Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Mutation accumulation in genes with sex-biased fitness effects: A parsimonious explanation for sex differences in lifespan and ageing
Published: 2025-11-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
Sex differences in lifespan and ageing pervade the tree of life, yet their evolutionary origin is still debated. Adaptive trade-off models have long dominated the field but show mixed empirical support. Here we argue that mutation accumulation in genes with sex-biased fitness effects is the most parsimonious evolutionary cause of sex-biased ageing. Because anisogamy and ecology shape reproductive [...]
Bioclimatic modelling of the spread of Dirofilaria spp. in Europe, with a special focus on Ukraine
Published: 2025-11-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
Background: The zoonotic disease dirofilariosis, caused by Dirofilaria spp., is expanding geographically in Europe, a phenomenon increasingly linked to climate change. Understanding the environmental drivers of this spread is crucial for surveillance and public health planning. Objective: This study aims to model the ecological niche of Dirofilaria spp. in Europe, identify key climatic drivers, [...]
Microevolutionary consequences of social structure in wild spotted hyenas
Published: 2025-11-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Many evolutionary models remain limited in their ability to predict evolutionary change under realistic ecological conditions. A potential reason for this limitation could be that social structures are not yet well incorporated into most empirically parameterized evolutionary frameworks, despite being a defining feature of animal populations. This is of particular relevance because social [...]
Ecological, demographic and social factors shape helping decisions at different spatial scales in a facultative cooperative breeder
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The fitness consequences of cooperative breeding are increasingly well understood, but the ecological and demographic factors driving helping remain contentious. Comparative and single-species studies have identified factors that promote the evolution of helping, but analyses typically test single hypotheses so the relative importance of different factors, and the spatial scale of their [...]
India’s dog crisis warrants governance reimagination, less animal management
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Indian Supreme Court’s 2025 mandate to relocate millions of dogs exposed policy instability in cities where ecological realities, cultural practices, and institutional fragmentation collide. The crisis is less about animals and more about how urban governance fails to reconcile competing priorities, underscoring the collapse of the Indian coexistence model.
The Queer & Trans Field Safety Assessment: a tool for protecting minoritized field scientists
Published: 2025-11-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Ecological fieldwork poses heightened risks for LGBTQIA+ scientists due to inadequate safety protocols and identity-based vulnerabilities. Best practices to improve safety for queer field researchers exist, yet over 50% of LGBTQIA+ field scientists report feeling unsupported, with structural and cultural barriers unaddressed. Our team of 15 researchers from the University of California developed [...]
Identifying deforestation and defaunation fronts in Indonesia’s tropical forests
Published: 2025-11-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Tropical forests are central to global climate regulation and biodiversity conservation, yet continue to face intense pressure from agricultural expansion, resource extraction, and infrastructure development. Indonesia contains some of the world’s largest remaining tropical forests and exceptionally high vertebrate diversity, but its islands differ widely in both historic forest loss and emerging [...]
Taxonomic revisions, strategic decisions research and management priorities for the threatened greater glider complex
Published: 2025-11-11
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Collating and synthesising ecological information is critical for guiding effective conservation policy and management plans. This is especially pertinent for species of conservation concern. This task may be further complicated when taxonomic revisions of species and species complexes occur. Species previously managed as a single taxon may be reclassified into multiple species, and hence [...]
Another brick in the wall of European subterranean spider knowledge: adding Macaronesian species and their traits to the picture
Published: 2025-11-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Caves and other subterranean ecosystems impose highly selective environmental filters, driving the evolution of convergent and specialized traits in subterranean organisms. Here, we present the first comprehensive checklist and trait database for subterranean spiders of Macaronesia, thereby filling a significant knowledge gap relative to continental Europe. We compiled data through direct [...]
The ecology of resting behaviour in terrestrial vertebrates, and potential effects of anthropization
Published: 2025-11-10
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Inactive behaviours are a major component of animals’ lives, generally representing important proportions of time budgets. The conditions in which they occur are thus likely to have key effects on individual fitness. Yet, relatively little research has focused on the determinants and ecological consequences of inactive behaviours, likely in part because of the inherent difficulties associated [...]
Artificial light at night has life stage-specific effects on biological rhythms in a seasonal insect
Published: 2025-11-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Artificial Light at Night (ALAN) has infiltrated many once-dark nightscapes, introducing a novel cue on biological clocks. Recent research has uncovered effects of ALAN on behavior, physiology, and fitness across taxa. However, questions remain about ALAN’s effects on key biological rhythm functions like diapause and sleep, and how disruptions to these rhythms can be linked to fitness declines. [...]
Proportion of native plants is a key predictor of pollinator richness in urban greenspaces
Published: 2025-11-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Pollinator declines are caused by a multitude of factors including pollution, global warming, disease, urbanization, deforestation, and habitat loss. Given the global increase in urbanization, identifying ways to support pollinators in cities has become an important conservation priority. Here, we investigate the effect of urbanization on pollinator richness. Using >100,000 iNaturalist [...]
A conceptual guide to studying multilevel societies
Published: 2025-11-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Multilevel societies—social systems composed of multiple nested social units—have long intrigued scholars in anthropology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary biology. Classically described in mammals, new evidence shows that multilevel societies are more widespread across taxa than previously acknowledged, raising both conceptual and methodological challenges for comparative research. 2. We [...]
TwisstNTern 2: Ternary analysis of topology weights from tree sequences
Published: 2025-11-07
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
Recent advances in genealogical inference now allow the reconstruction of genome-wide sequences of trees for large sets of samples, providing detailed records of how evolutionary relationships vary along the genome. Tree sequences encode a vast amount of information, but new approaches are needed to extract relevant patterns and make inferences. TwisstNtern is a program for visualising and [...]
High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza in Pinniped Conservation
Published: 2025-11-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Since 2020, H5Nx highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses (HPAIVs) have caused widespread disruptions not only to global agriculture and trade but also to the health of free-ranging wildlife. Pinnipeds have experienced greater mortality from H5Nx HPAIV than any other mammalian taxa. Emergent virus strains, persisting over long time periods and vast geographic distances, have repeatedly triggered [...]