Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
TwisstNTern 2: Ternary analysis of topology weights from tree sequences
Published: 2025-11-07
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
Recent advances in genealogical inference now allow the reconstruction of genome-wide sequences of trees for large sets of samples, providing detailed records of how evolutionary relationships vary along the genome. Tree sequences encode a vast amount of information, but new approaches are needed to extract relevant patterns and make inferences. TwisstNtern is a program for visualising and [...]
High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza in Pinniped Conservation
Published: 2025-11-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Since 2020, H5Nx highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses (HPAIVs) have caused widespread disruptions not only to global agriculture and trade but also to the health of free-ranging wildlife. Pinnipeds have experienced greater mortality from H5Nx HPAIV than any other mammalian taxa. Emergent virus strains, persisting over long time periods and vast geographic distances, have repeatedly triggered [...]
A century of invertebrate range extensions in the eastern North Pacific
Published: 2025-11-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Aim Understanding the fundamental drivers of species’ range edges has been a core question in ecology and biogeography for centuries and has taken on new urgency in the Anthropocene. Yet range edges can rapidly shift over large distances, complicating long-term study of their dynamics. This is especially true in marine systems, where ranges may move hundreds of kilometers from one year to the [...]
Relativistic Ecological Dynamics: An Empirical Investigation of its Geometric Properties
Published: 2025-11-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
The foundational models of population dynamics, such as those by Lotka and Volterra, presuppose a static, Euclidean phase space where interactions are governed by fixed forces. The theory of Biorelativity challenges this, positing that dynamics are better described as geodesics on a manifold whose geometry is actively shaped by the system’s state and external forcings. This study gives [...]
Carrion decomposition in a subtropical forest biodiversity experiment
Published: 2025-11-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
Tree species richness promotes the diversity of higher trophic levels and ecosystem functioning. Tree species richness may thus also affect communities of insect decomposers, and through this, accelerate the decomposition of animal carrion. However, these effects might be masked by other factors driving decomposition, such as forest structure, topography, and competition between different [...]
Relativity for the Realm of the Living: a geometric framework for eco-evolutionary dynamics
Published: 2025-11-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Abstract: Biological systems are here reinterpreted through a geometric lens that extends the insight of general relativity: organisms and their interactions are modelled as deformations of a multidimensional biological hyperspace. In this view, each entity acts as a source that locally bends a relational field defined by molecular, morphofunctional and ecological axes, thereby altering the [...]
An increase in animal diversity was facilitated by ecologically-driven brain complexity throughout the Cambrian
Published: 2025-11-04
Subjects: Developmental Biology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Other Genetics and Genomics, Zoology
The Cambrian Explosion is often seen as a singular event requiring an explanation. In fact, it is better represented as a cascade of linked events, each with numerous causes. The iconic middle Cambrian fauna, represented by sites such as the Burgess Shale, is a culmination of several phases of increases in taxonomic diversity and morphological complexity. I focus on an often-overlooked increase [...]
RevSyntax enables an efficient workflow for RevBayes analysis in VS Code
Published: 2025-11-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
RevBayes—a phylogenetic probabilistic graphical modeling software—presents prospective users with a steep learning curve. RevBayes lacks a custom integrated development environment (IDE) to facilitate writing and executing code, and as a result many users end up copying and pasting individual lines of code from a text editor into a terminal window. This inefficient and error-prone process limits [...]
The Thermodynamic Imperative: Evolution as Entropic Resistance through Mergers and Persistence
Published: 2025-11-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
This paper presents a unified theory of persistence, presenting the argument that evolution should be reframed as an explanation of entropic resistance rather than reproductive fitness. Through theoretical exposition and case studies across the biological spectrum, I demonstrate that persistence emerges from the capacity to merge through complementarity, integrate functionally, and form [...]
Asynchrony of ageing among traits in a wild bird population
Published: 2025-11-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
Ageing i.e. age-related changes in a trait, is a highly variable process. Studies have investigated variation in ageing among species and individuals, but little is yet understood about variation between traits. Evolutionary hypotheses argued that traits should age synchronously as selection should improve the trait that first senesces, therefore leading to trait synchrony. However, some past [...]
Beneath the Pavement: Understanding mycorrhizal fungi in urban ecosystems and the path forward
Published: 2025-11-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Studies, Human Ecology, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Urban Studies and Planning
Urban expansion is reshaping ecosystems worldwide, yet the responses of mycorrhizal fungi—key mediators of plant–soil interactions—remain poorly understood. In this review, we synthesize current knowledge on the environmental and ecological factors shaping mycorrhizal fungal diversity, distribution, and function in cities. We highlight how greenspace and landscape features—including plant [...]
Stranding-Based Demographic Inference in Marine Mammals: Best Practices for Extracting Vital Rates Despite Compound Sampling Bias
Published: 2025-11-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
Strandings records provide the only demographic data source for many marine mammal species. Yet they may be heavily biased. Every carcass passes through sequential filtering: mortality cause, oceanographic drift, decomposition, detection, and sampling. Each stage distorts age-specific signals. This creates a fundamental paradox: strandings are essential yet appear unreliable for demographic [...]
Overstating trophic cascade strength following large carnivore restoration in Yellowstone: A comment on Painter et al. (2025)
Published: 2025-11-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Painter et al. (2025) claim that large-carnivore recovery in Yellowstone National Park has produced a strong trophic cascade compared to other systems, citing a 152 fold increase in aspen sapling density and widespread recruitment of new trees. We show that these conclusions substantially overstate the cascade’s strength because of key methodological and interpretive flaws. First, Painter et al. [...]
Ecosystem dynamics in dune heathlands: spatial and temporal effects of environmental drivers on the vegetation
Published: 2025-11-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Pin-point cover data from 81 Danish dune heathland sites collected over 16 years were analyzed to quantify the effects of key environmental drivers on vegetation dynamics. A spatio-temporal structural equation model within a Bayesian hierarchical framework was used to assess the influence of nitrogen deposition, soil pH, soil C–N ratio, soil type, precipitation, and grazing. The species [...]
Parental care at the molecular level: the metabolic division of labour between parents and offspring
Published: 2025-11-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Parental care during offspring development has traditionally been viewed as a balance between cooperation and conflict. Offspring are imagined to be too helpless to find resources, or build protection, or generate warmth themselves. According to this view, the only work carried out by the offspring is through diverse acts of supplication for these vital resources. These are the traits, therefore, [...]