Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
From village land use plans to Key Biodiversity Areas: unlocking Tanzania's hidden conservation potential
Published: 2026-07-28
Subjects: Education, Life Sciences
Tanzania's National Land Use Planning Commission holds a fast-growing statutory archive of Village Land Use Plans, with approximately 4,900 approved plans covering roughly 40 percent of the country's registered villages as of mid-2026. Each plan records land tenure, zoning, and natural resource management rules at the village level under the Village Land Act of 1999 and the Land Use Planning Act [...]
Climate Change Reveals Contrasting Vulnerability: Asymmetric Range Shifts of Two Dianthus Species in the Irano-Anatolian Biodiversity Hotspot
Published: 2026-07-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The Irano-Anatolian biodiversity hotspot harbors exceptional plant richness and endemism but faces severe threats from climate change. We used MaxEnt-based ecological niche models to evaluate the current and future distributions of two closely related species, Dianthus floribundus and Dianthus szowitsianus. Models were projected for mid-century (2041–2070) and late-century (2071–2100) under [...]
The Capture Shift Hypothesis: Functional Decoupling of Capture and Feeding as a Framework for Coordinated Primate Evolution
Published: 2026-07-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The evolutionary origin of defining primate characteristics has been explained through ecological, behavioral, and dietary hypotheses, yet a broader question remains: why did multiple traits evolve in a broadly coordinated manner? This study proposes the Capture Shift Hypothesis (CSH), a testable conceptual framework in which prey capture was progressively redistributed from the oral apparatus to [...]
Honey, I shrunk one of my gonads! Does ‘feminization’ of behaviour cause asymmetric testis development in coucals?
Published: 2026-07-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
In most birds, females develop only a single ovary. This asymmetry is usually explained as an adaptation to reduce weight for flight, or to prevent damage to hard-shelled eggs by a second egg in the other oviduct. By contrast, males retain paired testes with the left one typically being larger. Coucals break this pattern: as sex-role reversal intensifies across the genus, males show a progressive [...]
Ensemble learning in ecological niche modeling of the Siderastrea (Cnidaria: Scleractinia) Atlantic complex: an information theory approach
Published: 2026-07-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Ecological niche modeling (ENM) is an invaluable tool in biodiversity science and many algorithms were developed for or incorporated into this area over the years. Back in 2007, Araújo and New outlined a framework to integrate different sources of variation into robust model projections. Almost 20 years later, surveys of real world applications show that standards are still lacking, particularly [...]
Nutrient Stress and Coral Health: Bridging Physiology, Holobiont Dynamics, and Molecular Mechanisms
Published: 2026-07-23
Subjects: Life Sciences
Nutrient stress acts as a multiscalar and context-dependent driver of coral reef decline primarily driven by anthropogenic interference. Decades of physiological and ecological studies have established that nutrient stress elicits physiological responses from corals, but reveal species-specific variability dependent on nutrient identity, concentration, and stoichiometry, as well as intricate [...]
varKodes extend DNA barcoding to ultrafine-grained identity, place, and state
Published: 2026-07-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
DNA barcoding has transformed biodiversity science, but locus-based markers often fail across taxa, at shallow phylogenetic depths, and in mixed or spatially structured samples. Here, we test whether varKoder, an alignment-free framework that converts low-coverage genomic reads into image-based genomic signatures (varKodes), can extend barcoding from taxonomic identification to broader inference [...]
From open science to credible science: practical guidance for more transparent and robust causal claims in ecology and conservation
Published: 2026-07-23
Subjects: Life Sciences
Rigorous scientific evidence requires both “transparency in action” about the research process and “transparency in thought” about the assumptions and logic underlying decisions. The open science movement has emphasized transparency in action, including open data and code standards. In parallel, causal inference literature has emphasized transparency in thought, particularly around the [...]
Bacterial Evolution and Involution
Published: 2026-07-23
Subjects: Life Sciences
In biology, the concept of evolution is often linked to an increase in directional complexity driven by particular selective landscapes. In contrast, involution is understood as the loss of adaptive gains achieved through evolution, leading to de-adaptation to the environment and eventually to extinction. However, the microecological heterogeneity of spaces occupied by bacteria necessarily makes [...]
Exploiting a Key Physiological Feature of Himalayan Balsam (Impatiens glandulifera) for Selective, Non-Chemical Control in a Native Woodland Understory
Published: 2026-07-22
Subjects: Life Sciences
Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera) is a highly invasive annual that outcompetes native understory plants in temperate woodlands, threatening biodiversity. Conventional control methods, such as herbicide application and mechanical cutting, often risk collateral damage to desirable native species. This study evaluates a novel, non-chemical control method that exploits Himalayan balsam’s [...]
How does drought disrupt the transfer of essential omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids (PUFA) from freshwater to terrestrial ecosystems?
Published: 2026-07-22
Subjects: Life Sciences
Freshwater and terrestrial food webs are connected via cross-ecosystem subsidies, including essential nutrients like omega-3 fatty acids that originate in the aquatic environment (microalgae) but support terrestrial consumers. Although global change stressors could be disrupting these linkages, most research to date has focused on subsidy quantity rather than quality. Here, we reviewed the [...]
Species recognition in herbaria and standing trees using an accessible portable spectrometer
Published: 2026-07-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
Species identification in hyperdiverse regions such as the Amazon forest, is time-consuming and often prone to errors. In light of the current rapid biodiversity loss, developing fast and low-cost methods to support species identification in both field and herbarium samples is fundamental to improve the quality of tropical forest inventories. We tested two spectrometers - the high-performance [...]
Swept ashore: Transoceanic dispersals and the biogeographic origins of Australian gekkonid lizards
Published: 2026-07-20
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences
Oceanic dispersal is a rare mode of long-distance dispersal where taxa colonize disconnected islands or continents, sometimes resulting in new radiations. Australia has been isolated from other continental landmasses during the last 45 million years, and overwater colonisation has played a critical role in shaping its contemporary biota. Here, we investigate the biogeographic origins of [...]
Quiet stewardship and deer return times: sound continuity, not fuel, predicts white-tailed deer avoidance of stewardship machines in a multi-year steward-conducted camera census
Published: 2026-07-18
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Recreation and routine land management can alter wildlife behavior even where they do not reduce abundance, and the acoustic component of human activity is difficult to isolate from human presence itself. Within a single restored prairie–savanna, the same trail network is worked on foot, on a silent electric utility vehicle (UTV), and behind gas engines (a gas ATV and a mower), with all vehicle [...]
Extant native and alien herbivores and carnivores retain substantial capacity to restore late-Quaternary trophic structure
Published: 2026-07-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Global ecosystem restoration seeks to recover ecological functions and trophic integrity. However, late-Quaternary extinctions and range contractions of large mammals have simplified modern ecosystems. The extent to which trophic structure can be rebuilt by surviving species remains unclear. We assess the capacity of extant native and already-introduced alien large herbivores and carnivores to [...]