Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity
Vendi Information Gain for Active Learning and its Application to Ecology
Published: 2025-09-15
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity
While monitoring biodiversity through camera traps has become an important endeavor for ecological research, identifying species in the captured image data remains a major bottleneck due to limited labeling resources. Active learning—a machine learning paradigm that selects the most informative data to label and train a predictive model—offers a promising solution, but typically focuses on [...]
Rediscovering lost Cenozoic tree diversity in Western and Central Europe
Published: 2025-09-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Forest Management, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Paleoclimatic changes during the late Cenozoic led to substantial losses of tree diversity in Western and Central Europe. A complete overview of what taxa were lost, the timing of these losses, and their implications for the adaptation of the region’s forest ecosystems to ongoing climate change is needed. Here, we compiled a dataset of fossil occurrences of tree genera from Western and Central [...]
Project Psyche: Generating and utilising reference genomes for all Lepidoptera in Europe
Published: 2025-09-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences
Project Psyche is a trans-national initiative to generate and study chromosome-level reference genomes of all ca. 11,000 described species of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) found in Europe. The Project Psyche community encompasses diverse researchers, amateur lepidopterists, practitioners, and industry experts united by a common vision of the importance of genomics for Lepidoptera. [...]
Mapping the landscape of live baitfish regulations for aquatic invasive species prevention in the United States
Published: 2025-09-10
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Policy, Marine Biology, Public Policy
Aquatic invasive species (AIS) pose a significant risk to global ecosystems, economies, and societies. In the United States, the live baitfish trade is a major pathway for their spread. While the presence of invasive species and pathogens in this trade has been documented, a comprehensive, nationwide analysis of the regulations governing live baitfish has been lacking. This study fills that gap [...]
Integrating Participatory Mapping and Stewardship Perspectives to Support Human–Wildlife Coexistence in Shared Landscapes
Published: 2025-09-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Community-based Research, Environmental Studies, Spatial Science
Understanding the drivers of coexistence between humans and wildlife in shared landscapes is critical for biodiversity conservation. This inquiry challenges us to reflect on our relationships with nature and highlights the need to consider the complexity of social-ecological systems. Although useful approaches exist for mapping the distribution of species, habitats, or ecosystems using [...]
Contribution to the knowledge of the distribution of bats (Chiroptera) in Algeria
Published: 2025-09-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Algeria is the largest country in Africa and for the most part has not yet been surveyed for bat species. To contribute to the knowledge of the distribution of Algerian bat fauna, between 2010 and 2025 we surveyed 69 sites from across the country, mostly roost sites but also using mist nets. We found 19 species from six families, out of a total of 27 species from seven families currently [...]
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 [...]