Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Warm Temperate Southwestern Atlantic
Published: 2025-02-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Warm Temperate Southwestern Atlantic is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Rio Grande and Southeastern Brazil. The mapped extent of mangroves in 2020 was 709.5 km2, representing 0.5% of the global mangrove area. The biota is characterized by three species of true mangroves, Rhizophora mangle, [...]
Genetic diversity is key to a nature-positive future
Published: 2025-02-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
1. Nature-positive describes the concept of halting and then reversing the loss of biodiversity in a manner that is equitable to all, particularly indigenous peoples and local communities. 2. Genetic diversity is the foundational component of biodiversity, underpinning species and ecosystem diversity. Genetic diversity is vital to resilience and ecosystem services. While genetic diversity was [...]
Mitonuclear divergence predicts gradual speciation in animal hybrid zones
Published: 2025-02-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
The core of speciation is the genetic incompatibilities underlying the evolution of reproductive isolation. Hybrid zones provide unique opportunities to unravel the evolutionary rate of reproductive isolation in the origin of species. The selection against hybrids accrues with increased genetic incompatibilities and drives the evolution of reproductive isolation in the face of gene flow. There [...]
Projected climate change scenarios spatially decouple desert EFN-ant mutualisms
Published: 2025-02-21
Subjects: Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Aim: Climate change is changing species distributions globally, but predicting these impacts on assemblages and their spatial overlaps under future scenarios is an ongoing challenge. Here, we explore how climate change influences distributions among two mutualistic assemblages. Location: The Mojave and Colorado Deserts, California, United States Methods: We developed stacked species [...]
estar: An R package to measure ecological stability
Published: 2025-02-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
1. Assessing ecological stability across populations or communities is a prime goal in biodiversity monitoring and conservation research. Quantifying stability is not trivial because its different aspects can be measured with various metrics. However, to date, no software enables measuring different stability metrics on ecological time-series data. 2. We present the estar R package that [...]
Repeated mitochondrial capture with limited genomic introgression in a lizard group
Published: 2025-02-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
Mitochondrial introgression is common among animals and is often first identified through mitonuclear discordance — discrepancies between evolutionary relationships inferred from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and nuclear DNA (nuDNA). Over recent decades, genomic data have also revealed extensive nuclear introgression in many animal groups, with implications for genetic and phenotypic diversity. [...]
High-resolution habitat suitability maps for all widespread Italian breeding bird species
Published: 2025-02-18
Subjects: Life Sciences, Ornithology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Tackling the current global biodiversity crisis requires spatially accurate biodiversity data to rapidly assess knowledge gaps and set conservation priorities. Obtaining accurate data across large spatial scales is often challenging, due to the massive logistical and economic requirements of large-scale surveys. Here, we provide high-resolution (0.81 to 81 km², depending on species ecology) [...]
Report on spatial sampling designs for long term biodiversity monitoring of soil biota
Published: 2025-02-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
Soil biota are extremely diverse and spatially heterogeneous. Sampling strategies that target the soil biota through metabarcoding must incorporate existing ecological theory and explicitly consider technical constraints. This report synthesizes empirical research from large-scale projects (SpaceMic, PhytOakMeter) to evaluate how spatial sampling design—specifically sample extent, number, and [...]
Spectral biology across scales in changing environments
Published: 2025-02-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
Understanding ecosystem processes on our rapidly changing planet requires integration across spatial, temporal and biological scales. We propose that spectral biology, using tools that enable near- to far-range sensing by capturing the interaction of energy with matter across domains of the electromagnetic spectrum, will increasingly enable ecological insights across scales from cells to [...]
Assessing UAV direct-seeding for tropical forest restoration: carbon sequestration potential and cost efficiency
Published: 2025-02-14
Subjects: Forest Management, Life Sciences, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
Introduction: Afforestation, Reforestation, and Revegetation (ARR) projects are key to global reforestation targets under frameworks like the Paris Agreement and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. However, manual planting remains labor-intensive and costly, limiting large-scale restoration. UAV-assisted direct seeding offers a scalable alternative, yet its carbon sequestration and [...]
Community (citizen) science as a tool to support nature’s benefits assessments in the UK: a systematic review and survey of community scientists
Published: 2025-02-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
1) Developing methods for valuing nature aim to address biodiversity and environmental crises caused by nature’s undervaluation in decision-making. However, implementing methods to assess nature’s benefits is challenging for a myriad of reasons. 2) We explored whether community science (CS) could support a more holistic assessment of nature’s benefits on a national scale using a mixed-methods [...]
Northward expansion of the thermal limit for the tick Ixodes ricinus over the past 40 years
Published: 2025-02-14
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
The tick Ixodes ricinus is the main pathogen vector in Europe. Many speculations have been made about the effect of past climate change on the potential distribution of this ectothermic organism, despite a poor understanding of how climate change has resulted in distribution changes to date. In this study, we used a public cross-sectional dataset of I. ricinus abundance at the northern edge of [...]
The effect of habitat health and environmental change on cultural diversity and richness in animals
Published: 2025-02-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
There is increasing evidence that habitat decline via fragmentation or species loss can lead to loss of cultural diversity, complexity, or richness in non-human animals. For example, a reduction in local bird species richness leads lyrebirds to sing less complex song, while great apes living in fragmented landscapes have smaller cultural repertoires. However, the link between animal culture and [...]
Diversity and Distribution of Amphibians and Freshwater Fishes on Australian Islands
Published: 2025-02-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Freshwater ecosystems cover less than 3% of the earth’s surface, yet support nearly 10% of all known animal species, majorly represented by freshwater fishes (69%) and amphibians (24%), both of which are highly threatened groups. Geographically isolated freshwater species, such as those inhabiting islands, are at high risk. Australia, with ~9300 islands, is home to diverse island freshwater [...]
Monitoring animal movement diversity as a component of biodiversity
Published: 2025-02-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
Animal movement is increasingly being quantified in novel ways, with high potential for integration in broad-scale efforts to monitor biological diversity. Here, we define movement diversity as a form of biodiversity measuring variation in animal movement from the level of individual animals to communities. We present a framework to develop a common language for movement diversity metrics which [...]