Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
From mating to sperm storage: density-dependent plasticity in pre- and post-copulatory shared mating traits
Published: 2025-11-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mating interactions depend on traits expressed jointly by males and females, yet the extent to which each sex controls variation in these shared mating traits remains unclear. Because the expression of such traits (like mating latency, copulation duration, and sperm transfer) depends on both partners, their evolution is constrained by intersexual correlations yet facilitated by behavioural [...]
Ecosystem services from shellfish reefs as a nature-based solution: a global evidence synthesis to guide restoration and policy
Published: 2025-11-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Context. Shellfish reefs, comprising oysters, mussels, clams, and mixed bivalves, act as ecosystem engineers and nature-based solutions (NbS), providing supporting, regulating, provisioning, and cultural ecosystem services (ES). Yet, despite rapid growth in restoration practice, the translation of ES evidence into policy and management remains uneven across regions and taxa. 2. Objectives. We [...]
Quantifying impacts of policy and practice interventions on biodiversity and climate
Published: 2025-11-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
There is urgent demand for ecosystem management interventions – targeted actions through policies and practices – that meaningfully address climate change and biodiversity loss while sustaining ecosystem delivery of water, food, fibre and fuel. Rigorous quantification of intervention outcomes is required for decision makers to identify, promote and scale effective interventions. Yet [...]
Marker-Assisted Breeding for Salt Tolerance in Rice: In Bangladesh Context.
Published: 2025-11-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Salinity stress threatens rice (Oryza sativa L.) production across 1.056 million hectares of Bangladesh's coastal regions, with intensification projected due to climate change and sea-level rise. Marker-assisted breeding (MAB) has emerged as a transformative approach for developing salt-tolerant varieties, offering precision and efficiency over conventional methods. This review examines [...]
Hemitaeniochromis pumba, a new species of cichlid fish from Lake Malawi, Africa, with comments on related species.
Published: 2025-11-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
A new species of haplochromine (Pseudocrenilabrini) cichlid fish, Hemitaeniochromis pumba is described from Lake Malawi, named for its outwardly angled, tusk-like oral jaw teeth, recalling those of a pig or warthog. It is assigned to the genus Hemitaeniochromis Eccles & Trewavas 1989 on the basis of its dark horizontal midlateral band, broken anteriorly but continuous posteriorly, with a [...]
Plasticity and scaling through multinucleation: a key adaptation to challenging environments
Published: 2025-11-27
Subjects: Cell and Developmental Biology, Cell Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Multinucleate cells, single cells containing multiple nuclei in a shared cytoplasm, are found across the eukaryotic tree of life. Having evolved independently in fungi, plants, protists, and animals, they thrive in environments ranging from nutrient-poor deep-sea sediments to dynamic soil microhabitats and host tissues. Multinucleate organization enables spatial specialization without internal [...]
Unravelling the Enigma of Soil Animal Diversity: An Integrated Perspective from Functional Traits to Evolutionary History
Published: 2025-11-26
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Why does a single square meter of forest soil harbour thousands of animal species? Fifty years after Jonathan M. Anderson raised this question, soil ecology still struggles with a fragmented view on the coexistence of species. Researchers often study taxonomy, functional traits, and phylogeny in isolation. Each approach adds insight but leaves gaps in the picture of soil biodiversity. In this [...]
Bergenia ligulata: A Comprehensive Review of Its Phytochemistry, Pharmacology, and Public Health Potential
Published: 2025-11-26
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
Bergenia ligulata (Wall.) Engl., commonly known as “Pashanbheda” or “stone breaker,” is a perennial herb of the family Saxifragaceae, widely utilized in South Asian traditional medicine for the prevention and treatment of urinary and renal disorders. This review synthesizes current evidence on its ethnomedicinal relevance, phytochemical composition, pharmacological properties, and potential [...]
Reevaluating Spider Nutrition: The Essential Role of Arachidonic Acid in Captivity
Published: 2025-11-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Spiders are among the most ecologically diverse arachnids, yet their nutritional physiology remains poorly characterized despite their importance in both natural ecosystems and experimental settings. In captivity, whether in research facilities, zoos, or private collection feeding practices are often generalized and overlook the specific metabolic demands of spider biology. This has limited our [...]
Identification of the Cichlid Fishes of Lake Malawi/Nyasa Part 1: Cyrtocarina (the ‘benthic’ or ‘hap’ sub-radiation).
Published: 2025-11-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
With an estimated 800-1000 species, the cichlid fishes of Lake Malawi represent the largest known adaptive radiation of vertebrates from a single common ancestor in a limited geographical area, in this case a single lake. They provide an outstanding opportunity to study the rapid diversification of form and function on a limited genetic background and to attempt understand why lineages vary so [...]
Specialization of bat-fly interactions at different elevations in a montane forest of Northern Peru
Published: 2025-11-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Hippoboscoidea flies exhibit highly specific ectoparasitic relationships with bats, shaped by both intrinsic factors (e.g., bat behavior) and extrinsic factors (e.g., land use). Understanding the dynamics of these parasite–host interactions is essential for uncovering co-evolutionary patterns and informing conservation strategies. To this end, we studied bat–fly interactions across different [...]
Invasive fishes interact with temperature to reshape community size structure across climatic zones
Published: 2025-11-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
The body size spectrum (or individual size distribution) is a simple yet widely recognized approach that links individual and population traits to community structure and ecosystem functions, making it a valuable indicator of anthropogenic effects. However, the assessment of size spectra in the context of biological invasions remains poorly explored. We investigated the impacts of non-native (NN) [...]
Resurrection of Anopheles darlingi FREP1 Ancestor Reveals Adaptive Evolution Characterized by Changes in Protein Stability and Plasmodium falciparum Interaction
Published: 2025-11-22
Subjects: Life Sciences
Fibrinogen-related protein 1 (FREP1), a midgut-localized fibrinogen-like lectin in Anopheles mosquitoes, mediates Plasmodium ookinete attachment by binding α-tubulin-1. To elucidate the evolutionary forces shaping this interaction, the study analysed FREP1 sequences from 29 Anopheles species using codon-based tests, ancestral sequence reconstruction, stability modelling, and docking. Both aBSREL [...]
RNA Virus Discovery from Daphnia meta-transcriptomes: A novel Tombunoda-like virus based on RNA dependent RNA polymerase identification
Published: 2025-11-22
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Life Sciences, Virology
The discovery of RNA viruses from meta-transcriptomes has led to an explosion in viral diversity and identified many novel host-virus associations. To date, no studies have examined the RNA virome of the model zooplankter Daphnia. From which only four viruses are known, with only one being well understood. Here, I assemble and annotate RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) containing contigs from [...]
Changes in the fire resilience of Mediterranean trees in response to climate variability over the past 300 Years
Published: 2025-11-22
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
With global warming, understanding the tree resilience to fire is still a scalding topic in ecology. Tree resilience would depend on fire intervals, and on interactions with atmospheric conditions, including temperature, precipitation, drought, and CO₂. These interactions would be exacerbated in Mediterranean ecosystems. We test this hypothesis by analysing variations in tree-ring widths [...]