Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Individual variation in animal communication: from species averages to unique voices
Published: 2025-02-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
The comparative study of the communicative behaviour of non-human animals, especially primates, has yielded crucial insights into the evolution of human language. This research, mostly focused on the species and population level, has helped to understand the various socio-ecological factors that shape communication systems. However, despite the inherent flexibility of human communication, the [...]
Designing epigenetic clocks for wildlife research
Published: 2025-02-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
The applications of epigenetic clocks, statistical models that predict an individual's age based on DNA methylation patterns, are expanding in wildlife conservation and management. This growing interest highlights the need for field-specific design best practices. Here, we provide recommendations for two main applications of wildlife epigenetic clocks: estimating the unknown ages of individuals [...]
Location-scale Meta-analysis and Meta-regression as a Tool to Capture Large-scale Changes in Biological and Methodological Heterogeneity: a Spotlight on Heteroscedasticity
Published: 2025-02-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Heterogeneity is a defining feature of ecological and evolutionary meta-analyses. While conventional metal-analysis and meta-regression methods acknowledge heterogeneity in effect sizes, they typically as-sume this heterogeneity is constant across studies and levels of moderators (i.e., homoscedasticity). This assumption could mask potentially informative patterns in the data. Here, we introduce [...]
Variations in epifaunal assemblages among different algal species in the coastal waters of the Noto Peninsula, Japan
Published: 2025-02-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Algal beds are biodiversity hotspots in coastal ecosystems, forming complex food webs based on seaweeds. Epifauna serve as important indicators of algal productivity and environmental change, interacting closely with their host seaweeds. This study compared the composition of epifaunal assemblages associated with different seaweed species in the Noto Peninsula, Japan, to elucidate their [...]
Seeing herbaria in a new light: leaf reflectance spectroscopy unlocks predictive trait and classification modeling in plant biodiversity collections
Published: 2025-02-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
Reflectance spectroscopy is a rapid method for estimating traits and discriminating species. Spectral libraries from herbarium specimens represent an untapped resource for generating broad phenomic datasets across space, time, and taxa. We conducted a proof-of-concept study using trait data and spectra from herbarium specimens up to 179 years old alongside data from recently dried, pressed [...]
Multiplayer videogames to analyze behavior during ecological interactions
Published: 2025-02-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Behavior shapes population and community dynamics through feedbacks with habitat configuration and interaction networks. Work on this interplay includes longitudinal surveys, experiments, and models. Multiplayer online videogames foster real-time interactions among lots of players in virtual spaces. Data from these games could complement theoretical and empirical work but research on them is only [...]
Geography, taxonomy, extinction risk and exposure of fully migratory birds to droughts and cyclones
Published: 2025-02-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Anthropogenic climate change is predicted to drive unprecedented increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme climatic events, such as drought and cyclones. The impacts of these events on fully migratory species could be particularly severe and have cascading effects on the functioning of many ecosystems. We explore the relationships between geography, taxonomy, extinction risk and the [...]
Monogenea on exotic Indian freshwater fish. 8. Co-translocation of Cichlidogyrus tilapiae (Monogenea, Dactylogyridae) with pindani Chindongo socolofi (Cichliformes, Cichlidae), the first report of this parasite genus in India
Published: 2025-02-07
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Parasitology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Chindongo socolofi (Cichliformes, Cichlidae) is a popular freshwater ornamental fish from Lake Malawi in Africa. Although identifying parasites associated with the global ornamental trade is critical for developing biosecurity practices, little is known about the parasite fauna of C. socolofi. Therefore, this study sought to determine what monogenean parasites C. socolofi harbours in India. Adult [...]
Harnessing Large Language Models for Ecological Literature Reviews: A Practical Pipeline
Published: 2025-02-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Hundreds of thousands of peer-reviewed articles and grey literature reports are published every year in ecology and conservation biology. This ever-growing body of knowledge presents new challenges. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly challenging for researchers to stay current on new information and to identify knowledge gaps. Here, we argue that Large Language Models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s [...]
A new perspective on Squamate social cognition – the use of semiochemicals
Published: 2025-02-07
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The Social Intelligence Hypothesis suggests that cognition might be key to enable animals to live in social groups. Especially social cognition is important as it allows animals to respond appropriately to conspecifics and ensure group cohesion. Social cognition is extensively studied in mammals and birds but to gain a broad understanding of the benefits of social cognitive processes in social [...]
Shaped from an early age: behavioural and hormonal phenotypes in juvenile male guinea pigs living in distinct social environments
Published: 2025-02-05
Subjects: Animal Studies, Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Behavioural plasticity enables individuals to vary their behaviour in response to different environmental conditions. As the social environment can change at any time, individuals need to be able to adjust throughout their lives. Our goal was therefore to elucidate when and how behavioural and hormonal adjustments in guinea pigs occur. We focused on juvenility, an important developmental phase [...]
Integrating spatiotemporal and cultural dimensions of animal behavior can enhance conservation
Published: 2025-02-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
Behavioral ecology has seen a recent integration of the spatiotemporal and cultural elements of animal behavior. However, similar integration in ecosystem management and wildlife conservation remains an important gap. Here we explore how the intersections among space, time, and culture in animal behavior can inform and enhance conservation practices. Drawing on instructive examples from [...]
Coinfection interactions systematically influence parasite diversity estimates in simulated host populations
Published: 2025-02-05
Subjects: Life Sciences, Parasitology
Parasite diversity is a central component of epidemiological dynamics. Parasite diversity is commonly studied across animal populations and species using metrics like parasite species richness; although these metrics generally assume no interactions among parasite species within a community, such interactions are common and important, and could affect parasite diversity estimates in ways that are [...]
Integrating Phylogeny and Functional Traits into Evaluations of Nestedness in Island Floras
Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Questions Understanding the composition and structure of island floras is crucial for making informed conservation decisions. Island floras are often nested, i.e. lower species richness assemblages are frequently subsets of those higher in richness. However, the circumstances under which this occurs on islands are often unclear. Moreover, research in island biogeography rarely integrates [...]
Diverse hosts, diverse immune systems: evolutionary variation in bat immunology
Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
The ability of multiple bat species to host zoonotic pathogens without showing disease has fostered growing interest in bat immunology, indicating ways immune systems may differ between bats and other vertebrates. However, interspecific variation in immunological diversity among bats has only begun to be recognized. The order Chiroptera accounts for over 20% of all mammal species and shows [...]