Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity
Relational Thinking for Landscape Management and Conservation: can we really embrace a human/nature continuity?
Published: 2025-09-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Studies
It is increasingly recognized that the conservation of natural and degraded landscapes requires rethinking our relationships with nature by considering social-ecological complexity. Currently, managers are faced with a wealth of knowledge in landscape ecology, restoration ecology and related fields, that are all mobilized to solve management problems. However, many conceptual propositions fall [...]
Persefone.jl: Modelling Biodiversity in Dynamic Agricultural Landscapes
Published: 2025-08-31
Subjects: Agriculture, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Population Biology
Agricultural landscapes are highly dynamic, constantly changing in space and time due to the effects of farm management and environmental factors. To forecast the effects of changes in agricultural systems on biodiversity, we need to understand these landscape dynamics and how they impact different species. Here, we present Persefone.jl, an open-source process-based model of agricultural [...]
Mapping multiple dimensions of forest diversity using spaceborne spectroscopy
Published: 2025-08-31
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Observing biodiversity across space and time is essential for advancing and verifying conservation efforts toward global biodiversity and sustainability goals. Spaceborne imaging spectroscopy has emerged as a revolutionary tool for quantifying and tracking forest diversity, yet its application at large spatial scales remains a central challenge. We develop a framework to map multiple dimensions [...]
Challenges for small island developing states in meeting monitoring requirements of the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework
Published: 2025-08-31
Subjects: Biodiversity
The Kunming Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted by Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity is an ambitious agreement to halt the decline in the world’s biodiversity by 2030 and restore nature by 2050. In order to measure progress towards the Framework’s Goals and Targets, a monitoring framework has been established and this includes 26 headline indicators and 71 questions [...]
Frequent shifts in pollination strategy are decoupled from diversification in the terrestrial orchids
Published: 2025-08-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Pollinator attraction strategies are central to orchid reproductive biology and have long been hypothesised to accelerate speciation rates, particularly through specialised coevolutionary interactions. However, most macroevolutionary evidence comes from studies of individual genera or tribes, leaving broad-scale patterns unresolved. Here, we reconstruct the evolution of pollination strategy in [...]
Modelling complex habitat use for threatened bat species decision-making in landscapes with competing priorities
Published: 2025-08-26
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Zoology
Species distribution models (SDMs) provide valuable information to aid conservation decisions, particularly in landscapes where economic and biodiversity priorities compete. Generating SDMs for species that rely on discrete habitat types for different activities (e.g. roosting or foraging) can be challenging, and result in outputs that are not appropriately tailored for end use. We collated [...]
Long-read sequencing for biodiversity analyses - a comprehensive guide
Published: 2025-08-26
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
DNA-based monitoring of biodiversity has revolutionised our ability to describe communities and rapidly assess anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity. Currently established molecular methods for biomonitoring rely heavily on classic metabarcoding utilising short reads, mostly through Illumina data. However, increasingly more studies use long-read sequencing technologies, such as Oxford Nanopore [...]
Fast evolving flowers drive cactus diversification
Published: 2025-08-22
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The rise of biodiversity is shaped by variation in diversification rates. Across the Tree of Life, numerous forces are thought to influence these rates, including the evolution of adaptive traits, climate change, and interactions with other organisms. In the flowering plants, a longstanding hypothesis favoured by Darwin suggests that floral evolution is a driving force for plant diversity. [...]
Herbarium specimens reveal long-term decline in pollination services since in the 1970s
Published: 2025-08-22
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences
Anthropogenic change has resulted in pollinator decline and altered plant-pollinator interactions. This may drive widespread declines in pollination and reproductive success of plants, yet few datasets allow us to track changes in pollination services over time. Herbaria provide a unique opportunity to assess pollination services across broad spatial and temporal scales, and the associated [...]
Embryos are largely understudied in conservation physiology
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Physiology
Understanding how animals respond to environmental stressors across their life cycle is essential for predicting species’ vulnerability to climate change. Here, we systematically reviewed the literature to quantify the variation in research effort on different life stages in the field of conservation physiology. Specifically, we reviewed experimental studies measuring physiological and [...]
Connectivity, Fire, and Land Use: Understanding Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) Persistence in Fragmented Watersheds
Published: 2025-08-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Aim: Effective biodiversity conservation requires improved understanding of species distributions, and of the influence of threatening processes on those distributions. This is particularly important for freshwater species, which are difficult to survey even as they are exposed to disproportionately high levels of threat. Here we address this issue for the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus), an [...]
Comparing screening outcomes of national and global biodiversity datasets for private sector nature-related disclosures
Published: 2025-08-12
Subjects: Biodiversity
In response to demand for better biodiversity stewardship from the private sector, frameworks such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) have been developed to help companies assess, manage and disclose their nature-related impacts, dependencies, risks and opportunities. A key initial screening step is to identify operations in ecologically sensitive areas, often done [...]
Opportunities for Cities to Cultivate Biodiversity
Published: 2025-08-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Plant Sciences, Public Policy, Recreation, Parks and Tourism Administration, Systems Biology, Urban Studies and Planning
Cities pose a major threat to global biodiversity in every sense of the word. Municipal leaders have opportunities to promote biodiversity efforts in their cities. Several studies have shown that managing resources with biodiversity in mind within cities is effective and benefits both human and non-human residents and visitors. Two major opportunities for biodiversity investment in urban areas [...]
Predictive Evolutionary Genomics: Principles, Validation, and Practice
Published: 2025-08-11
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genomics, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Population Biology
Contemporary evolution occurs on observable timescales, enabling prospective evolutionary forecasting with quantitative frameworks rather than only retrospective inference. We propose a unified probabilistic framework that integrates three approaches linked to detectability windows through time. Trait-based models use multivariate quantitative-genetic equations to project correlated phenotypic [...]
Progress toward sustainable management of marine crustacean fisheries
Published: 2025-08-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Population Biology
Marine crustacean capture fisheries have been contributing increasingly more to global aquatic food production in recent decades, helping secure socioeconomic benefits. In the past decade the landings of marine crustaceans rose by more than 67% while expanding spatially and taxonomically, doubling their contribution to global fisheries landings. Although efforts to improve the data collection [...]