Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Nutritional needs and social bonds: how early-life dependencies shape meerkat sociality
Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Across species, social systems vary in their extent of interactions, competition, cooperation, and cohesion. Though there has been considerable research on overall social structures, the dynamics of how an individual's social niche develops during early life and how biological needs of offspring shape sociality has received less attention. In this study, we took a longitudinal approach targeting [...]
High-frequency eDNA metabarcoding survey data of coastal fish across the Japanese Archipelago
Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The Japanese archipelago, spanning over 3,000 km from subarctic to subtropical zones (approximately 24°N to 45°N), hosts a diverse array of coastal fish communities shaped by pronounced latitudinal gradients. Here, we present a high-frequency environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding dataset of coastal fishes collected across the archipelago. Using the MiFish primer set targeting a hypervariable [...]
Going Global by Going Local: Impacts and Opportunities of Geographically Focused Data Integration
Published: 2025-06-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Biodiversity conservation is a global challenge that requires the integration of global and local data. Expanding global data infrastructures have opened unprecedented opportunities for biodiversity data storage, curation, and dissemination. Within one such infrastructure – the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) – these benefits are achieved by aggregating data from over 100 regional [...]
Multiple global-change drivers and cascading effects in Mediterranean ecosystems: Lessons from an iconic national park
Published: 2025-06-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Historically, Mediterranean systems, particularly the Mediterranean Basin, have been substantially impacted by multiple regional-scale disturbances resulting from complex interactive effects of global-change drivers. However, such effects are typically studied on isolated groups of organisms, often disregarding how ecological processes such as biotic interactions affect ecosystem responses to [...]
Light color and nutrient availability alter trophic transfer from algae to zooplankton
Published: 2025-06-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Freshwater plankton communities experience both natural variation of light color and nutrient availability and shifts due to eutrophication and brownification. These changes can alter algal community structure, but whether variation of light color impacts trophic transfer from algae to zooplankton is unknown because most research ignores color and focuses on light intensity. We used microcosms [...]
Forest composition and diversity buffer microclimates and enhance productivity
Published: 2025-06-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
Trees can buffer forest ecosystems against climate extremes, creating microenvironments that support diverse plant communities. We asked how diverse tree communities could influence the above- and below-ground moisture environment, thereby linking tree diversity and ecosystem function. To address this question, we integrated remotely sensed forest structure, growth inventories, microclimate [...]
Enhancing motivation to learn marine ecology and increase ocean literacy through Virtual Reality in Higher Education
Published: 2025-06-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Virtual Reality (VR) is increasingly recognised as a tool for enhancing engagement and motivation in education. This is particularly true where access to experiential learning is limited, as is often the case in marine ecology courses. However, the effectiveness of VR for teaching and learning in higher education is poorly understood. Here, we use the Explore experience developed by The Hydrous [...]
Elevating the importance of Risk of Bias assessment for ecology and evolution
Published: 2025-06-16
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Microbiology, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses are key evidence synthesis methods informing research and policy. An assessment of the Risk of Bias (RoB) in included studies is normally considered an essential component of these. However, RoB assessment is rare in ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB), and tools from other fields are seldom adopted. To identify reasons for this limited uptake, we surveyed [...]
Comparing statistical methods for detecting weather cues of mast seeding in European beech (Fagus sylvatica) across Europe
Published: 2025-06-16
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Understanding the drivers of mast seeding is important for predicting reproductive dynamics in perennial plants. Here, we evaluate the performance of four statistical methods for identifying weather-associated drivers of annual seed production, i.e, weather cues: climate sensitivity profile, P-spline regression, sliding window analysis, and peak signal detection. Using long-term seed production [...]
Characterising the structural complexity across major habitats of Tenerife, Spain
Published: 2025-06-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Life Sciences
Understanding biodiversity changes across ecosystems requires the consideration of various biodiversity dimensions, such as habitat structural complexity – the degree of heterogeneity in the distribution of plant material in three-dimensional space. Yet, its inclusion in long-term biodiversity monitoring on oceanic islands remains limited. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) can be used to quantify [...]
Toxin resistance mechanisms span biological scales in the Royal Ground Snake (Colubridae: Erythrolamprus reginae)
Published: 2025-06-13
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genomics, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Molecular Biology, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Physiology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences, Systems Biology, Zoology
Exposure to multiple toxic compounds imposes selective pressures across biological levels. There are several known toxin resistance mechanisms–such as behavioral avoidance, metabolic detoxification, and target-site insensitivity but an integrative approach to consider multiple toxins and resistance strategies. Predators of amphibians, for example, must counteract multiple chemicals secreted by [...]
Genomic data confirms that mutation cannot restore genetic diversity lost through population bottlenecks
Published: 2025-06-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics, Population Biology
Maintaining within-species genetic diversity is a critical goal of biodiversity conservation as it determines a species’ ability to adapt to environmental change. Without human intervention, isolated populations can only recover genetic diversity post-bottleneck through the accumulation of new mutations over evolutionary timescales. Using recent estimates of mutation rates from major genomic [...]
When homology fails: lessons from liver-fluke phylogenies
Published: 2025-06-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
Misaligned sequences derail evolutionary inference. Datasets from GenBank require verification of positional homology and orientation before alignment and phylogenetic analysis. Liver-fluke case studies reveal how overlooked errors skew results, underscoring the need for rigorous checks in parasitology and all molecular research.
Colorful birds face heightened extinction risk around the world
Published: 2025-06-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Ornithology
Many of the functional traits that mediate extinction risk across the tree life relate indirectly to a species’ ability to persist in a changing world. Yet, there are certain traits such as coloration that directly affect human interactions with wildlife. Here, we use an existing dataset of color metrics for 4334 passerine bird species combined with global functional trait data to determine [...]
The interplay between ecological networks drives host-plasmid community dynamics
Published: 2025-06-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Plasmids drive bacterial evolution by transferring adaptive traits, such as metabolism and antimicrobial resistance, between members of microbial communities. There are trends and barriers to plasmid transmission, which likely emerge from both host-plasmid interactions (e.g. plasmid host ranges), and plasmid-plasmid interactions (e.g. plasmid incompatibility). However, while both interaction [...]