Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity
From Scalable Biodiversity Measurement to Credible Biodiversity Metrics
Published: 2026-07-09
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Business, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Economics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Statistical Models, Sustainability, Technology and Innovation
Governments struggle to develop effective policies to counter the decline of species and ecosystems. An obstacle to command-and-control and incentive-based mechanisms is that biodiversity is costly to measure, creating an information asymmetry in which firms and governments are incentivised to withhold information on adverse impacts. Using a principal-agent model, we show that credible reporting [...]
Sniffing for fungi: Use of a conservation dog uncovers high regional truffle diversity
Published: 2026-07-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Sciences, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Hypogeous aromatic fungi (‘truffles’) contribute significantly to overall fungal diversity but are difficult to find using traditional survey methods because they fruit underground, leading to under-documentation and a lack of understanding of truffle ecology. Truffles evolved to emit strong aromatic compounds to attract mycophagists for spore dispersal, a trait that culinary truffle harvesters [...]
Threat intensification reshapes trait-response relationships in birds and mammals
Published: 2026-07-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Predicting which species are most at risk of extinction, and by which threats, is central to effective biodiversity management (1). Trait-based frameworks, linking species traits to extinction risk, are increasingly used to predict global biodiversity trends, with applications from species-specific prioritisations (2) to estimations of global diversity loss (3). However, despite the strong [...]
Analysis of in-situ biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management in Twenty-three selected Sacred Groves of Manipur within Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot : Bio-legal aspects
Published: 2026-07-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany, Environmental Law, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
In Manipur, Sacred Groves (SGs), known as “Umang Lai," which literally means ‘forest deities’, are worshipped in forest or thick vegetation areas. A total of 365 SGs have been officially reported in Manipur, a biodiversity hotspot of India. The concept of SG is founded on the traditional religious belief systems which aid in the sustainable and restrictive utilization of resources within it. [...]
What’s in a name? Bioinformatics and the challenge of using eDNA metabarcoding to report non-indigenous species detections
Published: 2026-07-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is increasingly employed for surveillance of non-indigenous species (NIS), offering the promise of simultaneous multi-taxon de-tection, scalability, and the capacity for early detection before populations become es-tablished. The sensitivity of metabarcoding that makes it attractive for NIS surveil-lance also creates a meaningful risk of erroneous detections [...]
Insects as agents of national security: entomological biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse in agriculture and forestry threaten geopolitical stability
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Biosecurity, Entomology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
1. In early 2026, the UK Government published a report assessing how global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse represent systematic threats to UK national security through cascading impacts to food security, land use and climate-related feedbacks. 2. Recontextualising biodiversity and ecosystem health as determinants of national security offers a novel perspective on long observed [...]
A global evidence synthesis of outcomes of urban bird conservation interventions
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Ornithology
Avian populations face high concentrations of threats in urban areas. Understanding the outcomes of urban conservation interventions to tackle these threats could inform more effective evidenced-based approaches. Using an evidence synthesis and meta-analysis of peer-reviewed literature on conservation interventions to tackle four leading causes of urban bird mortality in urban areas (cat [...]
Technology should support, not sideline, locally driven conservation and restoration monitoring
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies
The choice of how to monitor conservation and restoration is not solely technical – it shapes which outcomes are valued, whose priorities define success, where resources flow, and who benefits. The shift toward tech-based monitoring, driven by demand for scalable metrics, risks incomplete ecological understanding, sidelining Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) from data ownership and [...]
Tilápia-do-Nilo (Oreochromis niloticus) e sua classificação como espécie exótica invasora no Brasil: conceitos, evidências científicas e implicações para a gestão ambiental
Published: 2026-06-29
Subjects: Biodiversity
An individual-based model for white storks (Ciconia ciconia) in Germany during breeding season
Published: 2026-06-26
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Ornithology
Understanding how habitat selection influences individual fitness is essential for predicting species responses to environmental change. Resource Selection Functions (RSFs) are widely used to quantify habitat preferences, but they often overlook individual variation and rarely link habitat use to demographic outcomes. We combined empirical habitat-selection modelling with a spatially explicit [...]
The Fish Fauna of Tubbataha Reefs is highly Biodiverse and distinctively Oceanic
Published: 2026-06-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Zoology
We surveyed the fish fauna of Tubbataha Reefs, a remote and well-protected coral reef system in the Philippines. Tubbataha is located in the Coral Triangle, the region with the highest marine biodiversity in the world, and is a no-take marine protected area. We found a total of 534 species, with the Labridae (65 species), Pomacentridae (60 species), Gobiidae (60 species), Chaetodonidae (33 [...]
robust.prioritizr: Robust Systematic Conservation Prioritization
Published: 2026-06-19
Subjects: Biodiversity, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Climate change poses significant threats to biodiversity. To ensure the long-term persistence of species, protected areas must be established in locations that will safeguard suitable habitats in the future. Although statistical models can predict where such habitats may occur under different future scenarios, designing protected areas that can effectively protect these habitats across a wide [...]
Body condition, but not reproductive success, is associated with sociality in a colonial seabird.
Published: 2026-06-19
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Ornithology, Zoology
Body condition, breeding habitat quality and access to socially acquired information are generally associated with higher fitness in social animals. In colonial species that breed in dense aggregations, such as seabirds, the combined effects of these factors on reproductive success have rarely been tested together. In this study, we investigated the relationship between fledging success, body [...]
From Footprints to Handprints: Principles for Assessing an Organisation’s Positive Impacts on Biodiversity
Published: 2026-06-18
Subjects: Biodiversity
Organisations are increasingly acknowledging their responsibility to ‘bend the curve of biodiversity loss’ by reducing negative biodiversity impacts, often referred to as biodiversity footprints. A growing number of organisations are also interested in highlighting the positive impacts they have on biodiversity, driven by research, innovation and lobbying, for example. Limited guidance currently [...]
When does modelling dependence change the target of biodiversity indicators?
Published: 2026-06-18
Subjects: Biodiversity
Recent biodiversity trend analyses have modelled uncertainty arising from temporal, spatial and phylogenetic dependence. For descriptive indicators such as the Living Planet Index (LPI) however, a prior question is whether dependence modelling improves estimation of a fixed quantity or risks changing the quantity being reported. Using the high-profile case of Johnson et al. (2024), the current [...]