Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Unifying occupancy-detection and local frequency scaling (Frescalo) models
Published: 2025-05-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Frescalo’s “local frequency scaling” and classical occupancy-detection models both seek to recover true species‐occurrence signals from imperfect data. In this paper, we show that the two approaches rest on the same underlying detection mathematics. Occupancy models treat each site’s repeat visits as independent detection trials and separately estimate occupancy probability and per-visit [...]
Inter-specific relationships and their ecological role in an oceanic elasmobranch community
Published: 2025-05-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Marine ecosystems support a diverse array of co-occurring species, whose presence and abundance influence the behavior, population dynamics, and distribution of interacting organisms. Elasmobranchs play a central role in marine ecological processes as top and meso-predators across various ecosystems. Previous work has shown that some elasmobranchs are key to ecosystem health and resilience, [...]
Biodiversity science is improved when silent herbaria speak
Published: 2025-05-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Herbaria represent a global biodiversity heritage essential for botanical research and conservation assessments. Despite their importance, herbaria in many parts of the world—especially in under-resourced regions such as much of Africa—are “silent”. These silent collections are poorly integrated into global research networks and hence underused and especially vulnerable to neglect. Here, we [...]
IQ2MC: A New Framework to Infer Phylogenetic Time Trees Using IQ-TREE 3 and MCMCTree with Mixture Models
Published: 2025-05-06
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences
IQ-TREE and MCMCTree are two widely used phylogenetic tools to infer phylogenetic trees and estimate divergence times, respectively. As MCMCTree performs fast approximate Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling to obtain the times along a fixed tree topology, it would be natural to use IQ-TREE to obtain the tree. However, it is currently not possible to integrate these tools seamlessly, as MCMCTree [...]
Evolutionary rate incongruences in squamates reveal contrasting patterns of evolutionary novelties and innovation
Published: 2025-05-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Understanding the rate of phenotypic evolution can reveal fundamental aspects of organismal evolutionary trajectories. Hence, several studies have attempted to detect the tempo of evolution for multiple organisms, although based on radically different datatypes (e.g., discrete and morphometric) and methods (phylodynamic vs comparative methods). Here, we ask whether these competing approaches [...]
Responses of wintering corvids to New Year’s Eve fireworks in Berlin
Published: 2025-05-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
Animals around the globe are strongly affected by anthropogenic disturbances, creating concerns for welfare and conservation. Fireworks during New Year’s eve are a major, regularly recurring anthropogenic disturbance, causing light, noise as well as air pollution. In the present study, we investigated behavioural responses of mixed-species flocks of corvids (hooded crows, Corvus cornix, rooks, [...]
Practical genetic diversity protection: an accessible framework for IUCN subpopulation and Evolutionarily Significant Unit identification
Published: 2025-05-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) sets global conservation standards, including the Red List of Threatened Species and the Green Status of Species. Recent analyses showed that genetic diversity has not been effectively considered by IUCN species assessments, despite being fundamental to species’ fitness and adaptive potential. Incorporation of genetic diversity into IUCN [...]
Genetic load in Evolutionarily Significant Units (ESUs): conservation and management implications
Published: 2025-05-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
The Conservation Genetics Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) proposes introducing Evolutionarily Significant Units (ESUs) as an additional new assessment unit in the IUCN Red List and Green Status. This proposal is made because ESUs possess unique evolutionary trajectories present within species and harbour genetic diversity that requires safeguarding. [...]
Acclimation to fluctuating hypoxia alters activity and escape performance, but not metabolism, in guppies
Published: 2025-05-03
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Organisms living in fluctuating environments must cope with constantly changing conditions. Here we investigated how acclimation to either fluctuating or constant oxygen affects behavioural and physiological responses to hypoxia in guppies (Poecilia reticulata). Guppies were acclimated to either fluctuating hypoxia (100% of air saturation during day to 40% at night) or constant normoxia (100% of [...]
Creating woodland through natural processes: Current understanding and knowledge gaps in Great Britain
Published: 2025-04-30
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Creating new woodlands through natural processes, as opposed to traditional tree planting, is expected to result in more structurally diverse, locally-adapted woodlands that enhance the resilience of existing treescapes. However, the outcomes of natural colonisation can be variable, and there is still considerable uncertainty around the ecological processes involved. 2. To address knowledge [...]
Sex-Specific Control and Incomplete Matings: Sperm Removal Behaviour in a Bush Cricket Species
Published: 2025-04-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
In sexually promiscuous species, sperm removal behaviour (SRB) is a male strategy to increase reproductive success by displacing rival sperm prior to insemination. This behaviour may, however, impose costs on both sexes, generating sexual conflict. We investigated the sex-specific control over SRB in Metaplastes ornatus, a bush cricket species exhibiting this behaviour. We used a double mating [...]
The wind of change: mapping wind energy growth and multi-species vulnerability in the Mediterranean
Published: 2025-04-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
The rapid expansion of wind energy across the Mediterranean region calls for more advanced tools to assess and mitigate its impacts on biodiversity. In this study, we propose an innovative approach that integrates historical satellite imagery and ecological modelling to assess the spatiotemporal overlap between wind energy development and habitat suitability for multiple vulnerable raptor [...]
Plant pathogen profiling with the EpiPv package
Published: 2025-04-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
This study introduces a flexible framework for epidemiological profiling of insect-borne plant pathogens (IBPPs), utilizing readily available experimental data. The framework is applicable to most IBPPs transmitted by insects feeding on plant veins, with particular relevance to whitefly-borne viruses that impact cassava production in sub-Saharan Africa. The goal of the study is to provide an [...]
Facing the heat: behavioral and molecular underpinnings of climate hardiness in bumblebees
Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Behavioral Neurobiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Climate change heralds an era of increased heat waves, with an estimated 20-30 additional high heat days per year. While climate change is upon us, we still have little understanding of the organismal impacts of high heat and how to combat them. Insects, due to their short generation times and their sensitive ecological requirements, offer a powerful model for studying rapid physiological and [...]
Code review in practice: A checklist for computational reproducibility and collaborative research in ecology and evolution
Published: 2025-04-24
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Ensuring that research, along with its data and code, is credible and remains accessible is crucial for advancing scientific knowledge—especially in ecology and evolutionary biology, where the climate crisis and biodiversity loss accelerate and demand urgent, transparent science. Yet, code is rarely shared alongside scientific publications, and when it is, unclear implementation and insufficient [...]