Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity
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 a major driver of biodiversity loss, but may also have positive impacts on biodiversity. Limited guidance exists for how positive biodiversity impacts should be quantified, presenting a risk to organisations and biodiversity more widely. Here we introduce the ‘biodiversity handprint’ framework, enabling organisations to measure and communicate the additional positive [...]
When does modelling dependence change the interpretation of biodiversity indicators?
Published: 2026-06-18
Subjects: Biodiversity
Recent biodiversity trend analyses have modelled uncertainty arising from temporal, spatial and phylogenetic dependence. For primarily descriptive indicators such as the Living Planet Indices (LPI) however, a prior question is whether dependence modelling improves estimation of a fixed quantity or actually changes the quantity being reported. Using the high-profile case of Johnson et al. (2024), [...]
Parasitic zoosporic eufungi: taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity, ecology, and impacts
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Parasitology, Plant Pathology
Zoosporic eufungi (i.e., chytrids, sensu lato) comprise a phylogenetically and ecologically diverse guild of early diverging fungal phyla (Chytridiomycota, Monoblepharomycota, Neocallimastigomycota, Blastocladiomycota, Sanchytriomycota, Aphelidiomycota, Cryptomycota/Rozellomycota, and Olpidiomycota). While most circumscribed zoosporic eufungi function as decomposers of recalcitrant materials, [...]
History, challenges, and opportunities in the study of entomopathogenic fungi in tropical regions: Borneo as a model ecosystem
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Fungal pathogens tend to have a poor reputation as a disease among the general public and policy-makers. However, entomopathogenic fungi, adapted to infect and kill arthropod hosts, play a wide range of roles in ecosystems, provide key ecosystem services, and offer interesting models to understand pathogen interaction networks. Tropical regions provide especially favorable conditions for [...]
Towards integrating interaction networks into global parasite conservation: insights from bats, bat flies and their fungal associates
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Parasites are a key conservation blind spot. Even though parasitism is a widespread ecological lifestyle, most parasite diversity remains unknown, as do the interactions in which they are involved. Some parasite species are involved in multitrophic interactions, meaning they span multiple trophic levels. These complex interactions are generally understudied, and conservation frameworks fail to [...]
Projecting the vertical disassembly of the bumble bee pollination network of the Southern Rocky Mountains
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Climate warming and land-use change are reshuffling the distribution of life on Earth. This change is altering the structure of species interaction networks, which ultimately enable the persistence of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Forecasting change in species interactions is a central challenge for biodiversity conservation, but there are numerous methodological challenges associated with [...]
Blitz the Gap: a nation-wide effort to guide citizen science toward the needs of biodiversity science
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
To resolve persistent biases in conservation assessments and forecasting, we urgently need more systematic collection of biodiversity data. Citizen (or, community) science, despite its reputation for unstructured data, holds vast potential for data collection initiatives at scales and speeds unmatched by traditional monitoring. Here, we introduce Blitz the Gap, a pan-Canadian initiative to guide [...]
A data-driven assessment of the global community structure of pelagic zooplankton biomass
Published: 2026-06-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Marine Biology, Statistical Models
Aim: Zooplankton often dominate pelagic metazoan biomass, making them a central component of marine ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles. In this study, we aimed to: (1) provide biomass distributions of zooplankton functional types to support marine ecosystem monitoring and biogeochemical model evaluation; and (2) investigate regional and seasonal patterns of biomass across marine zooplankton [...]