Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Fast evolving flowers drive cactus diversification
Published: 2025-08-22
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The rise of biodiversity is shaped by variation in diversification rates. Across the Tree of Life, numerous forces are thought to influence these rates, including the evolution of adaptive traits, climate change, and interactions with other organisms. In the flowering plants, a longstanding hypothesis favoured by Darwin suggests that floral evolution is a driving force for plant diversity. [...]
Genomic characteristics of root-knot nematodes: a major group of crop pests
Published: 2025-08-22
Subjects: Life Sciences
Nematodes constitute one of the most species-rich groups of animals, only paralleled by arthropods. They have a worldwide distribution being present in many biomes from deep sea sediments to deserts. Around 15% of them parasitize plants and they cause enormous damage to the global agricultural production despite the control methods deployed. Among those, the root-knot nematodes (genus [...]
Embryos are largely understudied in conservation physiology
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Physiology
Understanding how animals respond to environmental stressors across their life cycle is essential for predicting species’ vulnerability to climate change. Here, we systematically reviewed the literature to quantify the variation in research effort on different life stages in the field of conservation physiology. Specifically, we reviewed experimental studies measuring physiological and [...]
Pleiotropy and the evolutionary stability of plastic phenotypes: a geometric framework
Published: 2025-08-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Phenotypic plasticity allows organisms to express different traits in response to different environmental or genetic conditions. Understanding the evolution of conditional phenotypes is challenging because they are not expressed by all members of a population, which allows for the accumulation of deleterious variation due to drift. Theory suggests pleiotropic effects help prevent the decay of [...]
Moving from the Dilution Effect to Dilution Landscapes: Effects of Natural Vegetation Cover and Fragmentation on Host-parasite Eco-evolutionary Dynamics
Published: 2025-08-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The conversion and fragmentation of natural landscapes are key drivers of biodiversity loss and the erosion of ecosystem services, including disease regulation. Although habitat degradation is linked to higher zoonotic disease risk, the mechanisms by which landscape structure shapes host-parasite eco-evolutionary dynamics remain poorly understood. Here, we combine a spatially explicit [...]
Catalogue of Papilionoidea from Noguera de Albarracín (Teruel, Spain), including new distributional data for the Sierra de Albarracín (Insecta: Lepidoptera)
Published: 2025-08-20
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Zoology
We present a catalogue of butterflies from Noguera de Albarracín (Teruel, Spain), based on field surveys conducted in 2024 and 2025 within the framework of the Iberozoa Entomology Course. A total of 52 species were recorded, representing 20.15% of the Iberian butterfly fauna. The material belongs to 5 families, 13 subfamilies, 33 genera and 52 species. Lycaenidae was the richest family with 16 [...]
Causal interpretations can be based on mechanistic knowledge
Published: 2025-08-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. There exists a long-standing disconnect between statistical and mechanistic approaches to the development of causal understanding. Statistical approaches, which have dominated the literature, have focused on the need to obtain perfectly unbiased estimates of causal effects often using either experimental, quasi-experimental, or other methods. Mechanistic approaches have instead focused on [...]
Finding Inter-species Associations on Large Citizen Science Datasets
Published: 2025-08-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Infection profiles in a wild rat–protozoan network are shaped by host traits and environmental factors
Published: 2025-08-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Pathogenic Microbiology
Heterogeneity in parasite infection among hosts shapes transmission dynamics and spillover risk to other host species but remains poorly understood in natural systems. We applied network-based stochastic block modeling and machine learning to a uniquely rich dataset to identify and predict protozoan infection profiles in introduced black rats (Rattus rattus) sampled along an environmental [...]
Flower constancy in pollinators: a bouquet of agendas shapes interactions among mutualistic partners
Published: 2025-08-15
Subjects: Life Sciences
Plant–pollinator interactions have become a major research area because of their impact on key ecosystem services. One pollinator behaviour of particular importance is flower constancy, the tendency to temporarily focus on one flower species during a foraging trip, thereby promoting cross-pollination. The costs and benefits of flower constancy for plants and pollinators are varied, complex and [...]
From Shorelines to Social Media: Mixed-Methods Insights into Urban Fishing Practices, Policy Gaps and Culture in the Digital Age
Published: 2025-08-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Recreational and subsistence fishing are globally significant forms of marine resource use, contributing to food security, cultural identity, and social well-being across diverse coastal communities. Yet these non-commercial sectors are often overlooked in formal fisheries monitoring and governance. In California’s San Francisco Bay Area, non-commercial fishers represent a wide range of [...]
Connectivity for the conservation of Borneo’s biodiversity
Published: 2025-08-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Ecological connectivity is fundamental to biodiversity conservation and climate adaptation, facilitating species movement, genetic exchange, and ecological function across landscapes. In Borneo, connectivity is increasingly threatened by deforestation, agricultural expansion, infrastructure development, and urbanization, leading to habitat fragmentation and isolation. This chapter examines the [...]
The Norfolk Island Proposal
Published: 2025-08-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
This paper proposes a novel ecological intervention: Ethical Marine Offal Dumping (EMOD) as a low-cost, high-impact method of restoring apex predator presence in marine ecosystems. Using Norfolk Island as a case study, where tiger sharks are significantly larger and more abundant than regional norms, the paper explores the unintended yet beneficial ecological consequences of routine livestock [...]
Eclipse of reason: debunking speculative anticipatory behavior in trees
Published: 2025-08-12
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Advancing plant behaviour research requires adherence to robust experimental designs, the formulation of alternative falsifiable hypotheses, sufficient replication, and stringent controls. These tenets safeguard the field from slipping into pseudoscience. A recent study by Chiolerio et al. (2025) claims that Picea abies trees collectively anticipate solar eclipses via electrome-based signalling. [...]
Rethinking termite methane emissions: does the mound environment matter?
Published: 2025-08-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
Termites are important decomposers in tropical ecosystems, and they emit methane (CH4) from digesting plant matter. Termite contributions to global CH4 emissions are calculated using species-specific termite CH4 emissions from individuals (termite emission factors; TEF) and estimated biomass, which overlooks how the termite mound environment may alter emissions to the atmosphere. Factors such as [...]