Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Sexual size dimorphism, reproductive ecology and antipredator coloration in poison frogs: Rensch's rule revisited
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Body size differences are the most commonly studied form of sexual dimorphism. The extent of sexual size dimorphism (SSD) varies between species and in function of e.g. ecological factors and phylogenetic constraints. Rensch’s rule (RR) states that SSD is larger in species with male-biased SSD and smaller in species with female-biased SSD. RR assessments in amphibians, which tend to have [...]
History, challenges, and opportunities in the study of entomopathogenic fungi in tropical regions: Borneo as a model ecosystem
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Fungal pathogens tend to have a poor reputation as a disease among the general public and policy-makers. However, entomopathogenic fungi, adapted to infect and kill arthropod hosts, play a wide range of roles in ecosystems, provide key ecosystem services, and offer interesting models to understand pathogen interaction networks. Tropical regions provide especially favorable conditions for [...]
Towards integrating interaction networks into global parasite conservation: insights from bats, bat flies and their fungal associates
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Parasites are a key conservation blind spot. Even though parasitism is a widespread ecological lifestyle, most parasite diversity remains unknown, as do the interactions in which they are involved. Some parasite species are involved in multitrophic interactions, meaning they span multiple trophic levels. These complex interactions are generally understudied, and conservation frameworks fail to [...]
Gastronomy meets nature positive through the conservation of invisible microbial terroir
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Food Science, Life Sciences
Anthropogenic climate change and the expansion of mass-consumption societies pose existential threats to "microbial terroir", the cryptic microbiological assemblages that underpin the organoleptic identity and quality of traditional fermented foods. Here, we propose a framework that bridges microbial diversity, regional gastronomy, and "Microbial PES", an extension of Payments for Ecosystem [...]
Co-existence of large carnivores and Dhangar community in Maharashtra’s Western Ghats: is it close to the tipping point?
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Gavli Dhangar are semi-nomadic pastorals scattered in small hamlets along the western ghats and Konkan area who mainly keep cattle and buffalo. The Sahyadri Tiger Reserve was established in 2010 relocating some of the hamlets while others continued to occupy their traditional habitats overlapping with three species of large mammalian carnivores. While leopard presence continued over a long time, [...]
Resolving the Conservation Stewardship Paradox: A Dual-Pathway Architecture for Biodiversity Credits and Stewardship Certificates
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Voluntary biodiversity credit markets are expanding rapidly, but their credibility depends on demonstrating that claimed outcomes would not have occurred without intervention. This requirement, additionality, is essential for high-integrity conservation finance and is operationalized through dynamic baselines, ex post issuance, and independent monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of [...]
WildMAPS: A Global repository and visualisation tool for habitat suitability predictions
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
The Global Biodiversity Framework outlines a consensus of global targets for reversing the decline of biodiversity. A core theme that underpins the framework is the identification of areas that hold the most potential for realising positive outcomes for biodiversity. Identifying these areas is a complex process involving large scientific datasets and stakeholders from a range of background and [...]
Choices that matter: the impact of substitution models on machine learning-based species delimitation inference
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics
The choice of nucleotide substitution models is a cornerstone of phylogenetic inference, influencing the accuracy of the estimated evolutionary parameters and, by extension, demographic and species delimitation model selection. With the growing adoption of machine learning methods trained on simulated data, it remains unclear how the substitution model used during simulation training influences [...]
Are We Mapping Ecosystems or Models? Framework Choices Dominate Food Web Topology and Extinction Inferences
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aim Ecological networks are widely used to assess community structure, stability, and responses to disturbance. Such networks often require model-based reconstructions (e.g., based on traits or theoretical constraints); however, the extent to which these frameworks influence ecological inference remains unexplored. Here, we assess whether macroecological inference derived from ecological [...]
How cities lock in biodiversity persistence, recovery, and decline
Published: 2026-06-15
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Cities are expanding biodiversity plans, restoration projects, green infrastructure, corridors, and nature-based solutions. This Perspective defines biodiversity lock-ins as self-reinforcing urban pathways that make it difficult to reverse biodiversity persistence, recovery, or decline. It contributes a durability lens that links six urban mechanisms with biodiversity-specific features, including [...]
Connected but Misaligned: Rethinking Urban Nature for Biodiversity, Equity, and Resilience
Published: 2026-06-15
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Urban nature is often planned through partial forms of connectivity: habitat corridors for biodiversity, green infrastructure networks for ecosystem services, accessibility networks for public use, and governance networks for implementation. Yet connected urban nature can still fail. Connectivity misalignment occurs when connections in one domain coexist with disconnection, inequity, risk, weak [...]
Tree species richness effects on pre-dispersal seed predation are mediated by tree fruit type
Published: 2026-06-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Forest BEF experiments are only now reaching a stage at which natural tree regeneration can be studied, offering new opportunities to understand how biodiversity shapes trophic interactions during early demographic filtering. Here, we quantified seed productivity and insect-mediated pre-dispersal seed predation on 12 tree species across a tree species richness gradient from 1 to 16 in the [...]
An integrated framework for unifying our understanding of nonconsumptive predation risk effects
Published: 2026-06-12
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Predation risk can induce risk-induced trait responses (RITRs) – changes in prey defensive traits including behavior, morphology, life history, and physiology – thought to have profound effects on prey fitness and population dynamics (termed ‘nonconsumptive effects’). Yet, predicting the magnitude of RITRs and their fitness consequences remains difficult because outcomes depend heavily on [...]
Evolutionary and operational trade-offs in assisted gene flow for climate-adaptive forestry
Published: 2026-06-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Assisted gene flow (AGF) is an adaptive forest management strategy to increase forests' resilience to climate change, yet little is known about how management decisions interact with the strength of natural selection and introgression dynamics that co-determine relative stand productivity. We used individual-based, spatially explicit simulations to investigate how spatial configuration (ranging [...]
The crabeater seal reference genome reveals hallmarks of persistently large effective population size and sustained population expansion in the World’s most abundant pinniped
Published: 2026-06-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Population genetic theory predicts that a species’ demographic history shapes patterns of genome-wide variation. However, conservation genomic studies have disproportionately focused on small or declining species, where low genetic diversity and inbreeding are major concerns, while highly abundant species have attracted comparatively less attention. Here, we investigate the crabeater seal [...]