Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
A framework for predicting the dynamics of plant-mycorrhizal interactions
Published: 2026-01-23
Subjects: Life Sciences
Interactions between plants and mycorrhizal fungi shape nutrient cycling and ecosystem function on a global scale, but the dynamics of these interactions remain poorly understood. Due to their below-ground nature, directly observing key dynamical features such as Allee effects and oscillations is often not possible, hampering further progress in this area. Here we present a mechanistic model of [...]
Volcanic deposits select for woodiness on islands
Published: 2026-01-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Oceanic islands’ unique biodiversity often arises from woody plant radiations derived from non-woody continental ancestors. Since Darwin, various theories have tried to explain the evolution of woodiness on islands (insular woodiness). Recently, frequent volcanic activity and burial of vegetation by volcanic ash (tephra) depositions were linked to the abundance of woody species on islands. In a [...]
Laboratory Evidence of the effect of Water Availability on Aedes Mosquito Population Dynamics: A Scoping Review
Published: 2026-01-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
The increasing geographical spread, abundance and activity of invasive Aedes mosquitoes are cause of concern for public health at local and global scales. These species transmit diseases such as dengue, Chikungunya, Yellow Fever, and Zika, which can cause outbreaks in endemic and non-endemic settings. Unlike temperature, whose impact on key entomological traits has been extensively studied, the [...]
Microbial drivers of woody plant encroachment in fire-maintained grasslands and savannas
Published: 2026-01-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
Woody plant encroachment into grasslands and savannas is a global phenomenon with wide-ranging consequences for people and nature, but we lack a comprehensive understanding of its drivers. Various factors can contribute to woody encroachment across ecosystems, but a notable commonality is that transitions from herbaceous to woody vegetation are spatially and temporally abrupt, suggesting that [...]
Scaling from Metawebs to Realised Webs: A Hierarchical Approach to Network Ecology
Published: 2026-01-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Ecological networks provide a critical framework for understanding the architecture of biodiversity and predicting ecosystem responses to environmental change. However, the application of network ecology is often hindered by a lack of clarity regarding the assumptions inherent in different network representations. Here, we present a hierarchical framework that distinguishes between ‘metawebs’ [...]
The missing branches of the bee Tree of Life: addressing global Darwinian shortfalls and their drivers
Published: 2026-01-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Understanding the Darwinian shortfall (i.e., the lack of knowledge about phylogenetic relationships) can help us to guide future biodiversity research and conservation efforts. Overcoming this shortfall is essential to develop robust strategies to preserve the Tree of Life while facing the ongoing biodiversity crisis. Here, we present the first global assessment of Darwinian shortfalls and their [...]
Delivering Nature Positive outcomes through landscape conservation: credible actions and shared responsibility in the mining sector
Published: 2026-01-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability
The mining sector is increasingly expected to align their corporate nature commitments with global biodiversity goals. Emerging Nature Positive frameworks require companies not only to mitigate impacts of direct operations, but also to contribute to biodiversity recovery at the landscape scale, where impacts, dependencies and conservation priorities intersect. Yet expectations for credible [...]
Developmental density shapes adult mate guarding strategies in an invertebrate
Published: 2026-01-19
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Post-copulatory mate guarding is a widespread reproductive strategy that reduces sperm competition but can generate sexual conflict when male and female optima diverge. While mate guarding is known to respond plastically to immediate social conditions, the extent to which early-life social environments of both sexes shape adult guarding behaviour remains poorly understood. We experimentally [...]
From the province-based Fish Management Plan to the first steps of a catchment-based Fish Management Plan in Sicily: the Ragusa experience.
Published: 2026-01-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
In Italy, the Fish Management Plan (FMP) is considered the fundamental document for the conservation and management of inland fish fauna and fisheries, as well as for the planning of the territory in which aquatic environments are located. There are two phases of the Fish Management Plan: the regional or provincial FMP and the catchment-based FMP. In Sicily, no catchment-based FMP had yet been [...]
How does the rate of environmental change affect density-dependent population dynamics?
Published: 2026-01-19
Subjects: Dynamic Systems, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Population Biology
Natural populations experience variable environments. Anthropogenically driven environmental change, in particular, is expected to impose trends on key demographic parameters such as reproduction and survival. Theoretical studies of how such environmental changes affect populations have highlighted dynamical phenomena including bifurcation-related tipping points – typically identified by [...]
Introducing relative pollen productivity estimates for Iberian taxa: methodological insights and implications for landscape modelling in the Western Mediterranean
Published: 2026-01-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Understanding the impact of ongoing global change on plant communities requires long-term quantitative reconstructions of past vegetation dynamics. Fossil pollen records offer one of the most powerful tools to reconstruct past landscapes, yet for their accurate interpretation it is important to take into account the differential pollen productivity of plant taxa. For southern Europe, and [...]
Phylogenetic Perspectives on Heavy Metal Hyperaccumulation in Fungal Lineages
Published: 2026-01-19
Subjects: Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Microbiology, Other Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
Across the fungal kingdom, the ability to hyperaccumulate and sequester toxic heavy metals from the environment appears to have evolved multiple times. Although in plants, animals, and bacteria the evolution of heavy metal hyperaccumulation is well studied, and despite potential applications of hyperaccumulation in mycoremediation, fungi are under-investigated. Here, we compile a novel dataset [...]
The evolution of niche construction in social species
Published: 2026-01-19
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Niche construction is a behaviour where the local environment is changed by individuals, often to improve reproductive success (e.g. nests or burrows). In social species, the niche construction behaviour of an individual also changes the local environment of others. In such cases, individuals could cheat and not contribute to the social behaviour, but instead make use of the efforts of others. [...]
Wild fire salamanders (Salamandra salamandra) prefer natural housing conditions ex-situ
Published: 2026-01-19
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Life Sciences, Zoology
The European fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) is threatened by infection with the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), which has caused massive population declines in several European countries. One attempt to conserve the genetic diversity of fire salamanders is to keep individuals of affected or vulnerable populations in ex-situ assurance populations. However, [...]
The interplay between epigenetic mechanisms and deleterious mutations: implications for fitness, evolution and conservation
Published: 2026-01-13
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics
Understanding the causal effects of genetic mutations is essential for explaining fitness variation, forecasting evolutionary trajectories and assessing extinction risk, yet remains a fundamental challenge, particularly in natural populations. While amino acid substitutions can alter protein structure and function, mutations affecting gene regulation can also have significant fitness [...]