Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences

A new perspective on Squamate social cognition – the use of semiochemicals

Birgit Szabo

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

Melanie Gleske, Carolin Mundinger, S. Helene Richter, et al.

Published: 2025-02-05
Subjects: Animal Studies, Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

The individualised social niche results from interactions of an individual with its social environment. The social environment can change during lifetime. Thus, individuals need to be able to conform to different individualised social niches over lifetime. Our goal was therefore to elucidate when and how social niche conformance in guinea pigs occurs. We focused on juvenility, an important [...]

Integrating spatiotemporal and cultural dimensions of animal behavior can enhance conservation

William K Oestreich, Dawn R Barlow, Taylor A Hersh

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

July Pilowsky, Greg Albery, Barbara Han, et al.

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

Fabio Mologni, Peter J. Bellingham, Ewen K. Cameron, et al.

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

Daniel J Becker, Amanda Vicente-Santos, Ashley Reers, et al.

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 [...]

Land use gradients drive spatial variation in Lassa fever host communities in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone.

David Simons, Rory Gibb, Umaru Bangura, et al.

Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Epidemiology, Life Sciences, Virus Diseases

The natal multimammate mouse (Mastomys natalensis) is the primary reservoir host of Lassa mammarenavirus (LASV), a zoonotic pathogen causing Lassa fever that is endemic to West Africa. The occurrence and abundance of this species is regulated by the human environment and biotic interactions with other small-mammal species, but these ecological drivers remain poorly understood in the regions [...]

Proposing a socialecological framework for successful grassland restoration in Germany – an overview and insights from the Grassworks project

Vicky M. Temperton

Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Life Sciences

Bending the biodiversity curve and delivering on biodiversity promises from international agreements and laws, including Kunming-Montreal and the EU Restoration Law, requires upscaling ecological restoration from smaller to larger spatial and temporal dimensions and across different spheres of society. Achieving this depends on a strong scientific evidence base and synthesis of effective [...]

Measuring critical thermal maximum in aquatic ectotherms: a practical guide

Graham D Raby, Rachael Morgan, Anna H. Andreassen, et al.

Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology

Critical thermal limits, commonly quantified as CTmax (maximum) or CTmin (minimum), are core metrics in the thermal biology of aquatic ectotherms. CTmax, in particular, has recently surged in popularity due to its various applications, including understanding and predicting the responses of animals to climate warming. Despite its growing popularity, there is a limited literature aimed at [...]

Combined effects of land-use- and climate-driven stressors on stream fungi and organic matter decomposition

Aida Viza, Encarnación Fenoy, Meritxell Abril, et al.

Published: 2025-01-30
Subjects: Life Sciences

Freshwater microbial communities are essential for maintaining ecosystem functions and services, with aquatic fungi playing a particularly critical role in decomposing terrestrial organic matter entering streams and converting it into energy and nutrients that sustain higher trophic levels. However, freshwater ecosystems face growing threats from multiple stressors. The combined effects of these [...]

Forever an optimist? Investigating the temporal consistency of optimism within and across life phases in rats

Louisa Bierbaum, Viktoria Siewert, Carolin Mundinger, et al.

Published: 2025-01-30
Subjects: Life Sciences

It is long known from human psychology that people differ in their perception of the world, with some judging ambiguous information more positively (i.e., “optimists”) and some more negatively (i.e., “pessimists”). About 20 years ago, this knowledge was transferred to animal welfare science to assess emotional states in animals by quantifying optimistic or pessimistic judgement biases. More [...]

Emergence, spread, and impact of high pathogenicity avian influenza H5 in wild birds and mammals of South America and Antarctica, October 2022 to March 2024

Thijs Kuiken, Ralph Eric Thijl Vanstreels, Ashley Banyard, et al.

Published: 2025-01-30
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences

The currently circulating high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) virus of the subtype H5 causes variable illness and death in wild and domestic birds and mammals, as well as in humans. This virus evolved from the Goose/Guangdong lineage of HPAI H5 virus, which emerged in commercial poultry in China in 1996, spilled over into wild birds, and spread through Asia, Europe, Africa and North America [...]

Phylogenetic Signal in Shell Morphology of the Chemosymbiotic Lucinidae (Bivalvia)

Brooke Lamonte Long-Fox, Laurie C Anderson, Shen Jean Lim, et al.

Published: 2025-01-29
Subjects: Life Sciences

Lucinidae are the most specious family of extant chemosymbiotic bivalves and occupy a wide range of habitats worldwide. All extant lucinids examined to date house chemosynthetic endosymbionts within their gill tissues. Fossil evidence suggests a Silurian origin for the family, with chemosymbiotic associations dating back to at least the Late Jurassic. Previous systematics work indicates that [...]

Incorporating responses of functional traits to changing climates into species distribution models: A path forward

Shijia Peng, Aaron M Ellison, Charles Davis

Published: 2025-01-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Conventional species distribution models (SDMs) typically consider only abiotic factors, thus overlooking critical biotic dimensions, including functional traits that play an important role determining species’ distributions in changing environments. Process-based models explicitly incorporate functional traits and have been applied to SDMs. However, their parameterization can be complex and [...]

Bridging data silos to holistically model plant macrophenology

Lizbeth G Amador, Tadeo Ramirez-Parada, Isaac W Park, et al.

Published: 2025-01-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences

● Phenological shifts to global climate change impact ecosystem functions. There are various data sources from which spatiotemporal, and taxonomic phenological data may be obtained: mobilized herbaria, community-science initiatives, observatory networks, and remote-sensing. However, analyses conducted to date have generally relied on single sources of data, thus treating alternative data sources [...]

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