Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Halophyte-associated salt-tolerant rhizobacteria: ecological adaptation, mechanistic pathways, and translational relevance for wheat salinity tolerance
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Background Soil salinization is an expanding constraint to agricultural productivity worldwide, particularly in irrigated and arid regions and strongly limits wheat growth and yield. Although breeding and biotechnology have produced cultivars with improved ion-exclusion and tissue-level tolerance, these advances alone do not fully mitigate salinity-induced disruptions in rhizosphere processes and [...]
Parasitism of an intertidal foundation species: Allometric scaling and environmental constraints on trematode distribution in barnacles across biological scales
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Parasites of foundation species, such as fucoids, mussels, and barnacles, can shape the intertidal communities that depend on them, yet their effects remain poorly understood. On rocky shores of the Northeast Pacific, the acorn barnacle Balanus glandula forms dense aggregations that provide habitat for other species. We investigated infection by the microphallid trematode Maritrema gratiosum in [...]
The Ecological Price of Segregation: Socioeconomic Stratification Structures Urban Bird and Vegetation Distribution
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
As income inequality rises, cities do not merely become less equal in aggregate; they also sort residents into increasingly separate neighborhoods, a spatial process known as socioeconomic segregation. Building on a companion study that documented the luxury effect in Bogotá using cadastral land value (Mutis & Armenteras, 2026), this analysis asks a distinct question: does the city's [...]
Understanding the Global Report on Collective Progress in the Implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework: Purpose, Content, and Science-Policy Engagement
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), adopted under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), establishes four long-term 2050 goals, 23 action-oriented 2030 targets, and a standardized monitoring framework to track collective progress. The 2026 global review marks the first operational test of the Party-led planning, monitoring, reporting, and review (PMRR) mechanism, [...]
Interactive effects of land use change and climate drive the decline of a threatened boreal forest orchid in Finland
Published: 2026-10-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Land use and climate change are two of the greatest threats to biodiversity globally. However, their interactive effects remain poorly understood. In the boreal forest biome, where species are experiencing increasing pressures from forest management and climate change, improved understanding of these effects is urgently needed. Here, we assess the impacts of forest loss and both baseline and [...]
Genomic variation in Sydowia polyspora in relation to geography and host symptom severity
Published: 2026-10-13
Subjects: Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Plant Pathology
Background. Sydowia polyspora is a widespread conifer-associated fungus with ecological roles that vary among host and disease contexts. However, how its genomic variation corresponds to geography and host symptom severity remains poorly understood. We examined whether genomic differentiation among S. polyspora isolates recovered from symptomatic Pinus taeda varied between geographic regions and [...]
What is Social Behavior? Clarifying and Integrating the Concept for Cross-species Research
Published: 2026-10-13
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The ecological world of driver ants (Dorylus): a review
Published: 2026-10-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Driver ants (Dorylus) are among the most conspicuous and abundant predators in continental Africa. Their enormous surface-swarm raids and nomadic lifestyle have captivated naturalists for over 150 years, yet their ecology remains surprisingly poorly understood, especially compared to their Neotropical counterparts. Here, we review the ecology of African driver ants, synthesising knowledge of [...]
Potential impacts of Ground-mounted photovoltaic panels on land cover and carbon storage in Norway – a scenario analysis
Published: 2026-10-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Energy Policy, Environmental Policy, Life Sciences, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
In cool-temperate and boreal regions, ground-mounted photovoltaic (PV) is rapidly emerging as a new land use, but planning-relevant evidence on land requirements, siting options, and land-system impacts remains limited. Based on an analysis of built and planned ground-mounted PV projects in Norway (n = 77), we quantify size, capacity density, land-cover composition and net greenhouse gas effects, [...]
Anthropogenic food subsidies shape parental foraging and offspring development in an opportunistic bird
Published: 2026-10-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Humans are transforming ecosystems by providing predictable anthropogenic food subsidies (PAFS), such as at landfills, now used by multiple animal taxa. In breeding animals, parental landfill use can influence offspring development, yet few studies have quantified parental landfill use and linked it to parental care and offspring development, behaviour or survival, limiting our understanding of [...]
Why are insects attracted to light?
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Life Sciences
The sight of insects swarming around lamps is ancient and well known, but the reasons for this behavior remain disputed. We propose that attraction to light is not merely a sensory accident, but an adaptive strategy during nuptial flights: under certain conditions, flying toward a light source can be the optimal way to encounter mates, because it aligns flight with pheromone gradients and [...]
Spatially explicit sampling of AM fungal biomass reveals links to community characteristics and landscape context
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Agriculture, Biochemistry, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are important contributors to soil functioning, yet their biomass and diversity may respond differently to environmental characteristics and historical legacies. Understanding these relationships is necessary for evaluating AM fungi as indicators of soil health. We investigated relationships among AM fungal biomass, community properties and natural habitat [...]
Projecting kinship networks through time in variable environments
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Kinship networks shape key biological and social processes, yet their dynamics under changing environments remain poorly understood. Like population abundances, kinship structures are determined by past vital rates. Matrix population models provide a powerful framework for projecting population abundances through time and analysing the effects of environmental change on population dynamics, but [...]
Social decision-making in a freshwater gastropod
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Animals are hypothesized to plastically adjust their social behaviour expression dependent on their environment and their phenotype to ensure that its benefits outweigh its costs. There is a strong research bias towards socially complex vertebrates and eusocial insects. Thus, here we study mollusks, a taxon whose social behaviour is less well studied. As predation is one of the strongest drivers [...]
A unified systems model for evolution. Implications for human behaviour and survival
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Life Sciences
Here we present a systems-based and unified theory of evolution, more consistent with biological complexity than previous unified models, and addressing popular misconceptions about ‘survival of the fittest’ that have contributed to overcompetitive and overaggressive attitudes in our social and economic systems. These attitudes have played an important part in the global metacrisis of today. We [...]