Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity
Intensification pathways modulate Eragrostis plana invasion trajectories in natural grassland
Published: 2026-11-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Natural Resources and Conservation, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Management pathways aimed at increasing forage supply and livestock productivity are often proposed in natural grasslands, but their consequences for established invasive grasses remain uncertain. We evaluated trajectories of an established Eragrostis plana Nees (Poaceae) invasion under contrasting pathways in the Brazilian Pampa. From August 2014 to May 2017, vegetation was monitored in eight [...]
Widespread human alteration of natural barriers threatens Pacific salmon biodiversity
Published: 2026-11-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Anthropogenic barriers such as dams are a pervasive threat to freshwater diversity, yet human-mediated increases in aquatic connectivity can also have unintended consequences. Natural, flow-dependent barriers such as waterfalls structure the upstream limits of Pacific salmon and steelhead by completely or partially obstructing passage. Across the Pacific Northwest, natural barriers were modified [...]
Microclimate loggers: A matter of shielding… or wrapping?
Published: 2026-11-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Climate, Environmental Monitoring, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Direct sunlight can heat the sensor, housing, and shield of microclimate loggers overestimating air temperature readings as a result. This raises the question of how loggers should be shielded. We tested whether extra shield layers, ventilation holes inside the shielding and a wrap of aluminium foil around the logger housing reduce the error of one of the most commonly used microclimate loggers, [...]
The cost of a promise – the species conservation expenditure needed to meet Australia’s zero extinction target in the marine environment
Published: 2026-11-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy
The Global Biodiversity Framework has the goal of halting the human-induced extinction of species. An immense number of species are threatened with extinction, the task confronting nations is great, and the cost highly uncertain. We collated cost data for marine species recovery programs in the United States where there have been some successful threatened species recoveries. Based on the [...]
Integrating the concept of acoustic diversity into the functional ecology framework
Published: 2026-11-11
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The ecological relevance of sounds in ecosystems has gained increasing attention in the recent decade. While ecoacoustics seeks to study these roles, a majority of studies to date have focused on using Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) for species monitoring or calculating integrative ecoacoustic indices as rapid proxies for biological diversity. This paper proposes an ecological perspective on [...]
Evolutionary origins of a latitudinal plant height gradient
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Latitudinal gradients are among the most pervasive patterns in biodiversity, yet their evolutionary origins remain poorly understood, especially in plants. Here we identify a latitudinal gradient in plant height within cacti, an iconic and rapidly evolving plant family spanning the Americas, with taller species inhabiting warmer, lower latitudes. To uncover how this gradient arose, we [...]
Thirty years after “The Naturalists Are Dying Off”: Regrounding Conservation Biology in a predictive era
Published: 2026-11-06
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Thirty years after Reed Noss warned that naturalists were dying off, conservation biology has entered an era of unprecedented analytical capacity, driven by global biodiversity databases, remote sensing, and artificial intelligence. This transformation has coincided with declining visibility and support for field-based natural history and taxonomy. The resulting losses extend beyond primary [...]
Co-producing biodiversity data infrastructures: Mexico’s Agrobiodiversity Information System as a case study
Published: 2026-11-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Science and Technology Studies
Agrobiodiversity data, rooted in place and in community, expose tensions around sustaining the involvement of data collectors across the data lifecycle and embedding their context-specific expertise as data are mobilized beyond their sites of origin. These challenges extend to biodiversity data infrastructures that integrate diverse socio-ecological information. We examine how a co-production [...]
Cave spider trophic dynamics, network structure and competition: cave zone, taxonomy and bat presence drive hypogean interactions
Published: 2026-11-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Zoology
Cave ecosystems are shaped by unique environmental constraints, influencing species distributions and trophic interactions. Spiders are often the dominant predators in caves, but their diet is restricted by local parameters that likely intensify competition and other intraguild interactions, including the confinement of energy flows to detrital and chemoautotrophic pathways. The hypogean [...]
Evaluating AI agents on the IUCN Red List assessor exam: Tradeoffs and opportunities for AI assistants in extinction risk assessments
Published: 2026-11-03
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Computer Sciences
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the world's most widely used system for assessing the global extinction risk of species, underpinning conservation policy and action worldwide. However, due to funding constraints and limited assessor capacity, the Red List faces significant gaps in species coverage (less than 20% of plant species have been assessed) and challenges in keeping assessments [...]
Recognising patterns of vulnerability in a seagrass-dependent social-ecological system to support place-based management
Published: 2026-11-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Human Geography, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy
Seagrass social-ecological systems are increasingly demonstrated to contribute to the well-being, livelihood opportunities and local economies of millions of people across coastlines globally. Seagrasses are also recognised for supporting endangered, culturally significant biodiversity and fisheries species. In the Palk Bay, Tamil Nadu region of southern India, we use a vulnerability framework to [...]
The spatial dynamics of nutrient limitation in communities of generalist predators of crop pests
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Nutrition, Zoology
Generalist arthropod predators vitally control crop pests, but their ability to perform this role relies on them obtaining sufficient nutrients within simplified crop environments. Field margins are thought to provide habitat and resources for predators, such as ground beetles, but how far into fields this provision extends is poorly understood. Since arthropod nutrient contents can vary [...]
A targeted metacollection of Nordic gardens reveals horticultural endemism of threatened woody plants
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany
There is huge potential for bringing together international networks of Botanic Gardens and Arboreta and pooling their resources for coordinated action to conserve threatened species. Realising this potential requires effectively managing complex, largely independently acquired data for tens of thousands of species and many more individual plants with different wild or cultivated origins. Here we [...]
Genomic costs without functional consequences in short-range endemics trapped in evolutionary refugia
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Evolution, Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics
Species with small geographic ranges are often concentrated in evolutionary refugia, landscapes that support viable populations through significant climate oscillations. Under long-term stable environments and with small population size, species are predicted to evolve narrow climatic tolerances, lose genetic diversity and accumulate harmful mutations. Together, these predictions suggest that [...]
Mapping actor diversity is essential for advancing global seagrass conservation
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Human Geography, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy
Seagrass conservation is increasingly organised around global agendas for protection, restoration, climate mitigation, biodiversity recovery and nature-positive finance. The actor systems that determine whether these agendas succeed remain poorly described, if at all. We developed a heuristic actor-centred framework for seagrass social-ecological systems, combining a literature scan with [...]