Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Environmental factors have a greater influence on photosynthetic capacity in C4 plants than C4 biochemical subtypes or growth forms
Published: 2025-04-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
• Our understanding of how photosynthesis varies among C4 species and across different growth and measurement conditions remains limited. • We collated 1,696 CO2 response curves of net CO2 assimilation rate (A/Ci curves) from C4 species grown and measured at various environmental conditions and used these data to estimate the apparent maximum carboxylation activity of phosphoenolpyruvate [...]
Spatial scaling of functional and taxonomic diversity across ecosystems on an island
Published: 2025-04-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Spatial scale influences how we perceive, quantify, and conserve multiple biodiversity facets. Like other facets of biodiversity, functional diversity is scale-dependent and varies non-linearly with taxonomic diversity. Yet, studies commonly rely on single-scale analyses, limiting our understanding of the role of spatial scale in biodiversity patterns. Here, we assessed how spatial grain and [...]
Transition from incubation to brood-rearing activities influences dyadic associations differently between the sexes in a central-place foraging seabird.
Published: 2025-04-11
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Life Sciences
1. Changes in activities following seasonal cycles can affect social interactions, which in turn influence social network structures. Because such activities are often sex-related, their effect on the social environment can affect males and females differently, particularly during periods of high activity such as the breeding season. While the effects of sex-related activities on the social [...]
MODIFICATION OF THE FRESHWATER FISH COMMUNITY IN THE NATURE RESERVE "OASI DEL SIMETO" (SICILY-ITALY): PRELIMINARY DATA
Published: 2025-04-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
There are no recent data on the fish fauna of Simeto, the river with the largest catchment area in Sicily. Based on this assumption, it is particularly interesting to search whether the fish community has suffered variations over the years or remained unaltered.A recent preliminary sampling investigation was carried out in the stretch of river flowing through the Natural Reserve "Oasi del [...]
Speciation in ants: Unlocking ant diversity to study speciation (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Ants are among the most abundant terrestrial animals and play key roles in ecosystems across the globe. Their taxonomic and ecological diversity makes them a prime taxon for contributing to our understanding of the patterns and processes of speciation. However, studies on ants, such as those on ant diversification or taxonomy, often do not explicitly consider how their results inform or update [...]
Deep-learning technology provides insights into the morphological evolution of birds
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Computational Engineering, Evolution, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
The evolution of biological morphology is critical for understanding the diversity of the natural world, yet traditional analyses often involve subjective biases in the selection and coding of morphological traits. This study employs deep learning techniques, utilizing a pretrained ResNet34 model capable of recognizing over 10,000 bird species, to explore avian morphological evolution. We [...]
Plant genomic variation and its implications for proposed EU NGT legislation
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Biotechnology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics, Plant Breeding and Genetics Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
The European Commission proposal for New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) of July 2023 specifies that NGT1 plants, which are considered equivalent to conventional plants, may differ from the recipient or parental plant by no more than 20 insertions, which cannot be longer than 20 bp; deletions can be of any size and number. Here, we examine the proposed 20/20 NGT1 limit against the background of the [...]
The Missing Environmental Impacts in Invasive Species Cost Assessments –Insights from an InvaCost-based regional review
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Accounting for the costs incurred due to biological invasions is important for informing invasive species management policies, and understanding and mitigating future losses. InvaCost, a living review and massive database of cost estimates, is a valuable open science resource that can support informed policy and management of invasive species and has since been the basis of many regional and [...]
The molecular evolutionary basis of species formation revisited
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
How do new species arise? This is among the most fundamental questions in evolutionary biology. The first genetic model for how reproductive barriers leads to the origin of new species was proposed nearly 90 years ago. However, empirical evidence for the genetic mechanisms that cause reproductive barriers took many decades to accumulate. In 2010, Presgraves presented a comprehensive review of the [...]
Scaling animal impacts on dispersal and structure through space and time.
Published: 2025-04-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Scaling theory allows us to predict animal impacts on seed distribution, zoogeochemistry, pathogen movement, and vegetation structure over space and time. Here we have both reviewed this literature and suggested future directions to scale such work over space and time and apply it to such disparate fields as ecosystem ecology, paleontology and remote sensing. This chapter is accepted in the [...]
Dynamic pollinator networks maintain pollination efficiency during mast flowering in an insect-pollinated tree
Published: 2025-04-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mast seeding, the synchronous and highly variable reproduction across years, is common among perennial plants, enhancing reproductive success through predator satiation and improved pollination. Animal-pollinated species generally show lower interannual variability in seed production then wind-pollinated plants, often explained by pollinator satiation reducing selection for masting. However, [...]
Functional traits drive the competitive assembly of ant communities and impact colony performance in competition mesocosms
Published: 2025-04-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Studies along broad spatial and habitat gradients evidence that organisms’ traits can influence community assembly through their impact on dispersal and environmental filtering. However, the role of traits in structuring local faunal communities within habitats remains poorly understood. In particular, the often-assumed role of traits in affecting the outcome of competition among animal species [...]
Shifts in phenology and species ranges synergistically alter the timing and species composition of the flowering season
Published: 2025-04-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Global change is altering the phenology and geographic ranges of flowering species, with potentially profound consequences for the timing and composition of floral resources and the seasonal structure of ecological communities. However, shifts in flowering phenology and species distributions have historically been studied in isolation due to disciplinary silos and limited data, leaving critical [...]
AedesTraits: A global database of temperature–dependent trait responses in Aedes mosquitoes
Published: 2025-04-07
Subjects: Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Invasive Aedes mosquitoes are major vectors of arboviral diseases such as dengue, Zika, and chikungunya, posing an increasing threat to global public health. Their recent geographic expansion calls for predictive models to simulate population dynamics and transmission risk. Temperature is a key driver in these models, influencing traits that affect vector competence. While data on [...]
IQ-TREE 3: Phylogenomic Inference Software using Complex Evolutionary Models
Published: 2025-04-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
IQ-TREE (http://www.iqtree.org) is a widely used open-source software tool for efficiently inferring phylogenetic trees under maximum likelihood. Here, we present IQ-TREE version 3, the third major release of the software. IQ-TREE 3 significantly extends version 2 with new features, including mixture models as an alternative to partitioned models, gene and site concordance factors to quantify [...]