Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
The past, present and future of online biodiversity knowledge systems
Published: 2025-09-24
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
In recent decades, there has been an exponential increase in the availability and accessibility of biodiversity data and a profusion of portals, tools, and platforms through which to utilise it. This reflects the extensive variety of challenges biodiversity data is being used to address and the need to enhance decision-making by different stakeholder groups. Whilst this has provided unprecedented [...]
Nine changes needed to deliver a radical transformation in biodiversity measurement
Published: 2025-09-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
Biodiversity is declining in many parts of the world. Biological diversity measurement and monitoring are fundamental to the assessment of the causes and consequences of environmental changes, identification of key areas for the protection of biodiversity or ecosystem services, determining the effectiveness of actions, and the creation of decision-support tools critical to maintaining a [...]
Dancing on Linnaeus’ Palm: Divergence of Species Scapes between ecologists and taxonomists
Published: 2025-09-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
Taxonomy is foundational to the life sciences, yet remains structurally undervalued in systems of research evaluation that rely on short-term citation metrics. To explore the roots of this imbalance, we analysed 360 open-access articles published in 2024 across 12 major journals in ecology and taxonomy. Our results reveal a striking divergence: ecological journals overwhelmingly focus on [...]
Classification and regression trees clarify the role of epistasis and environment in genotype–phenotype maps
Published: 2025-09-23
Subjects: Life Sciences
Understanding how genetic variation translates into phenotypic outcomes is central to various sub-fields of genetics. This task is complicated by a range of forces–including epistasis, environmental modulation of mutation effects, and ecological influences–that complicate the process of mapping from genotype to phenotype. In this study, we apply a unified decision tree approach, classification [...]
Social implications of human food subsidies on wildlife populations
Published: 2025-09-23
Subjects: Life Sciences
Human activities—intentionally or not—generate a variety of novel food sources that wild animals exploit. On land and in water, human food sources can profoundly alter intraspecific interactions with cascading effects on population dynamics and ecosystem functioning. Yet, despite their growing ecological relevance, the role of human food subsidies in shaping intraspecific interactions remains [...]
Novel worker-like behaviour observed in gynes of the social parasite Tetramorium microgyna
Published: 2025-09-23
Subjects: Life Sciences
Socially parasitic ants increase their own fitness by exploiting the labour and resources of non-kin ant colonies. Here, we report a novel worker-like behaviour observed in an African workerless inquiline, Tetramorium microgyna, a parasite of Tetramorium sericeiventre. We observed several T. microgyna gynes excavating soil and performing nest maintenance tasks at the entrance of an established T. [...]
What defines an urban butterfly? Life history traits and habitat associations of butterflies in urban environments
Published: 2025-09-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Urban areas are encroaching onto semi-natural areas the world over, driving species assemblages into homogenisation. A better understanding of the life history and habitat association traits can help support management efforts to improve urban biodiversity. Urban areas present an ecological filter, limiting the number of species present compared to the wider countryside. What characteristics help [...]
From Data to Decisions: Towards a Biodiversity Monitoring Standards Framework
Published: 2025-09-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
Achieving the goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), requires robust monitoring and reporting to track progress and guide action. However, our ability to understand trends is challenged because biodiversity data are fragmented and biased. This stems from the many different approaches used to record data, aggregate records, and analyze them to detect trends and [...]
Life-history variation mediates the importance of population structure to the short-term dynamics of plant populations worldwide
Published: 2025-09-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
A population’s structure (i.e., the distribution of individuals across the life cycle of a species) influences how it responds to environmental changes and recurrent disturbances, and shapes its vulnerability to extinction. Yet, despite compelling evidence that population structures are rarely stationary over time, assessments of population viability have only recently begun to consider how a [...]
Dietary preferences and behaviour of the Southern Lesser Bushbaby Galago moholi (Loriformes: Galagidae) foraging at an entomological light trap
Published: 2025-09-15
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
The Southern Lesser Bushbaby Galago moholi is a small, nocturnal, strepsirrhine primate, native to Sub-Saharan Africa. Previously considered a strict dietary specialist on tree exudates and insects, recent observations have revealed hitherto unappreciated plasticity in its feeding behaviour, encompassing fruits and even small vertebrates. While arthropods are an important seasonal component of [...]
Inferring the dynamics of selective constraints across complex ontogenies
Published: 2025-09-15
Subjects: Life Sciences
Most organisms undergo a series of complex phenotypic changes throughout their life cycles that allow them to meet the demands of different niches throughout ontogeny. Theory suggests the significant coordination required to undergo such ontogenetic transitions can impose evolutionary constraints on variation to developmental programs. This produces patterns known as developmental hourglasses, [...]
The Brightening Sky and the Bug's Advance: Unraveling the Drivers of Oxycarenus lavaterae Range Expansion
Published: 2025-09-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Analyzing the Lime Seed Bug's (Oxycarenus lavaterae) European range expansion, optimized Maxent models and comprehensive occurrence data (2007-2025) reveal a swift northward and eastward spread, with a distinct "rapid expansion" phase starting in 2017. Key drivers include minimum and maximum temperatures, and importantly, downward shortwave radiation (DSR). Increased DSR, linked to [...]
Epi-eDNA: From Methylation Signal Detection to Functional Ecological Monitoring
Published: 2025-09-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Environmental DNA (eDNA) technology has revolutionized biomonitoring, primarily capturing the presence/absence of target taxa. Recent advances have revealed that eDNA also retains epigenetic signatures (epi-eDNA), particularly DNA methylation, which enable functional ecological insights. This review synthesizes three pivotal milestones: (1) Initial detection of methylation signals in eDNA, [...]
Ecosystem dynamics in dry heathlands: spatial and temporal effects of environmental drivers on the vegetation
Published: 2025-09-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
To understand and estimate the effects of environmental drivers on temperate dry heathland vegetation, pin-point cover data from 102 Danish sites sampled during a 16-year period was regressed onto selected environmental variables. The effects of nitrogen deposition, soil pH, soil C-N ratio, soil type, precipitation and grazing on the heathland vegetation was modelled in a spatio-temporal [...]
Fish biodiversity survey of small water bodies in the Nkhotakota District, Malawi.
Published: 2025-09-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
We surveyed 6 small lakes and the lower reaches of the Kaombe River in Nkhotakota District of Malawi (in 2 seasons; rainy and dry hot seasons), primarily to determine if two species previously reported only from Lake Chilingali were still present in the area following the collapse of the Chilingali Dam in 2012 and failure to rediscover the species in 2016 and subsequently. We report that [...]