Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Climate isolation and percolation as drivers of terrestrial vertebrate richness
Published: 2026-07-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The warmer, the yellower? Colour patterns of fire salamanders across different scales in the face of rising temperatures
Published: 2026-07-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
The unprecedented increase in global temperatures might lead to phenotypical changes in many species to account for increased thermoregulatory processes. This could be due to increased selection pressures on traits such as colouration or body size. Using specimens from the Natural History Museum in Vienna for a long-term series and recent data from an ongoing fire salamander monitoring programme [...]
Precipitation predictability shapes plant growth trajectories, climate sensitivity, and fitness pathways within and across generations
Published: 2026-07-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Environmental predictability is increasingly altered under climate change, particularly through shifts in the temporal structure and autocorrelation of climatic variables. In plants, the interaction between precipitation predictability and temporal climatic variation can shape the magnitude, timing, and trajectory of growth, with cascading effects on phenological coordination, and ultimately on [...]
Marine subsidies, spatial heterogeneity, and territoriality drive trophic ecology in desert predators
Published: 2026-07-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Allochthonous (including marine) subsidies can have far-reaching effects on recipient ecosystems. By altering local resource availability, the combined effects of these subsidies and landscape heterogeneity can structure consumer diets, shape communities and influence ecosystem dynamics. 2. We examined how marine subsidies, landscape heterogeneity, and territoriality drive resource use in [...]
The roles of contrasting host types on the environmental abundance of Anaplasma phagocytophilum, an emerging zoonotic pathogen
Published: 2026-07-09
Subjects: Life Sciences
Fundamental knowledge of the role of hosts in shaping vector-borne pathogen abundance is critical to understanding the ecology of these disease systems; yet the roles can be challenging to tease apart, especially for pathogens vectored by generalist feeders with multiple hosts. In this study, we aimed to quantify the relative contributions of hypothesised pathogen transmission hosts (deer and [...]
From Scalable Biodiversity Measurement to Credible Biodiversity Metrics
Published: 2026-07-09
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Business, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Economics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Statistical Models, Sustainability, Technology and Innovation
Governments struggle to develop effective policies to counter the decline of species and ecosystems. An obstacle to command-and-control and incentive-based mechanisms is that biodiversity is costly to measure, creating an information asymmetry in which firms and governments are incentivised to withhold information on adverse impacts. Using a principal-agent model, we show that credible reporting [...]
A comprehensive dataset on plant-associated invertebrates and gardening activities, from 100 sites across five urban green space types in Zurich, Lugano, and Geneva, Switzerland
Published: 2026-07-09
Subjects: Life Sciences
This dataset describes plant-associated invertebrates, gardening activities, and habitat diversity across five urban green spaces (UGS) types in the cities of Zurich, Lugano, and Geneva, Switzerland. The UGS types, namely allotment lot, private garden, residential estate, park, and ruderal area, cover different purposes, ownership, and management regimes. While Zurich was the core study region, [...]
Threat intensification reshapes trait-response relationships in birds and mammals
Published: 2026-07-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Predicting which species are most at risk of extinction, and by which threats, is central to effective biodiversity management (1). Trait-based frameworks, linking species traits to extinction risk, are increasingly used to predict global biodiversity trends, with applications from species-specific prioritisations (2) to estimations of global diversity loss (3). However, despite the strong [...]
Cetaceans of the Black and Azov Seas as Indicators of Habitat Quality via Stacked Species Distribution Models
Published: 2026-07-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Habitat degradation and biodiversity loss in the Black and Azov Seas necessitate improved tools for spatially explicit conservation planning. We employed stacked species distribution modelling (SSDM) to assess habitat quality for the three resident cetacean species—the common dolphin (Delphinus delphis ponticus), the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus ponticus), and the harbour porpoise [...]
Timing isn’t everything: impacts of maximum abundance and duration of a seasonal resource on consumer fitness
Published: 2026-07-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Phenological advances are among the most apparent biotic responses to warmer springs in mid- to high-latitude regions, with evidence that consumers are advancing less than the resources they rely on. Here, we extend the match/mismatch hypothesis to predict how the mean timing, maximum abundance and duration of the resource phenological distribution impacts on consumer fitness. Using data from 44 [...]
From a review to the field: Alternative coping styles under urbanisation
Published: 2026-07-06
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Endocrinology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physiology, Population Biology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences, Zoology
Under human-induced rapid environmental changes, behavioural and physiological responses of organisms are key to maintain homeostasis and minimise fitness loss. Both responses can be integrated, into among-individual correlations forming stress-coping styles or syndromes (SCS). Such SCS emerge from genetic correlations or adaptive trade-offs. In the context of environmental challenges, more [...]
Taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity of a Sierra Nevada subalpine meadow community along soil hydrological gradient
Published: 2026-07-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mountain meadows occupy about 2% of the Sierra Nevada Range but house many narrow endemic and imperiled species. In this study, we investigated plant community structure and assessed species, phylogenetic, and functional diversity of Dog Valley Meadow, a subalpine meadow in the northern Sierra Nevada Range, California. Variation in groundwater level creates three distinct meadow-type habitats – [...]
Drivers of temporal beta diversity and ecological resilience of plant communities across the United States
Published: 2026-07-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Long-term monitoring surveys offer more reliable assessments of biodiversity responses to climate change. In this study, we evaluated community shifts in 1105 1 m2 plots across 20 NEON sites, representing each of the 20 eco-climatic domains across the U.S. and Puerto Rico, using long-term plant surveys (5-10 years). We computed alpha, spatial and temporal beta, and gamma diversity for the plots [...]
Incorporating traits into consumer-resource models for a mechanistic trait ecology
Published: 2026-07-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
Traits provide a powerful way to infer community assembly processes, responses to environmental perturbations, and coexistence mechanisms, although most work has focused on plants and has not incorporated the role of trophic interactions. Here, we briefly review the main goals of trait-based ecology and highlight recent examples that use traits to study insect communities, specifically focusing [...]
Insects as agents of national security: entomological biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse in agriculture and forestry threaten geopolitical stability
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Biosecurity, Entomology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
1. In early 2026, the UK Government published a report assessing how global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse represent systematic threats to UK national security through cascading impacts to food security, land use and climate-related feedbacks. 2. Recontextualising biodiversity and ecosystem health as determinants of national security offers a novel perspective on long observed [...]