Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Sleep elasticity: accessory, useful and vital components of a single state
Published: 2026-08-19
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Systems Biology
Sleep is universal, homeostatically defended and apparently costly, and for half a century this combination has been read as evidence of a vital, conserved function still awaiting identification. The search has not converged. Instead, it has accumulated a dozen candidate functions, each defensible but none commanding assent. I argue that the difficulty lies with the question rather than with the [...]
Non-native plants homogenize global urban flora
Published: 2026-08-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Urban areas serve as hubs for non-native plant introductions, but the extent to which these introductions have homogenized city floras globally remains unexplored. We analyzed species inventories from 553 cities across six continents and show that non-native plants increase mean pairwise floristic similarity by ~50%, from a Jaccard index of 0.11 for native species alone to 0.16 when non-natives [...]
Wolf–Deer Camera-trap Detections Across Wisconsin’s Statewide Wolf Range (2018–2025): A Temporary Increase in Wolves Following Deer After the 2021 Wolf Harvest, Displacement Effects by Habitat Zone, and Avoidance of People Across Co-occurring Species
Published: 2026-08-19
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Two prior analyses of wolf-enriched extracts of the Snapshot Wisconsin camera network — one county, then five northwestern counties — showed that gray wolves (Canis lupus) tended to arrive at cameras shortly after white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), that they arrived after antlered bucks more often than the bucks’ numbers would predict, and that deer returned to a site more slowly after a [...]
IUCN Red List Threatened Bird Classification from Citizen-Science Images using Fine-Tuned CNN Features and a Hierarchical Lightweight Classifier
Published: 2026-08-18
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Ornithology
To prevent bird strikes at wind farms, an approaching protected bird must be identified so that the turbine can be halted before a collision. We present a bird-species classification module intended for that real-time, low-power edge setting: a hierarchical system assigning IUCN Red List categories to in-the-wild citizen-science bird images, combining a ResNet50 feature extractor fine-tuned on a [...]
Toward a standardized workflow for pre-processing large vegetation-plot databases
Published: 2026-08-17
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences
Large vegetation-plot databases have opened unprecedented opportunities for investigating vegetation patterns and processes across large spatial and temporal scales. However, such databases are typically created by combining pre-existing smaller databases or datasets that often used different standards and protocols, leading to data inconsistencies (e.g., different taxonomy and nomenclature) and [...]
The knowledge landscape of jaguar science: rapid growth, thematic structure, and regional inequalities
Published: 2026-08-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Understanding how scientific effort is distributed is essential for evaluating the evidence available to guide species conservation. We assessed the temporal, thematic, methodological, and spatial organization of jaguar (Panthera onca) research across the species’ range. Using 1,028 bibliographic records, we applied a metadata-based scope filter, defining a primary analytical corpus of 857 [...]
Density dependence buffers natural populations against multiple stressors
Published: 2026-08-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Predicting population persistence under global change requires understanding how populations buffer against interacting stresses. Gradual stresses, such as droughts, suppress individual performance, whereas abrupt stresses, such as harvesting, remove individuals from populations. Because these stresses interact through density-dependent responses of growth, reproduction and survival, predicting [...]
Plant sex chromosome evolution in the phylogenomic era
Published: 2026-08-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Plants harbor a tremendous diversity of sexual systems, including various forms of chromosomal sex determination that have arisen repeatedly across major clades, especially in angiosperms. The causes and consequences of sex chromosome evolution are far-reaching, with implications for sexual system, mating system, and life history evolution, genome architecture, and speciation, extinction, and [...]
Lake Champlain fisheries and ecosystem in the context of the Laurentian Great Lakes: past research, current management issues, and future research priorities
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Lake Champlain is a large lake bordered by New York, Vermont, and Quebec. This bi-national, multi-jurisdictional lake shares many management issues and challenges with the much larger bi-national Laurentian Great Lakes, including a history of commercial fisheries, species declines and extirpations, sport fisheries supported by stocking, and invasion of non-native species. The bathymetric [...]
Chromosomal speciation through holocentric lenses
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Chromosomal rearrangements (CRs) can trigger speciation by acting as barriers to gene flow. Two main theoretical frameworks were developed on how they contribute to speciation: causing infertility in heterokaryotypes (hybrid dysfunction) or creating islands of divergence through recombination suppression. However, these theories were developed with monocentric chromosomes in mind. Species with [...]
Beyond the mammalian nucleolus—a comparative perspective on nucleolar dynamics in stress and through the life cycle
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Cell and Developmental Biology, Cell Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Microbiology, Organismal Biological Physiology
Classically the site of ribosomal RNA transcription, processing and early ribosome assembly, the nucleolus is increasingly understood as a dynamic multiphase condensate reshaped by cell state. Most reviews of this plasticity are mammal-centred. Here we set mammals alongside fungi, plants and animal germlines, following the nucleolus through the life cycle under environmental change and through [...]
Impacts of the end Pliocene marine megafaunal extinction on North Atlantic trophic structure
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Marine megafauna are experiencing widespread population declines and these losses are expected to have cascading effects, impacting ecosystem structure and function. However, quantifying these ecological consequences at a global scale remains challenging, requiring an understanding of long-term trophic dynamics. Palaeoecology can provide useful insights into how communities respond to taxonomic [...]
Impact of warming on functional traits of a keystone grazer in Arctic lakes
Published: 2026-08-07
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Laboratory and Basic Science Research Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Temperature rise is one of the most pronounced abiotic changes currently affecting Αrctic ecosystems. Knowledge about the adaptation capacity of their key species is urgently needed to better understand the ecological consequences for these sentinel ecosystems. Previous work on a keystone zooplankton grazer, the obligatory parthenogenetic Daphnia pulicaria, from a lake in South-West Greenland [...]
EcoScape: Species-specific Functional Habitat Connectivity Via Efficient Parallel Propagation Simulations
Published: 2026-08-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Well-connected habitats sustain viable populations through gene flow, repopulation potential, and functional habitat extent. Conserving and enhancing habitat connectivity has been identified as a priority to halt extinctions and safeguard 30% of the planet. Conservation prioritization would therefore benefit from habitat connectivity modeling that is applicable at broad spatial and taxonomic [...]
Characterization of Haplosporidium pinnae's biogeographical distribution by means of Ecological Niche Modelling techniques and consequences of climate change upon its range
Published: 2026-08-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
This study provides a biogeographical characterization of protozoan endoparasite Haplosporidium pinnae's distribution following the associated Mass Mortality Event of endangered bivalve Pinna nobilis in 2016. The epizootic has reached mortality rates between 80% - 100% and was first reported in the south-western Mediterranean Sea. It has since spread to north-western waters, followed by the [...]