Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Forest composition and diversity buffer microclimates and enhance productivity
Published: 2025-06-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
Trees can buffer forest ecosystems against climate extremes, creating microenvironments that support diverse plant communities. We asked how diverse tree communities could influence the above- and below-ground moisture environment, thereby linking tree diversity and ecosystem function. To address this question, we integrated remotely sensed forest structure, growth inventories, microclimate [...]
Enhancing motivation to learn marine ecology and increase ocean literacy through Virtual Reality in Higher Education
Published: 2025-06-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Virtual Reality (VR) is increasingly recognised as a tool for enhancing engagement and motivation in education. This is particularly true where access to experiential learning is limited, as is often the case in marine ecology courses. However, the effectiveness of VR for teaching and learning in higher education is poorly understood. Here, we use the Explore experience developed by The Hydrous [...]
Elevating the importance of Risk of Bias assessment for ecology and evolution
Published: 2025-06-16
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Microbiology, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses are key evidence synthesis methods informing research and policy. An assessment of the Risk of Bias (RoB) in included studies is normally considered an essential component of these. However, RoB assessment is rare in ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB), and tools from other fields are seldom adopted. To identify reasons for this limited uptake, we surveyed [...]
Comparing statistical methods for detecting weather cues of mast seeding in European beech (Fagus sylvatica) across Europe
Published: 2025-06-16
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Understanding the drivers of mast seeding is important for predicting reproductive dynamics in perennial plants. Here, we evaluate the performance of four statistical methods for identifying weather-associated drivers of annual seed production, i.e, weather cues: climate sensitivity profile, P-spline regression, sliding window analysis, and peak signal detection. Using long-term seed production [...]
Vegetation Structural Complexity across Tenerife’s Zonal Vegetation Types, captured by Terrestrial Laser Scanning
Published: 2025-06-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Life Sciences
Questions: Vegetation structural complexity, defined as the density and distribution of plants in three-dimensional (3D) space, is a key ecological property of plant communities, influencing biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Yet, how vegetation structural complexity varies across contrasting vegetation types, and which factors drive this variation remain poorly understood. This knowledge [...]
Toxin resistance mechanisms span biological scales in the Royal Ground Snake (Colubridae: Erythrolamprus reginae)
Published: 2025-06-13
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genomics, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Molecular Biology, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Physiology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences, Systems Biology, Zoology
All predators of poisonous prey deal with toxins, yet we often lack an understanding of how the predators integrate various physiological adaptations to toxins. Here we investigate multiple complementary toxin resistance mechanisms in the pan-Amazonian snake Erythrolamprus reginae (Squamata: Colubridae), which consumes multiple species of poisonous frogs. We find that the toxin resistance [...]
Inescapable bottlenecks: Demographic recovery cannot replenish evolutionary potential over conservation timeframes
Published: 2025-06-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics, Population Biology
Maintaining within-species genetic diversity is a central goal of biodiversity conservation, because it determines a species’ capacity to adapt to environmental change. Species that have experienced population bottlenecks are expected to suffer from an increased risk of extinction unless their genetic diversity is able to recover. A recent study proposed that rapid demographic expansion in a [...]
When homology fails: lessons from liver-fluke phylogenies
Published: 2025-06-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
Misaligned sequences derail evolutionary inference. Datasets from GenBank require verification of positional homology and orientation before alignment and phylogenetic analysis. Liver-fluke case studies reveal how overlooked errors skew results, underscoring the need for rigorous checks in parasitology and all molecular research.
Colorful birds face heightened extinction risk around the world
Published: 2025-06-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Ornithology
Many of the functional traits that mediate extinction risk across the tree life relate indirectly to a species’ ability to persist in a changing world. Yet, there are certain traits such as coloration that directly affect human interactions with wildlife. Here, we use an existing dataset of color metrics for 4334 passerine bird species combined with global functional trait data to determine [...]
The interplay between ecological networks drives host-plasmid community dynamics
Published: 2025-06-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Plasmids drive evolution by transferring traits across microbial hosts. Transmission depends on both host–plasmid (infection) and plasmid–plasmid (compatibility) interactions, yet how the structure of these networks shapes transmission remains poorly understood. We hypothesized that these two ecological networks interact in non-additive ways to influence community outcomes. To test this, we [...]
Reproductive Timing as a Driver of Longevity Evolution: A Conceptual Extension of Hamilton's Framework
Published: 2025-06-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Evolutionary theories of aging share a common foundation: the force of natural selection declines with age after the onset of reproduction. Reproductive timing has received comparatively little explicit attention as a factor that can modify the post-maturation decline in selection itself. Here I propose that delayed reproduction shifts reproductive value toward older age classes, slowing the [...]
Subterranean environments contribute to three-quarters of classified ecosystem services
Published: 2025-06-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Beneath the Earth’s surface lies a network of interconnected caves, voids, and systems of fissures forming in rocks of sedimentary, igneous, or metamorphic origin. Though largely inaccessible to humans, this hidden realm supports and regulates services critical to ecological health and human well-being. Subterranean ecosystems are integral to major biogeochemical cycles, sustain diverse surface [...]
Withdrawn: Which phenotypic traits are under selection under warm, dry climates in black spruce?
Published: 2025-06-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
• Trees are increasingly at risk of maladaptation to their environment as climates change rapidly world-wide. Although adaptive evolution by natural selection is a key mechanism by which populations and species can avoid extinction in changing environments, we have limited information regarding the phenotypic traits under selection under warm and dry environments. We answer the following research [...]
Vaccination and immigration rates influence raccoon rabies elimination and recolonization in simulated urban-suburban landscapes
Published: 2025-06-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
The raccoon variant of the rabies virus (RRV) is primarily managed in the eastern United States and Canada via distribution of oral rabies vaccine (ORV) baits. The goal of ORV distribution is to reach seroprevalence rates (an index of population immunity) of 60%, the threshold thought to eliminate RRV. Seroprevalence rates in urban areas rarely reach target levels, predictably leading to rabies [...]
Interaction Between Fitness and Genetic Diversity May Lead to the Relatively High Diversification of Active Foragers
Published: 2025-06-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Differences in the diversification of species across the Tree of Life may emerge from the ecological and evolutionary consequences of organismal traits. Foraging behavior may influence species diversification through its effects on fitness and genetic diversity. Different foraging strategies can be expected to alter patterns of movement, gene flow, and adaptation in different ways. Active [...]