Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
The Plant Communities of Oman’s Central Coastline: A Baseline Ecological Assessment amid Rising Threats
Published: 2025-12-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany, Desert Ecology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
In recent decades, the botanical knowledge within the Sultanate of Oman has advanced considerably. However, the coastal vegetation is comparatively understudied with much of the country’s extensive coastline still undocumented. This is despite Oman’s coast being faced with a plethora of threats including development, overgrazing and the invasive species Neltuma juliflora. This study presents the [...]
Microbial contributions to host life history tradeoffs
Published: 2025-12-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
All organisms must allocate finite resources among growth, maintenance, and reproduction, generating trade-offs that constrain adaptation. Here, we argue that host microbiomes are dynamic resource engines capable of reallocating and generating energy and resources for their hosts. In doing so, they may recalibrate the tradeoffs fundamental to life history evolution.
Quantifying Three Decades of Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining Frontiers in the Guiana Shield (1995–2024)
Published: 2025-12-10
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Remote Sensing, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM) is a leading driver of tropical deforestation and forest degradation, yet its spatial and temporal dynamics remain largely underexplored. Here, we present a pan-regional, annual time-series analysis of ASGM expansion across rainforests of the Guiana Shield (Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana) from 1995 to 2024. Using Landsat imagery, we trained a deep [...]
A chronosequence of human remains on soil microbial populations
Published: 2025-12-09
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Surficial human decomposition produces substantial and measurable shifts in soil chemistry and microbial composition. This decade-long investigation examined temporal changes beneath surface deposited human remains and identified strong microbial and chemical responses in the first twelve to twenty four months, including decreased microbial diversity, elevated soil nutrients and sustained [...]
Gene expression and structural differences underpinning black and white colouration in spiders
Published: 2025-12-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
The presence of multiple colour variants within a single population, known as colour polymorphism, is a striking example of intraspecific phenotypic variation and a model for studying evolutionary processes. These processes depend on the underlying mechanisms such as the genes and pigments involved; but we currently lack such information for non-model groups such as arachnids. We examined the [...]
Butterfly abundances but not patch occupancy buffered by vegetation heterogeneity during climatic extremes
Published: 2025-12-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
As extreme climatic events are becoming more frequent and intense, we need to understand what mechanisms could buffer populations from climate change impacts to ensure their persistence. Fragmented populations may be especially vulnerable to climate change, as exemplified by species with metapopulation dynamics, whose persistence is determined by a precarious balance between frequent local [...]
Identification of the Cichlid Fishes of Lake Malawi/Nyasa Part 3: Rhamphochromina and others.
Published: 2025-12-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
With an estimated 800-1000 species, the cichlid fishes of Lake Malawi represent the largest known adaptive radiation of vertebrates from common ancestry in a limited geographical area, in this case a single lake. Although they represent a major system for the study of evolution, and have considerable local economic value, the presence of so many closely-related and poorly known species presents [...]
Leveraging publicly available data to facilitate urban ecology and evolution
Published: 2025-12-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
The intensifying pace of urbanization has prompted researchers to investigate its ecological and evolutionary consequences more deeply, yet logistic and monetary challenges can impose a barrier to research. Publicly available databases offer scientists from broad backgrounds an opportunity to circumvent those barriers, enhancing participation in urban ecology and evolution. In conjunction with [...]
POLLEN ANALYSIS AS A REMOTE BIOLOGICAL SENSOR: USING MELISSOPALYNOLOGY AND SURFACE SOIL DATA FOR AN INTEGRATED LANDSCAPE SCALE VEGETATION ASSESSMENT IN SOUTH INDIA
Published: 2025-12-04
Subjects: Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Life Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Plant Sciences
We use pollen assemblages from two sources, surface soil and bee pollen to characterize modern pollen spectra from contrasting landscapes, evaluate their potential as biological proxies complementing each other in reconstructing vegetation comprised of anemophilous and entomophilous plants. The bee pollen assemblages are from honeycombs and corbicular loads from Apis cerana and A. florea. We try [...]
African swine fever vs. COVID-19: only one virus mattered for wild boar hunting bags in Europe
Published: 2025-12-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Wild boar (Sus scrofa) populations have been steadily increasing across Europe in the last decades, due to the synergy between landscape modifications, the ecological plasticity of the species and global warming. However, since 2014, an increasing number of these populations have also been affected by African swine fever (ASF) and have experienced increased mortality. Moreover, in 2020 and 2021, [...]
On the spatial aggregation of condition metrics for ecosystem accounting
Published: 2025-12-03
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
In face of the ongoing nature crisis, the international community is setting targets and deciding on actions to combat the current biodiversity crises. For this to be effective they need tools to accurately describe the current situation and to monitor trends in ecosystems over time. Ecosystem condition accounts (ECA) is one such tool that use variables and indicators to describe key ecosystem [...]
Predicting coral trends and attributing drivers of change from local to global scales
Published: 2025-12-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
Modern biodiversity monitoring programs are designed to assess abundance trends of keystone taxa and deliver scientific insights to inform decision-making and policy development. An important consideration when using these evidence-based frameworks is the quantification of uncertainty from trends, which determines the robustness of data-driven methods in detecting and attributing changes across [...]
The legacy of privilege: Social inheritance reverses sex differences in reproductive inequality in spotted hyenas
Published: 2025-12-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Inequalities in reproductive success among females and males shape natural and sexual selec-tion, as well as genetic diversity. A key mechanism influencing reproductive inequality in humans and other animals is the social inheritance of privilege. Using a 29-year dataset spanning eight generations of spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta), a species in which social status is maternally inherited, we [...]
Tagged for life? Retention rates and effects on growth and condition of tagging - a long-term field study on PIT- and Carlin tagging in European eel
Published: 2025-11-29
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Different types of tags and markers are commonly used for various fish monitoring and tracking purposes. Effects of tags and markers on fish and the retention rates can affect the interpretation of mark-recapture data on both the individual (e.g. growth and body condition) and population level (e.g. survival and pro-duction estimates), making studies of this issue important. In this study, we [...]
Modelling the current and future potential distribution areas of Columba albitorques in Ethiopia
Published: 2025-11-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
Understanding species’ responses to climate change is essential for predicting future biodiversity patterns and informing conservation strategies. However, in Ethiopia, the impacts of climate change on bird distributions remain poorly documented. This study utilized the MaxEnt model to predict the current and future distribution of the White-collared Pigeon (Columba albitorques) under different [...]