Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Evaluating the efficacy of window treatments to reduce bird–window collisions
Published: 2026-03-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Collisions with glass are a leading anthropogenic driver of avian mortality. Window treatments can be highly effective at reducing collisions, however, treating windows remains uncommon and many treatments are applied that do not follow evidence-based standards or guidelines. To evaluate the efficacy of window treatments that meet versus do not meet guidelines, and the drivers influencing [...]
Separating good from bad – a methodological assessment of the critical temperature that separates stressful and permissive temperatures in ectotherms
Published: 2026-03-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Context and aim: Estimating the thermal limits of ectothermic organisms is critical for predicting their responses to climate change. A key physiological threshold in this context is the critical temperature (Tc), which separates the permissive temperature range, where organisms maintain homeostasis and complete their life cycle, from the stressful range, where thermal stress causes physiological [...]
Conserving Coherence Under Constraint
Published: 2026-03-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Organisms often respond to energy constraints, time pressure, or imminent threat by limiting behavioral options, lowering metabolic demands, and increasing their level of coordinated action. Although these responses can be framed as impairment, we argue they can be adaptive responses that occur as the costs of coordinating complexity exceed an organism's capabilities. As such, selection favors [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of The Tropical Northwestern Pacific
Published: 2026-03-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Tropical Northwestern Pacific is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of the East Caroline Islands, Mariana Islands and West Caroline Islands. The Tropical Northwestern Pacific mangrove province mapped extent in 2020 was 144.8 km2, representing 0.1% of the global mangrove area. The biota is [...]
Who leads diversity efforts in science? Evidence of minority tax in DEI committees of international learned societies in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Published: 2026-03-10
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Learned societies are key in shaping scientific communities, yet many face inequities rooted in their histories and governance. The inequities can be addressed by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committees or officers, but little is known about these organisational structures. We present the first analysis of 70 DEI structures across 50 international ecology and evolutionary biology [...]
Fear on the Landscape: How human activity shapes wildlife habitat use in protected areas in Tasmania
Published: 2026-03-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
The growing enthusiasm for outdoor recreation has prompted questions about the effects of different forms of human activity on the habitat use of both predators and prey. Here, we used time-to-event camera trap data from a large-scale survey in Tasmanian protected areas to investigate the influence of motorised (vehicles) and non-motorised (hikers, joggers, and cyclists) recreation on wildlife [...]
Long-lasting negative effects of poor early life conditions on cognitive performance in adulthood in a wild bird
Published: 2026-03-09
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Nutrition, Ornithology
Adverse conditions encountered during growth, such as stress or malnutrition, are known to affect cognitive development and functions in adulthood in humans and laboratory animals. However, how early life conditions can influence adult cognition in wild animals remains unclear. Yet cognitive abilities such as innovation can be crucial for animals to cope with rapidly changing environments. We [...]
Differential gene expression between urban and rural acorn ant populations
Published: 2026-03-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
The acorn ant, Temnothorax curvispinosus, is a model system for rapid evolution of physiological traits to urban environments. Here, we performed a transcriptome-wide comparison of changes in gene expression between urban and rural populations of acorn ants in the southeastern United States. Our analyses revealed 287 differentially expressed genes. Overrepresentation in gene ontology terms was [...]
Coexistence Nexus in practice: integrating One Health into the food-biodiversity challenge in Central America
Published: 2026-03-08
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
Reconciling biodiversity conservation, food security, and human health remains a major sustainability challenge, largely because these dimensions are often examined in isolation. Here, we present an integrated analytical framework that extends coexistence theory by explicitly incorporating zoonotic emergence within a One Health perspective. Using Central America as a case study, we combine [...]
Drivers of community structure and habitat suitability in ponds of the New Caledonia biodiversity hotspot
Published: 2026-03-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Despite being present on all continents including Antarctica, ponds remain an understudied freshwater ecosystem. Ponds are particularly diverse in their physicochemical characteristics which is reflected in the biological assemblages inhabiting them. On the New Caledonia archipelago, acknowledged to be a global biodiversity hotspot, lentic freshwater habitats are numerous. The archipelago is [...]
Data- and code-archiving in the British Ecological Society journals: present status and recommendations for future improvements
Published: 2026-03-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Data- and code-archiving are important components of open science, as both make research more transparent, reproducible, accountable, and credible, allowing future researchers to identify errors and build on previous work. Despite progress in implementing data- and code-archiving policies in journals publishing ecology and evolution research, issues remain. To be more useful to future [...]
Abiotic constraints and recreational rock climbing shape cliff vegetation in Freyr, Belgium
Published: 2026-03-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Aim: Cliff ecosystems support diverse vascular plant communities due to high abiotic heterogeneity and their historical role as climatic refugia. However, cliffs are increasingly exposed to disturbances from recreational rock climbing. The ecological effects of climbing likely depend on abiotic cliff characteristics—such as slope, aspect, and microtopography—but these context-dependent [...]
Call for a paradigm shift from statistical causal inference to multi-evidence causal investigation
Published: 2026-03-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Explicit discussions of causal methods have long fallen into the domain of statistics. Scientists have instead pursued mechanistic knowledge as an alternative approach to causal understanding. In the past two decades, a body of literature has developed that constitutes a statistical causal inference paradigm based on restrictive assumptions that fail to respect mechanistic knowledge. Recent [...]
Island species as models for small population biology and conservation
Published: 2026-03-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
Islands provide unparalleled natural laboratories for understanding how small, isolated populations persist and evolve. Our synthesis of island population studies reveals that 50–70% report effective population sizes below 100, yet many taxa have sustained such small populations for millions of years. Strikingly, only 4% and 27% of studies examined genetic load and genomic diversity, exposing [...]
Towards ecologically meaningful foundation models
Published: 2026-03-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
Ecology aims to explain and predict how organisms interact with each other and their environments across space and time. Yet both ecological data and theory are fragmented, leading to models that generalise poorly beyond specific systems or scales. Empirical evidence spans diverse modalities, resolutions and contexts, while theory is distributed across partially overlapping frameworks that are [...]