Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Quantifying Three Decades of Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining Frontiers in the Guiana Shield (1995–2024)
Published: 2025-12-09
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Remote Sensing, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM) is a leading driver of tropical deforestation and forest degradation, yet its spatial and temporal dynamics remain largely underexplored. Here, we present a pan-regional, annual time-series analysis of ASGM expansion across rainforests of the Guiana Shield (Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana) from 1995 to 2024. Using Landsat imagery, we trained a deep [...]
There is no taxon-free lunch
Published: 2025-12-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Over the last few decades, the term “taxon-free” has been widely used in paleoecological literature to highlight reasoning via ecomorphological or other functional traits of organisms as opposed to reasoning via taxonomic affiliations and phylogenetic conservatism. In practice, however, “taxon-free” inferences are very rarely free from using taxonomic information and occasionally they are even [...]
Gene expression and structural differences underpinning black and white colouration in spiders
Published: 2025-12-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
The presence of multiple colour variants within a single population, known as colour polymorphism, is a striking example of intraspecific phenotypic variation and a model for studying evolutionary processes. These processes depend on the underlying mechanisms such as the genes and pigments involved; but we currently lack such information for non-model groups such as arachnids. We examined the [...]
Butterfly abundances but not patch occupancy buffered by vegetation heterogeneity during climatic extremes
Published: 2025-12-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
As extreme climatic events are becoming more frequent and intense, we need to understand what mechanisms could buffer populations from climate change impacts to ensure their persistence. Fragmented populations may be especially vulnerable to climate change, as exemplified by species with metapopulation dynamics, whose persistence is determined by a precarious balance between frequent local [...]
POLLEN ANALYSIS AS A REMOTE BIOLOGICAL SENSOR: USING MELISSOPALYNOLOGY AND SURFACE SOIL DATA FOR AN INTEGRATED LANDSCAPE SCALE VEGETATION ASSESSMENT IN SOUTH INDIA
Published: 2025-12-04
Subjects: Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Life Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Plant Sciences
We use pollen assemblages from two sources, surface soil and bee pollen to characterize modern pollen spectra from contrasting landscapes, evaluate their potential as biological proxies complementing each other in reconstructing vegetation comprised of anemophilous and entomophilous plants. The bee pollen assemblages are from honeycombs and corbicular loads from Apis cerana and A. florea. We try [...]
On the spatial aggregation of condition metrics for ecosystem accounting
Published: 2025-12-03
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
In face of the ongoing nature crisis, the international community is setting targets and deciding on actions to combat the current biodiversity crises. For this to be effective they need tools to accurately describe the current situation and to monitor trends in ecosystems over time. Ecosystem condition accounts (ECA) is one such tool that use variables and indicators to describe key ecosystem [...]
The legacy of privilege: Social inheritance reverses sex differences in reproductive inequality in spotted hyenas
Published: 2025-12-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Inequalities in reproductive success among females and males shape natural and sexual selec-tion, as well as genetic diversity. A key mechanism influencing reproductive inequality in humans and other animals is the social inheritance of privilege. Using a 29-year dataset spanning eight generations of spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta), a species in which social status is maternally inherited, we [...]
Towards a causal understanding of bidirectional effects in ecology and evolution
Published: 2025-11-28
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series
Feedback loops govern many processes in the natural world and are ubiquitous in ecology and evolutionary biology. Despite their prevalence in theory, however, feedbacks and other forms of reciprocal causation are rarely quantified by empiricists working with observational datasets. This divide has been brought to the fore by the causal revolution in the natural sciences. When researchers aim to [...]
Tagged for life? Retention rates and effects on growth and condition of tagging - a long-term field study on PIT- and Carlin tagging in European eel
Published: 2025-11-28
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Different types of tags and markers are commonly used for various fish monitoring and tracking purposes. Effects of tags and markers on fish and the retention rates can affect the interpretation of mark-recapture data on both the individual (e.g. growth and body condition) and population level (e.g. survival and pro-duction estimates), making studies of this issue important. In this study, we [...]
Adaptive introgression in the context of climate adaptation
Published: 2025-11-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics
As the biosphere faces accelerating environmental disruption, including climate change, and the prospect of an anthropogenically-driven mass extinction, understanding the mechanisms that enable species to adapt has become increasingly urgent. One mechanism attracting growing attention is adaptive introgression, the transfer of beneficial genetic variation between closely related species. Although [...]
Quantifying impacts of policy and practice interventions on biodiversity and climate
Published: 2025-11-27
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
There is urgent demand for ecosystem management interventions – targeted actions through policies and practices – that meaningfully address climate change and biodiversity loss while sustaining ecosystem delivery of water, food, fibre and fuel. Rigorous quantification of intervention outcomes is required for decision makers to identify, promote and scale effective interventions. Yet [...]
Forest fecundity declines as climate shifts
Published: 2025-11-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Tree fecundity underpins regeneration, range tracking, and seed supply for assisted migration, yet may decline as climates move beyond reproductive niches. Using 34 years of nationwide harvest records from Poland (40,530 observations across 438 forest districts) for five dominant taxa — oaks (Quercus robur, Q. petraea), European beech (Fagus sylvatica), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), and silver [...]
Plasticity and scaling through multinucleation: a key adaptation to challenging environments
Published: 2025-11-26
Subjects: Cell and Developmental Biology, Cell Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Multinucleate cells, single cells containing multiple nuclei in a shared cytoplasm, are found across the eukaryotic tree of life. Having evolved independently in fungi, plants, protists, and animals, they thrive in environments ranging from nutrient-poor deep-sea sediments to dynamic soil microhabitats and host tissues. Multinucleate organization enables spatial specialization without internal [...]
Large regional variation in global impacts of agriculture on terrestrial insects and other arthropods
Published: 2025-11-26
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Many insects and other arthropods are reported to be in rapid decline worldwide, mainly driven by changes in land use and climate. At the same time, arthropods provide many important services that benefit agriculture, and thus their losses may pose risks to food security. Although biodiversity responses vary between global realms, this spatial heterogeneity is not well-understood and is rarely [...]
Unravelling the Enigma of Soil Animal Diversity: An Integrated Perspective from Functional Traits to Evolutionary History
Published: 2025-11-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Why does a single square meter of forest soil harbour thousands of animal species? Fifty years after Jonathan M. Anderson raised this question, soil ecology still struggles with a fragmented view on the coexistence of species. Researchers often study taxonomy, functional traits, and phylogeny in isolation. Each approach adds insight but leaves gaps in the picture of soil biodiversity. In this [...]