain resilience under recurrent disturbance remains unclear because the processes governing persistence often unfold over centuries to millennia. Using fossil pollen and charcoal records spanning up to 14,000 years from mountain ecosystems in Europe and Africa, we reconstructed temporal networks of community predictability to investigate the role of fire in [...]
Alternative proteins are likely essential for biodiversity conservation
Published: 2026-09-14
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Animal-sourced foods play a major role in four of the five greatest drivers of biodiversity loss, and the conservation community must do more to address the threats that animal-sourced foods pose. While a variety of tools can help address the problems posed by animal-sourced foods, conservation must prioritize strategies that enable sustainability gains at scale to achieve global consensus goals [...]
Environmental water management and H5 bird flu in waterbirds: Context and scenarios for decision-making
Published: 2026-09-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The impact of animal viruses has dramatically increased over the last decade globally, exemplified by the disruption caused by the recent panzootic of high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b (H5 bird flu), which has caused the deaths of millions of wild birds and mammals, as well as domestic animals such as poultry. Wild waterbirds play a role in the spread of H5 bird flu [...]
Integrating morphometric and spectral evidence for species discrimination in Amazonian trees: a case study of Carapa (Meliaceae)
Published: 2026-09-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Reliable species-level identification of Amazonian trees from herbarium and field material is essential for conservation, management, and economic use of non-timber forest products, yet overlapping morphology and inconsistent identifications often hinder it. Using three Amazonian species of Carapa (C. guianensis, C. surinamensis, and C. vasquezii) as a case study, we tested whether leaf [...]
The coefficient of variation of body mass (and other traits)
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Variation is a fundamental property of populations and provides the raw material upon which evolutionary processes can act. The coefficient of variation, defined as the standard deviation divided by the arithmetic mean, is widely used in evolutionary biology to quantify relative variation, for example to draw conclusions about the strength of selection. However, comparing coefficients of [...]
Evaluating vibroacoustic sensor performance and vibration attenuation: implications for soil biodiversity sampling
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Entomology, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Earth’s biodiversity is undergoing substantial changes in response to anthropogenic stressors, creating a need for efficient methods of assessing biodiversity, particularly in soil ecosystems where sampling remains challenging. Soil vibroacoustics - the use of substrate-borne vibrations or sounds to quantify or detect below-ground biological activity – offers a potentially rapid and scalable [...]
Heterogeneity in Microbial Systems: Scales, Drivers, and Consequences
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
Heterogeneity is a fundamental, multi-scale organizing principle of microbial life, transcending its historical treatment as mere statistical noise. This review synthesizes recent advances to construct a unified framework for understanding microbial heterogeneity across hierarchical scales—from molecular and cellular phenotypic diversity, through strain-level genomic micro-diversity, to [...]
The Little Reptilian Lion: A Literature Review and Field Perspective on the Behavioral Ecology of Agama picticauda (Peter's Rock Agama)
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Life Sciences, Zoology
Agama picticauda (Peter's Rock Agama) is one of West Africa's most abundant and visually striking lizards, yet remains profoundly understudied at the level of behavioral ecology. This review draws on published literature and extended personal field observation of wild populations in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, to document the species' behavioral complexity and argue for dedicated long-term research. [...]
Behavioural strategy and predator control: a coupled evolutionary predator-prey model for kiwi conservation in New Zealand
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Behavior and Ethology, Dynamic Systems, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Population Biology
Conservation management of endangered species can be enhanced by quantitative frameworks that simultaneously model behavioural adaptations alongside population dynamics. This paper presents a Coupled Evolutionary Predator-Prey Model (CEPPM) that integrates replicator dynamics from Evolutionary Game Theory with an extended Lotka-Volterra predator-prey framework, applied to kiwi (Apteryx spp.) [...]
Vegetation and local density are associated with red deer calving dates but don’t explain the long-term temporal trend
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Long-lived mammal species can show advancing reproductive phenology even though prolonged gestation means adaptive phenotypic plasticity to warmer springs, as observed for reproductive phenology across other taxonomic groups, is unlikely. A constraint model in which oestrus date depends on achieving a certain level of body condition seems more likely, so the question is which variables are [...]
Urban densification and vegetation composition reshape ecological networks across trophic layers
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Urban densification reshapes biodiversity, yet its effects on ecological networks across trophic levels remain unclear. Using a metaweb approach, we reconstructed bipartite, multitrophic, and combined food webs across 60 urban green spaces along gradients of urban densification and vegetation complexity. Densification reduced taxonomic and interaction richness, promoted interaction [...]
MiCampo: A Multi-Level Digital Cooperative Infrastructure for Agroecological Planning, Participatory Certification and Territorial Market Coordination
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Agroecological transitions require coordination across technical, certification, economic and research domains. We present MiCampo, a modular digital cooperative infrastructure organized into four functional levels: (1) agroecological technical planning, (2) digital participatory guarantee systems (PGS), (3) contractual territorial distribution planning and logistics, and (4) territorial research [...]
Endosymbiotic bioenergetic synergy behind climate-mediated species boundaries of rainforest warblers
Published: 2026-09-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
The molecular cooperation among organelles facilitates adaptation during eukaryotic evolution, but the role of endosymbiotic synergy in the organismal climate adaptation remains unclear. Here we unveil the Endosymbiotic Bioenergetic Synergy Model, which characterizes the role of emergent molecular activities among organelles underlying energy metabolism in climate adaptation of eukaryotes. The [...]
Multiple genetic routes to pelvic spine loss in brook stickleback
Published: 2026-09-10
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Pelvic spine loss has evolved repeatedly in stickleback species and represents an intriguing opportunity to study genetically parallel adaptation. While previous work has identified key loci associated with this trait, the extent to which different populations rely on the same genetic mechanisms remains unclear. The genetic basis of pelvic spine loss in Culaea inconstans (Kirtland 1840) has only [...]
Developmental and Phylogenetic Patterns of Antennal Expansion in Leaf-Footed Bugs (Hemiptera: Coreidae)
Published: 2026-09-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Insect antennae morphology is highly conserved in many insect families, yet in some clades elaborations of antennae form are more common. Leaf-footed bugs (Hemiptera: Coreidae) are one case where there is considerable variation in antennal morphology. Antennae can be rectilinear, with cylindrical antennomeres, or have laterally flattened antennomeres, that differ in which antennomeres they occur. [...]