Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Beyond the obstetric dilemma: evolutionary maternal-fetal conflict causes health problems in pregnancy and childbirth
Published: 2025-03-03
Subjects: Anthropology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Life Sciences, Maternal and Child Health, Medicine and Health Sciences, Translational Medical Research
In excellent recent work, Webb and colleagues challenged the so-called “obstetric dilemma”—the long-standing hypothesis that human childbearing is particularly dangerous because we have a narrow pelvis but large infant heads (we are bipedal and smart). They showed that humans and chimpanzees have a comparable fetal-pelvic squeeze. What, then, causes risky childbirth in humans? Webb and colleagues [...]
The effect of sex, age, and boldness on inhibitory control
Published: 2025-03-03
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Inhibitory control requires an individual to suppress impulsive actions in favour of more appropriate behaviours to gain a delayed reward. It plays an important role in activities such as foraging and initiating mating, but high within-species variation suggests that some individuals have greater inhibitory control than others. A standard index of inhibitory control used in many taxa is measuring [...]
A Practical Decision Tool for Marine Bird Mortality Assessments
Published: 2025-02-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Given the rise in anthropogenic, environmental, and disease events contributing to marine bird mortality, there is a critical need to improve the rigor of mortality assessments. Deficits in data collection and mortality estimation can hinder a manager’s ability to document event scales and inform population level impacts. Therefore, to inform decisions required during activities such as [...]
Climate-linked evolution and genetics in a warming Arctic
Published: 2025-02-27
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences
The extent to which species might be able to evolutionarily respond to rapid environmental change relies strongly on their genetic diversity. Accurate knowledge of both patterns of evolution and genetic variation across the species range is important for determining appropriate conservation and management strategies. The Arctic is the fastest-warming region on the planet, with the rest of the [...]
Ecosystem services of insectivorous bats in intensively managed arable land benefit from adjacent near-natural areas
Published: 2025-02-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Ecosystem services provided by insectivorous bats are an important yet underappreciated economic benefit of biodiversity. To investigate what is needed to maintain these services, we asked whether bat-mediated ecosystem services depend on near-natural areas adjacent to farmland. We used high-throughput tracking and genetic sequencing to determine the habitat use and diet of 128 common noctule [...]
The hidden figures at species boundaries: the mitochondrial energetics behind mating signal divergence
Published: 2025-02-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
The energy expenditure of mating signals is often divergent between species and mediates heterospecific mating, thus influencing the direction of gene flow across the species boundaries. The relative energetics of the mating signals can be underpinned by mitochondrial haplotypic divergence between species, which contributes to hybrid mitonuclear incompatibility and speciation. Here, we discuss [...]
Transferable approaches to CRISPR-Cas9 induced genome editing in non-model insects: a brief guide
Published: 2025-02-27
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Animal Sciences, Entomology, Genetics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics, Other Genetics and Genomics, Zoology
Despite the large variety of insect species with divergent morphological, developmental and physiological features questions on gene function could for a long time only be addressed in few model species. The adoption of the bacterial CRISPR-Cas system for genome editing in eukaryotic cells widened the scope of the field of functional genetics: for the first time the creation of heritable genetic [...]
Rapid declines in southern Sierra Nevada fisher habitat driven by drought and wildfire
Published: 2025-02-27
Subjects: Forest Management, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Forest disturbances are a natural ecological process, but climate and land-use change are altering disturbance regimes at an unprecedented rate, posing significant threats to biological communities and species of concern. Our aim was to develop an automated habitat monitoring system for the Southern Sierra Nevada Distinct Population Segment of fisher (Pekania pennanti) in California, USA to [...]
Ecology in Africa: historical perspectives, present state and prospects
Published: 2025-02-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Ecology research, education and conservation policies in Africa are heavily influenced by western science and philosophy, resulting in the marginalization of African traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) systems. This legacy persists in post-colonial African government structures and academic institutions, influencing teaching methodologies, research approaches, and conservation policy [...]
There is no such thing as an herbivore: incidental and intentional ingestion profoundly affects both herbivores and plant-dwelling invertebrates.
Published: 2025-02-26
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Real-life ‘herbivores’ are not the herbivores of our simplistic ecological and behavioral models – real-life herbivores constantly consume other organisms both incidentally and intentionally, with the ‘prey’ usually consisting of plant-dwelling arthropods, smaller invertebrates, and carrion. A remarkable amount of disparate literature has amassed on these phenomena, yet the implications of these [...]
Tracing the history of angiosperm systematics through Liliales and Asparagales
Published: 2025-02-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
The field of systematics is central to how we understand, classify, and discuss organisms and their evolution. Systematics directly or indirectly touches every branch of biology. Over the last 50 years, methods in the field have been continually reshaped by advancing technologies, transitioning from primarily relying on morphological data to utilizing genomic-scale data sets. As the methods [...]
Combining eDNA and Museomics to Enhance Biodiversity Monitoring
Published: 2025-02-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Genetics and Genomics
Biodiversity changes due to human activities highlight the need for efficient biodiversity monitoring approaches. Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding offers a non-invasive method to assess species distributions, but its accuracy depends on comprehensive DNA reference databases. Natural history museum collections often contain rare or difficult to obtain samples that could be used as a resource [...]
Comunicación breve sobre germinación de 15 especies nativas chilenas, de áreas protegidas desérticas costeras, semi desértica, mediterránea y templada
Published: 2025-02-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
Las comunidades vegetales están cambiando su diversidad y composición debido al cambio climático y las presiones humanas (IPCC 2023), lo que a menudo conduce a condiciones irreversibles. En Chile, muchas plantas nativas están enfrentando dificultades ya que su rango de distribución se está desplazando o reduciendo (Anderson, 2016), aumentando la necesidad de restaurar las comunidades vegetales [...]
Investigating the Effects of Future Climate on Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungal Spore Dynamics in a Belgian Pear Orchard Ecosystem
Published: 2025-02-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate change affects soil microbial communities, including arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), crucial for plant nutrient uptake and resistance to pathogens. This study examines the impact of future climate on the abundance, functional group composition and temporal dynamics of AMF spores in Belgian pear orchards using an advanced Ecotron climate simulation facility. By simulating present [...]
Belowground communities in lowlands are less stable to climate extremes across seasons
Published: 2025-02-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ecological responses to climate extremes vary drastically in different spatiotemporal contexts. For instance, the seasonal timing could be a major factor influencing community responses, but its importance is likely to vary at different spatial settings, such as high or low elevation. Here, we investigate how soil communities at high- and low-elevation sites respond to extreme heat events at [...]