Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
What defines an urban butterfly? Life history traits and habitat associations of butterflies in urban environments
Published: 2025-09-19
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: 2025-09-18
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 [...]
When is population structure important? Integrating transient dynamics and life-history theory
Published: 2025-09-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
Population dynamics are governed not just by the vital rates of the members of a population, but also by population structure (i.e., the distribution of individuals along species life cycles). A conventional focus of population biology and viability analyses has been to determine the influence of vital rates on long-term predictions such as stable population growth rates. With increasing [...]
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 [...]
When and How to Use Restricted Spatial Regression to Separate Environmental Effects from Spatial Confounding
Published: 2025-09-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Aim: To provide practical guidance for ecologists on when to use standard spatial generalized linear mixed models (SGLMMs) versus Restricted Spatial Regression (RSR). We reframe the debate by arguing the choice depends on whether the total effect or direct effect of covariates will be more transferable across space. Innovation: Our study's primary innovation is to introduce a causal framework to [...]
Spatial variation and individual specialization of stickleback diet in relation to trophic morphology
Published: 2025-09-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
A population's dietary niche, including individual variation and specialization, shapes the scope and strength of its trophic linkages. Individual diet variation may emerge in response to spatial variation in the selective pressures that shape trophic morphologies, such as food availability or competition. Therefore, characterizing dietary niche variation and its link to morphological differences [...]
Project Psyche: Generating and utilising reference genomes for all Lepidoptera in Europe
Published: 2025-09-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences
Project Psyche is a trans-national initiative to generate and study chromosome-level reference genomes of all ca. 11,000 described species of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) found in Europe. The Project Psyche community encompasses diverse researchers, amateur lepidopterists, practitioners, and industry experts united by a common vision of the importance of genomics for Lepidoptera. [...]
Natural developmental temperatures of ectotherms: A systematic map and comparative analysis
Published: 2025-09-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
In ectothermic animals, physiological processes are highly sensitive to environmental temperatures. Developmental temperatures, in particular, have large and long-lasting impacts on ectotherm phenotypes. However, most phenotypic responses are studied in the laboratory, and may not accurately reflect ecological impacts in natural environments. In this study, we provide the first synthesis of [...]
Apparent competition couples donor and trophic control among prey of generalist predators
Published: 2025-09-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Apparent competition refers to an indirect interaction between prey populations that affect one another's abundance through shared predators. Classically, prey are reciprocally coupled, such that each can sustain and be limited by predators via trophic (top-down) control. Here, we focus on a less-examined but potentially widespread form involving primary prey that are donor (bottom-up) [...]
Fossils for Future: the billion-dollar case for paleontology’s digital infrastructure
Published: 2025-09-10
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Bioinformatics, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Arts and Humanities, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The digital revolution has transformed paleontology through the development of open-access, community-driven databases that underpin some of the most impactful research in biodiversity, climate change, and extinction dynamics. These systems safeguard high-effort, volunteered data and have revealed major macroevolutionary patterns, including mass extinctions. However, of 118 paleontological and [...]