Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity
A protocol for biodiversity-informed wildlife disease surveillance
Published: 2025-12-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences
Land use and climate change are increasing the risk of spillover of zoonotic disease into human populations. However, we lack actionable information about the prevalence of pathogens in wildlife populations for most of the globe, challenging our ability to implement strategies to prevent zoonoses. Even when this data exists, it has historically been sampled opportunistically and without guidance [...]
The weak driver conundrum: data archiving and biological phenomena impact macrogenetic findings
Published: 2025-12-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Evolution, Genetics, Genomics, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Macrogenetics seeks to identify the global drivers and patterns in intraspecific genetic diversity, yet many reported patterns are weak or inconsistent. To achieve multispecies global inference, many macrogenetic studies leverage open sequencing data that can suffer from archiving biases. It remains unclear if macrogenetic inconsistencies are innate genetic phenomena, or are the product of open [...]
The Plant Communities of Oman’s Central Coastline: A Baseline Ecological Assessment amid Rising Threats
Published: 2025-12-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany, Desert Ecology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
In recent decades, the botanical knowledge within the Sultanate of Oman has advanced considerably. However, the coastal vegetation is comparatively understudied with much of the country’s extensive coastline still undocumented. This is despite Oman’s coast being faced with a plethora of threats including development, overgrazing and the invasive species Neltuma juliflora. This study presents the [...]
Quantifying Three Decades of Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining Frontiers in the Guiana Shield (1995–2024)
Published: 2025-12-10
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 [...]
From patterns to predictions: A framework for the spatial epidemiology of wildlife diseases
Published: 2025-12-09
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Biodiversity, Epidemiology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Population Biology, Statistics and Probability, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Preventive Medicine, Epidemiology, and Public Health, Zoology
Wildlife diseases pose a significant threat to public health, livestock, and biodiversity conservation. In this context, spatial epidemiology offers a robust framework for elucidating disease dynamics and informing policy-making and disease management. The workflow in spatial epidemiology involves three main steps: (1) descriptive analysis of spatial dynamics; (2) exploration of the observed [...]
Habitat connectivity shapes biodiversity outcomes in Indonesia’s community-managed forests
Published: 2025-12-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Forest Management
1. Social forestry is increasingly promoted as a means to achieve equitable resource governance while contributing to biodiversity conservation. Yet, empirical evidence on how effectively community-managed forests support biodiversity remains limited, particularly in tropical regions. 2. We assessed mammal communities in two contrasting social forestry contexts in Sumatra, Indonesia: (1) a [...]
Quantifying impacts of policy and practice interventions on biodiversity and climate
Published: 2025-11-28
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 [...]
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: 2025-11-26
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 [...]
New distributional records of two butterflies from Bangladesh: Insights into potential climate-driven range shifts
Published: 2025-11-26
Subjects: Biodiversity, Entomology
During field surveys on butterfly taxa at Madhobkunda Eco Park, located in the northeastern region of Bangladesh, two species from the Hesperiidae family were recorded for the first time in the country. Particularly, a skipper butterfly, Pithauria marsena, Hewitson,1866 (Banded Straw Ace), was observed in December 2023, and a flat butterfly, Celaenorrhinus nigricans, de Nicéville,1885 [...]
What evidence exists on the effectiveness of nature-inclusive designs for marine biodiversity in offshore wind farms? A Systematic map protocol
Published: 2025-11-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
The global expansion of offshore wind energy is essential for meeting climate targets, yet its ecological impacts on marine biodiversity remain a major concern. In line with the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which calls upon all economic sectors to reduce negative impacts and enhance positive contributions, Nature-inclusive Designs (NiDs) have been proposed to reduce the [...]
Edge-of-range camera-trap records of Superb Lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae) in western and central-north Tasmania (2018–2025)
Published: 2025-11-19
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Ornithology
Tasmania’s Superb Lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae) was deliberately introduced to south‑east Tasmania in 1934 and has since dispersed across much of the island’s central bioregions. Despite this expansion, the Lyrebird’s future range dynamics remains uncertain, with recent modelling projecting that it will take over 50 years for the species to establish in the north-west of the island. Here we [...]
Response to “Radiolarian evolution: Analytical challenges in estimating the diversity and origin of Nature’s stars”
Published: 2025-11-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Genetics and Genomics, Marine Biology
We appreciate Daniel Lahr’s concern (Lahr, 2025) on the interpretation and conclusions of our study “Extant diversity, biogeography, and evolutionary history of Radiolaria” (Sandin et al., 2025). Given that some of these comments were already addressed in our original study following reviewers comments and that such issues are well known in the molecular diversity and evolution fields we [...]
Paradigms and Principles for Integrating Nature Technologies in Biodiversity Monitoring
Published: 2025-11-14
Subjects: Biodiversity
Employing a combination of nature technologies such as satellite data, eDNA, camera traps, passive acoustic sensors, and GPS monitors can augment traditional biodiversity measurements to help respond to increasing demand for understanding conservation status and outcomes. However, there is no clear guidance or consensus on how nature technologies are best integrated. We aim to provide a robust [...]
Barking up the wrong tree? Indian street dog woes are emblematic of ecological governance failures for multispecies coexistence
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
On August 11, 2025, India’s Supreme Court mandated relocating 2.5 million dogs to address bites and zoonotic disease/death concerns—but reversed course twice since then—revealing that solutions require sequential waste management, education, and sterilization that prioritize addressing root demographic and behavioral drivers over reactive management.