Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Beyond distribution: environmental justice challenges of Indigenous communities across the Circumpolar North
Published: 2025-10-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The Circumpolar North is warming at an unprecedented pace, accelerating entrenched environmental injustices against Indigenous peoples. Although the disproportionate distribution of these harms is paramount, in this review, we contend that an exclusive emphasis on distribution is analytically inadequate. An inclusive multidimensional framework of environmental justice has been introduced that [...]
Legumes of the Koffler Scientific Reserve and Their Rhizobia
Published: 2025-10-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
In this document, we have consolidated information on the legumes of the Koffler Scientific Reserve (KSR, the University of Toronto’s biological research station, 44° 01' N, 79° 31' W; King Township, ON, Canada) and their associated rhizobia. The list of associated rhizobia was originally compiled in 2020 by J. Wang under the supervision of J.R. Stinchcombe, J.A. Boyle, and T.L. Harrison, and [...]
Ecosystem structure can affect human health: a longitudinal study on Green Prescriptions
Published: 2025-10-08
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Health Psychology, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
The role of Nature in supporting human life, health, and well-being has been recognized and appreciated since ancient times and has recently undergone scientific investigation, which highlighted the human dependence on Nature to nurture mental and physical health. Among Nature-based interventions that aim at exposing people to the natural environment, Green Prescriptions (GRx) represent a [...]
Challenges faced by ecologists: gender-based perceptions throughout the stages of the academic career in Brazil
Published: 2025-10-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Although women often outnumber men in the early stages of academic careers in ecology, they remain significantly underrepresented in senior positions. In Brazil, women comprise the majority of graduate students in ecological sciences but hold fewer senior academic roles, receive less research funding, and face greater obstacles to visibility and recognition. To understand the factors contributing [...]
Ciclos irregulares de financiamento no Brasil são uma barreira à conservação da biodiversidade e à liderança global do país
Published: 2025-10-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
O financiamento estável para a pesquisa científica é fundamental para a conservação da biodiversidade e a formulação de políticas baseadas em evidências. No Brasil, ciclos inconsistentes de financiamento para bolsas contribuem para a fuga de cérebros de Pesquisadores em Início de Carreira (ECRs, do inglês “Early Career Researchers”), que poderiam impulsionar avanços significativos na pesquisa em [...]
Understanding the adequacy and representativeness of species distribution data
Published: 2025-10-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Species occurrence data is the fundamental unit of any species distribution analysis, biodiversity patterns, species extinction vulnerability, and temporal trends. This data is also a critical component of monitoring progress towards global biodiversity targets, such as those included in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). [...]
Genomic insights into the origin of ecotypes
Published: 2025-10-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
A century ago, Göte Turesson introduced the ecotype concept to describe populations of species that are phenotypically and genetically differentiated by adaptation to contrasting habitats. His simple idea—that ecological divergence can occur below the species level—has had lasting influence, inspiring experimental tests of local adaptation across taxa. Today, ecotypes are described throughout the [...]
Narrative-Movement Framework (NMF): A socio-ecological systems (SES) approach to human narratives, animal movement, and coexistence in shared landscapes
Published: 2025-10-05
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Other Arts and Humanities, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Life Sciences
1. Managing human-wildlife coexistence is essential for biodiversity conservation in places where humans and nonhumans compete for access to ecosystems. Viewing human-wildlife conflict as part of a complex web of positive and negative connections that exist between humans and nature is essential. 2. The field of socio-ecological systems (SES) seeks to understand these connections between [...]
What fraction of the genomic basis of local adaptation are we missing?
Published: 2025-10-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
How will species adapt to changing environments? To what extent does adaptation to previous conditions maintain the variation needed to adapt to future conditions? To answer these kinds of questions, we need to identify locally adaptive alleles and quantify their effects. Theory shows that the architecture of adaptation can depend upon the nature of mutation and on how ecology shapes the [...]
Global biodiversity measurement to meet scale-dependent needs and opportunities
Published: 2025-10-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Business, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
In the face of rapid ecological decline, biodiversity information is essential for safeguarding life on Earth. Although this information is increasingly valued by governments, businesses, and other stakeholders, it remains insufficiently accessible and usable. Because the rarity and functions of biodiversity vary greatly across land- and seascapes, the global and local ecological and social [...]
Native bee genus diversity within bee-friendly urban gardens varies little along an urbanization gradient
Published: 2025-09-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology
Urban bee populations are threatened by ongoing habitat loss and fragmentation. Bee-friendly gardens with abundant forage and nesting resources may help offset these pressures, but attributes of the broader urban landscape could also play an important role. We explored bee diversity within 32 bee-friendly gardens distributed throughout the city of Kelowna, British Columbia. Our objectives were to [...]
CartograPlant: Bridging genomic, phenotypic, and environmental data to advance plant resilience and eco-evolutionary insight
Published: 2025-09-30
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Breeding and Genetics Life Sciences, Plant Pathology, Systems Biology
Climate change is threatening plant health and productivity at all spatial scales, and these impacts are further compounded by the rising incidence of invasive pests and pathogens. Effectively addressing these challenges requires a comprehensive understanding of plant demography as well as the mechanisms and drivers of adaptation. Achieving this understanding requires the integration of [...]
Born this way: individuality is seeded before birth and robust to environmental stress
Published: 2025-09-29
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Consistent individual differences in behavior, known as behavioral individuality, are pervasive across the animal world and have major ecological and evolutionary consequences. Nevertheless, we still have a limited understanding of what drives individuality and how it emerges during ontogeny. Here, we subjected clonal individuals to a ubiquitous yet critical environmental challenge—the threat of [...]
Species Invasion in a Two-Dimensional Space with Irregularly Shaped Patches
Published: 2025-09-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Accounting for spatial heterogeneity in the evolution of a species population in a given space is of much importance in population ecology, epidemiology and related fields in biosciences. Past literature has presented such analysis in the presence of regions with distinct diffusion/growth properties, often referred to as patches. However, most of the past work is limited to one-dimensional space, [...]
Spatial networks of habitats, populations, and communities: connecting approaches to keep cutting edges
Published: 2025-09-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Purpose of review: Spatial networks are extensively used in ecology to represent exchanges among landscape features (e.g., habitat patches, river segments) or biological entities (e.g., individuals, populations, communities). I reviewed the literature produced in the past 25 years using these networks. Distinct types of spatial networks have emerged in several subfields of ecology. I aimed to [...]