Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Strain-specific thermal acclimation, but little evidence of transgenerational plasticity, in an asexual crustacean
Published: 2025-08-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Transgenerational plasticity has been suggested as a means for species to succeed in rapidly changing environments, such as increased temperature brought on by climate change. However, the evidence for this phenomenon in animals is mixed. The freshwater crustacean Daphnia magna displays transgenerational plasticity in response to environmental cues such as the presence of predators or food, but [...]
Mitonuclear divergence predicts gradual speciation in animal hybrid zones
Published: 2025-08-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health 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 [...]
Predictive Evolutionary Genomics: Principles, Validation, and Practice
Published: 2025-08-11
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genomics, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Population Biology
Contemporary evolution occurs on observable timescales, enabling prospective evolutionary forecasting with quantitative frameworks rather than only retrospective inference. We propose a unified probabilistic framework that integrates three approaches linked to detectability windows through time. Trait-based models use multivariate quantitative-genetic equations to project correlated phenotypic [...]
Trapper Citizen Science: an open-source camera trap platform for citizen science in wildlife research and management
Published: 2025-08-11
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Computational Engineering, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Engineering, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Zoology
Effective wildlife monitoring is essential for biodiversity conservation and sustainable management, particularly in the face of rapid environmental changes and human-wildlife interactions. Advances in camera trap technology and citizen science, here used to denote non-professional involvement in scientific research, irrespective of citizenship status, have revolutionized ecological data [...]
Global 1-km land cover for ecological modelling from very high resolution imagery
Published: 2025-08-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Birdwatchers’ attitudes and preferences that influence their decisions to engage in local, national, and international birdwatching trips
Published: 2025-08-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Birdwatching tourism has significant economic potential and is a growing form of ecotourism. Birdwatchers throughout the United States have diverse attitudes and motivations, and here we sought to understand how, and why, birdwatchers select birdwatching destinations at local, in-country, and international scales. A questionnaire survey (n=427 participants) revealed that 98% participate in local [...]
Northern Riches and Rangifer Risks: A review of the Impacts of Resource Extraction for Caribou and Reindeer
Published: 2025-08-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
As the global demand for energy continues to rise rapidly, northern ecosystems—i.e. Arctic, subarctic, and boreal regions—are especially at risk due to their rich mineral and hydrocarbon potential. The expansion of infrastructure associated with extractive industries often impacts species and may ultimately contribute to population declines, particularly for those less resilient to environmental [...]
Improving the temporal transferability of species distribution models under climate change by incorporating historical species-climate relationship
Published: 2025-08-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Understanding how species will respond to climate change is one of the current key challenges in ecology and nature conservation. The tempo-spatial variations of climate makes it more challenging to predict species responses to climate change across their entire ranges. Species distribution models have been widely used for identifying how species distributions respond to climatic drivers. Despite [...]
Trait shifts during range expansions: A meta-analysis
Published: 2025-08-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Populations undergoing range expansions often undergo phenotypic shifts at the leading edge. Understanding how traits change during range expansions could provide insight into predicting invasive species dynamics and responses to climate change. Theory predicts that edge populations should increase in dispersal capability and shift towards reproductive traits that maximize fecundity over [...]
An Evolutionary Hypothesis on the Persistence of Non-Coding DNA in Complex Genomes: The Passive Selfish DNA Model
Published: 2025-08-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Non-coding DNA constitutes the vast majority of eukaryotic genomes, yet its evolutionary role remains largely unresolved. This manuscript proposes a theoretical model in which non-coding DNA persists not due to functional utility, but as "passive selfish DNA"—elements that replicate by coexisting with coding sequences in vital genomes. Drawing analogies with endogenous retroviruses and vertically [...]
TADA! Simple guidelines to improve code sharing
Published: 2025-08-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Code sharing is important for transparency and facilitates computational reproducibility of published research. However, even as the number of journals that encourage or mandate code sharing continues to increase, the prevalence of open code remains low. Furthermore, even when shared, code is often non-functional, which hinders computational reproducibility. One reason for low levels of code [...]
Faecal n-alkanes differ significantly between two lemur species reflecting differences in consumed diet
Published: 2025-08-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
The diet of an animal reflects its species’ ecology and local food availability and is often a key metric for monitoring the health and welfare of endangered species. However, determining diets across individuals and through space and time, is an inherent challenge within ecology, being expensive and time-intensive to accomplish with observations. Faeces offer the opportunity for non-invasive [...]
Tracking the hidden niches: Movement-based insights into northern lapwing intraspecific variation and conservation
Published: 2025-08-01
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Entomology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Other Animal Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Zoology
Context. Global monitoring data reveal farmland bird population declines, primarily driven by agricultural intensification, chemical inputs, and climate shifts. The northern lapwing (Vanellus vanellus), a ground-nesting wader adapted to lowland agricultural matrices, exemplifies this decline across Europe. Objectives. This study quantified intraspecific variation in habitat selection to evaluate [...]
Exploring the Integration of Traditional Ecological Knowledge with Artificial Intelligence to Mitigate Human-Wildlife Conflict in Kerala, India
Published: 2025-08-01
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Increasing human-wildlife conflict (HWC) in forest-fringe landscapes necessitates innovative and culturally acceptable mitigation strategies. This note proposes integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to mitigate HWC in Kerala. The proposition aims to translate African rural traditional knowledge of using alarm calls of Guinea fowls (Numida meleagris) [...]
From reintroduction to extinction risk: past, present and future of the newly established population of Ospreys in southern Iberia
Published: 2025-08-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Biodiversity is declining due to the ongoing environmental global change, and raptors are among the most threatened animal groups. To counteract their decline, birds of prey have frequently been the focus of reintroduction programs worldwide. However, newly established populations must be continuously monitored to assess both short- and long-term success. In this work, we investigate the case of [...]