Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity
An Evaluation of 15 Years of Community-Based Monitoring in Forest Stewardship Council Certified Forest Areas in Southern Tanzania: Insights from Mammal and Indicator Bird Species
Published: 2026-04-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Community-based Research, Forest Management
Certified community-managed forests are rare in East Africa, and the use of community-based biomonitoring to track biodiversity change in such forests is rarer still. We analyse 15 years of community-collected data on mammals and indicator bird species from 10 village land forest reserves in southern coastal Tanzania, managed under a Forest Stewardship Council certification scheme facilitated by [...]
Molecular identification and diversity assessment of Tyrrhenian Romulea species (iridaceae)
Published: 2026-04-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany, Plant Sciences
Taxonomic assignments based only on morphology are often insufficient for delimiting species, particularly in polyploid complexes with extensive morphological overlap. This limitation hinders biogeographic and conservation issues. The genus Romulea (Iridaceae), distributed across Africa and the Mediterranean Basin, exemplifies this challenge. Despite its remarkable diversity, Mediterranean [...]
Reporting on the extent of natural ecosystems under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
Published: 2026-04-09
Subjects: Biodiversity
Unlike its predecessors, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework emphasises ecosystems in its targets, goals, and monitoring framework. This novelty means that Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity are now expected to report on this component of biodiversity for the first time. Here we surveyed how Parties reported on Headline Indicator A.2 (Extent of Natural Ecosystems) in [...]
Multi-scale collapse of coral cover under climate change
Published: 2026-04-08
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Biology, Dynamic Systems, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Marine Biology, Mathematics, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Survival Analysis, Systems Biology
Projecting ecosystem trajectories under future climates is critical for conservation planning, yet remains constrained by uncertainty arising from limited data, ecological complexity, and biological and environmental variability. Variability, when disentangled from uncertainty, offers critical insights into population and community dynamics. For example, enhanced vital rates (growth, survival, [...]
Unraveling contaminant effects on biodiversity across scales: the macroecotoxicology perspective
Published: 2026-04-08
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
With the spread of contaminants across the globe, ecosystems are increasingly exposed to pollutants at varying levels of biological organization. The effects of a wide range of contaminants on individuals have been extensively studied within the discipline of ecotoxicology, but understanding the generality of species’ responses across taxa and ecosystems remains a major challenge. This is because [...]
Diversity and co-occurrence patterns of wood inhabiting insects along a tropical forest regeneration gradient
Published: 2026-04-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
More than 90% of global carbon released during dead wood decomposition comes from the tropics, where insects contribute significantly to this process, especially in lowland rainforests. Understanding community assembly of dead wood-inhabiting insects is therefore important. We investigated diversity patterns between habitats and host trees, and co-occurrence of wood-inhabiting ants, termites, and [...]
Network architecture and vulnerability of macroalgal epiphyte-host interactions in Caribbean coastal ecosystems: implications for marine conservation
Published: 2026-04-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Background and Aims Tropical coastal marine ecosystems depend critically on macroalgal epiphyte–host interaction networks to sustain biodiversity, primary production, and ecosystem services, yet the architecture and vulnerability of these networks remain poorly characterised in the Caribbean. This study aimed to characterise the topological structure of the epiphyte–host interaction network in [...]
Integrating ecoacoustic monitoring with machine learning to survey black-and-white ruffed lemurs (Varecia variegata) in Madagascar's Corridor Forestier d'Ambositra Vondrozo (COFAV)
Published: 2026-04-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Zoology
Black-and-white ruffed lemurs (Varecia variegata) are a Critically Endangered species limited to the fragmented eastern Malagasy rainforests. The importance of their conservation is underscored by their vital seed dispersal and pollinator niches; they are a keystone species and indicator of forest health. Little is known of their distribution in the Corridor Forestier d'Ambositra Vondrozo [...]
Secondary Forests Matter: Botanical Diversity and Structure Supporting Plecturocebus Oenanthe Persistence in Fragmented San Martín Forests, Peru
Published: 2026-04-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Plecturocebus oenanthe (Callicebinae) is Critically Endangered and restricted to fragmented premontane forests of San Martín, Peru. Severe habitat loss and altered forest structure threaten population persistence, and baseline ecological knowledge of habitat requirements is lacking. We characterized floristic composition and forest structural attributes across occupied habitats to identify [...]
Crop species and climate shape amphibian communities and conservation significance of coffee agroforests in the Western Ghats
Published: 2026-04-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Shade coffee agroforests are recognized as refuges for biodiversity and potential allies in conservation across the human-modified tropics. However, biodiversity is strongly influenced by coffee cultivation methods and climates, both of which vary widely and are increasingly dynamic. In this context, one significant but understudied change is the shift in cultivated species from arabica (Coffea [...]
Male scent-marks predict fitness via socio-spatial dominance, but not female choice, in a lacertid lizard
Published: 2026-04-03
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Zoology
Chemical communication via scent-marks is widely recognised as a key mediator of sexual selection in lizards, yet their role remains contentious because we mostly ignore how scent-mark composition ultimately impacts male fitness in nature. Male scent-marks are often proposed to function as condition-dependent honest sexual signals mediating female choice, but an arising alternative hypothesis is [...]
On the role of biogeography in the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis
Published: 2026-04-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
In the first half of the 20th century, the Modern Synthesis (MS) integrated Mendelian genetics, paleontology, systematics, natural history, common descent, and natural selection. Although the MS has been the guiding paradigm of evolutionary studies since 1950, by the beginning of the 21st century, a new synthesis incorporated themes such as evo-devo, phenotypic plasticity, and epigenetic [...]
Range-wide pangenomics reveals vulnerability and adaptation in a sedentary bird
Published: 2026-03-31
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics
Structural genetic variants are known to underlie evolutionary adaptations, but have never been evaluated across the entire geographic range of a species. We constructed the first range-wide pangenome to evaluate how such variants may influence conservation efforts of the Montezuma quail (Cyrtonyx montezumae). Profiles of local adaptation, population structure, and genomic diversity all support a [...]
Trophic niche structure of invertebrate-eating bats and birds in West African rice agroecosystems revealed by DNA metabarcoding
Published: 2026-03-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Life Sciences
Knowledge of animal community diets is essential for understanding ecosystem functioning. Bats and birds are important groups of invertebrate predators, managing their populations. However, the diets of West African species and the mechanisms shaping them remain poorly understood. In this study, we investigated these mechanisms in agricultural landscapes of Guinea-Bissau using metabarcoding and [...]
Synergies and trade-offs between tree cover expansion efforts within and outside forests to achieve climate, biodiversity and human well-being outcomes
Published: 2026-03-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Studies, Nature and Society Relations, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
Increasing tree cover is hailed as a leading climate mitigation strategy, yet there is increasing evidence that there may be trade-offs between trees in different parts of the landscape. Existing science, policy, and practice on natural climate solutions (NCS) assumes that trees outside of forests, for example on farms, homesteads, or in urban areas, are synergistic with forest conservation: if [...]