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Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences

Linking Pattern to Process in Metacommunities: Challenges and Opportunities

Mathew Leibold, Matthieu Barbier, Leonora Bittleston, et al.

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 [...]

BOLDistilled: Comprehensive but compact DNA barcode reference libraries

Sean William John Prosser, Robin M Floyd, Ken A Thompson, et al.

Published: 2025-04-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Advances in DNA sequencing technology have stimulated the rapid uptake of protocols—such as eDNA analysis and metabarcoding—that infer the species composition of environmental samples from DNA sequences. DNA barcode reference libraries play a critical role in the interpretation of sequences gathered through such protocols, but many lack adequate taxonomic curation, include redundant records, do [...]

A user’s guide for understanding reptile and amphibian hydroregulation and climate change impacts

Nicholas C Wu, Rodolfo O Anderson, Amael Borzee, et al.

Published: 2025-04-18
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Human impacts on ecosystems have intensified variation in water variability for terrestrial life, thus challenging the maintenance of water balance, or hydroregulation. The accelerated development and accessibility of technologies and computational models over the past decade have enabled researchers to predict changes in animal hydroregulation and environmental water with greater spatial and [...]

Re-revisiting the Niche Concept

Mathew Leibold, Veronica F Frans

Published: 2025-04-15
Subjects: Life Sciences

The adaptive maintenance of phenotypic polymorphism

Jay Jinsing Falk, Michael Webster, Dustin R Rubenstein

Published: 2025-04-15
Subjects: Life Sciences

Phenotypic polymorphisms have fascinated evolutionary biologists since the field’s inception, providing easily observable and quantifiable variation amenable to both empirical and theoretical study. However, a clear method for developing alternative hypotheses for the adaptive processes by which multiple morphs are maintained remains elusive. Here we review hypotheses for the maintenance of [...]

The Subtlety of Lake Superior Ciscoe Recruitment Dynamics

Mark R Vinson

Published: 2025-04-14
Subjects: Life Sciences

Objective: Lake Superior whitefish [Salmonidae: Coregoninae] have undergone high annual variability in survival to age-1 over the last 50-years, particularly within the dominant ciscoe flock of Bloater Coregonus hoyi, Cisco C. artedi, and Kiyi C. Kiyi. This work sought to determine if this variance was associated with hydrometeorological attributes that have also varied considerably over the same [...]

Delineating freshwater fish biogeographic regions in the Philippine archipelago

Brian Wade Jamandre, Nico Jose Leander, Rodulf Anthony Balisco, et al.

Published: 2025-04-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

The Philippines, a biodiversity hotspot with a complex geological history, presents an ideal setting to study freshwater fish biogeography in archipelagos. Despite its ecological significance, analyses of freshwater fish distribution patterns across the archipelago remain lacking. This study addresses this knowledge gap by delineating native freshwater fish biogeographic regions in the [...]

Function of duet coordination in a territorial socially monogamous bird

Frigg Janne Daan Speelman, Emma Scheltens, Hugo Loning, et al.

Published: 2025-04-14
Subjects: Life Sciences

Duetting, a cooperative vocal behaviour performed by mated pairs, is a distinctive vocal behaviour among many species in specifically primates and birds. The exact features of duets that may make them a stronger territorial signal is still inconclusive. One hypothesis is that the precision of duet coordination can indicate the quality or dedication of a pair, and thus the degree of threat posed [...]

High spatial pair cohesion during and after breeding in a socially monogamous territorial passerine

Frigg Janne Daan Speelman, Chris Tyson, Marc Naguib, et al.

Published: 2025-04-14
Subjects: Life Sciences

Long-term social monogamy, a prevalent mating system in avian species, is often associated with increased cooperation and coordination as well as reduced sexual conflict. Although many studies have highlighted the benefits of long-term partnerships for individuals, there remains a lack of insight into how closely partners associate with one another behaviourally. To date, studies investigating [...]

Quantifying the correlation between variance components: an extension to the double-hierarchical generalised linear model

Jessica G. King, Joel L Pick, Jarrod D Hadfield

Published: 2025-04-14
Subjects: Life Sciences

1. The variational properties of biological systems are an increasing focus of current research, and statistical methods are required for drawing inferences about the processes that determine them. 2. Double-hierarchical generalised linear models (DHGLM) are ideally suited for studying variational properties since they provide a direct way of modelling the distribution of variances. 3. Although [...]

Spatial and seasonal variation in avian dietary strategies

André M. Bellvé, Reymond J. Miyajima, Marta A. Jarzyna

Published: 2025-04-14
Subjects: Life Sciences

Diet is a fundamental aspect of vertebrate life history, shaping survival, recruitment, and ultimately fitness. While spatial variation in avian dietary traits has been extensively studied, seasonal dynamics at both species and assemblage levels remain largely unexplored, hindering our ability to uncover the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms underlying biodiversity patterns. Here, we present [...]

Environmental factors have a greater influence on photosynthetic capacity in C4 plants than C4 biochemical subtypes or growth forms

Yuzhen Fan, Daniel W.A. Noble, Belinda E. Medlyn, et al.

Published: 2025-04-13
Subjects: Life Sciences

• Our understanding of how photosynthesis varies among C4 species and across different growth and measurement conditions remains limited. • We collated 1,696 CO2 response curves of net CO2 assimilation rate (A/Ci curves) from C4 species grown and measured at various environmental conditions and used these data to estimate the apparent maximum carboxylation activity of phosphoenolpyruvate [...]

Spatial scaling of functional and taxonomic diversity across ecosystems on an island

Martha Paola Barajas Barbosa, Dylan Craven, Rüdiger Otto, et al.

Published: 2025-04-11
Subjects: Life Sciences

Spatial scale influences how we perceive, quantify, and conserve multiple biodiversity facets. Like other facets of biodiversity, functional diversity is scale-dependent and varies non-linearly with taxonomic diversity. Yet, studies commonly rely on single-scale analyses, limiting our understanding of the role of spatial scale in biodiversity patterns. Here, we assessed how spatial grain and [...]

Transition from incubation to brood-rearing activities influences dyadic associations differently between the sexes in a central-place foraging seabird.

Antoine Morel, Pierre-Paul Bitton

Published: 2025-04-11
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Life Sciences

1. Changes in activities following seasonal cycles can affect social interactions, which in turn influence social network structures. Because such activities are often sex-related, their effect on the social environment can affect males and females differently, particularly during periods of high activity such as the breeding season. While the effects of sex-related activities on the social [...]

MODIFICATION OF THE FRESHWATER FISH COMMUNITY IN THE NATURE RESERVE "OASI DEL SIMETO" (SICILY-ITALY): PRELIMINARY DATA

ANTONINO DUCHI, Roberto De Pietro

Published: 2025-04-10
Subjects: Life Sciences

There are no recent data on the fish fauna of Simeto, the river with the largest catchment area in Sicily. Based on this assumption, it is particularly interesting to search whether the fish community has suffered variations over the years or remained unaltered.A recent preliminary sampling investigation was carried out in the stretch of river flowing through the Natural Reserve "Oasi del [...]

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