Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Microplastic interference influences Pseudomonas fluorescens in denitrification efficiency of wastewater treatment
Published: 2025-10-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Microbiology, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
Wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) play an essential role in pathogen and contaminant removal in wastewater. While developed countries treat approximately 70% of industrial wastewater prior to discharge, only about 8% is treated in developing countries. WWTP solutions can reduce the solids load, including microplastics, by up to 98.4%. Still, it is estimated that about 65 million microplastics [...]
Animal dispersal costs are not universal
Published: 2025-10-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Dispersal is a keystone process shaping ecological and evolutionary dynamics, often assumed to be inherently costly. We synthesized 696 effect sizes from 206 studies across 148 animal species, spanning all continents and ecosystems, to test this assumption. Contrary to long-standing dogma, we found no overall effect of dispersal on fitness (mean effect size: -0.03, 95% CIs: -0.09 to 0.03). No [...]
Neighbourhood canopy cover alleviates increased tree mortality after exceptionally dry summers at a climatic range limit
Published: 2025-10-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Biology, Population Biology
Populations situated at range margins are often at their environmental niche limit. The stress gradient hypothesis posits that facilitation effects should be more common in such conditions, but few studies have examined the joint effects of biotic interactions and climatic factors on vital rates at species range limits. We used eight years of annual unmanned aerial vehicle surveys to assess the [...]
The age of change: social aging in dolphins
Published: 2025-10-27
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Recent work has unearthed strong relationships between aging and average sociability. Clear patterns of decreases in average sociability are observed across taxa, many of these are sex-specific. Individuals, however, generally deviate from population averages, and discounting individual variance in behaviour could disguise mechanisms of adaptation, selection, and developmental stability. Here, we [...]
The role of socially transferred materials in translating and mediating the effects of global change
Published: 2025-10-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Almost all animal species transfer endogenously produced substances to conspecifics, either horizontally or vertically, through eggs, seminal fluid, milk, or other specialized materials. These socially transferred materials (STMs) can have substantial evolutionary consequences, are exceptionally plastic, and may enable organisms to adapt to environmental change. The world is facing rapid [...]
Automated insect monitoring with camera traps is transforming ecological understanding
Published: 2025-10-22
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Addressing global declines in insect biodiversity requires both ecological restoration and high-quality monitoring data. While long-term participatory schemes have been foundational, recent advances in automated recording and AI-based identification offer transformative but undocumented potential. Here, we show how leveraging insect camera traps, deep learning models and statistics drives a [...]
SEICAT+: a comprehensive assessment framework for positive socio-economic impacts of alien species
Published: 2025-10-20
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Biodiversity, Community-based Research, Demography, Population, and Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Nature and Society Relations
Despite their recognized harms to humans and biodiversity, alien species outside of domestication/cultivation can also provide socio-economic benefits, which are essential to consider when identifying stakeholder conflicts and informing managers and policymakers. These benefits often result from the enhancement of ecosystem services, such as the provision of food, timber, and other natural [...]
Biogeography of crop progenitors and wild plant resources in the terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene of West Asia, 14.7–8.3 ka
Published: 2025-10-17
Subjects: Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology
This paper presents the first continuous, spatially-explicit reconstructions of the palaeodistributions of 65 plant species found regularly in association with early agricultural archaeological sites in West Asia, including the progenitors of the first crops. We used machine learning to train an ecological niche model of each species based on its present-day distribution in relation to climate [...]
Invasive mosquitofish become more aggressive in the presence of native pike young-of-year: implications for native predator recruitment
Published: 2025-10-14
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Invasive species often exhibit aggressive behaviour, boldness, and high foraging activity, which contribute to their establishment success and impact on native ecosystems. The mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki), one of the world’s most invasive fish species, is known for its aggressive nature, which threatens the survival of native species. Lake littoral zones, critical for juvenile fish [...]
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). [...]