Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity
The past, present and future of online biodiversity knowledge systems
Published: 2025-09-24
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
In recent decades, there has been an exponential increase in the availability and accessibility of biodiversity data and a profusion of portals, tools, and platforms through which to utilise it. This reflects the extensive variety of challenges biodiversity data is being used to address and the need to enhance decision-making by different stakeholder groups. Whilst this has provided unprecedented [...]
GhostNetZero: AI for Detecting Marine Ghost Nets
Published: 2025-09-23
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Databases and Information Systems, Environmental Monitoring, Marine Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Sustainability
Abandoned, lost, or otherwise discarded fishing gears (ALDFG), commonly referred to as ghost nets, pose a persistent global threat to marine biodiversity. Constructed from durable synthetic polymers, ghost nets remain intact for decades, continuing to entangle and kill marine organisms while damaging habitats and imposing economic burdens on fisheries and coastal communities. Despite their [...]
A Unified and Predictive Measure of Functional Diversity
Published: 2025-09-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Despite the critical role of functional diversity (FD) in understanding ecological systems and processes, its robust quantification remains a significant challenge. A long-held view in the field is that it is not possible to capture its three facets---functional richness, functional divergence, and functional evenness---in a single index. This perspective has prompted recent proposals for FD [...]
What defines an urban butterfly? Life history traits and habitat associations of butterflies in urban environments
Published: 2025-09-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Urban areas are encroaching onto semi-natural areas the world over, driving species assemblages into homogenisation. A better understanding of the life history and habitat association traits can help support management efforts to improve urban biodiversity. Urban areas present an ecological filter, limiting the number of species present compared to the wider countryside. What characteristics help [...]
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 [...]