Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Who should still peer-review, for whom, and with what tools?
Published: 2026-11-02
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Business, Education, Engineering, Law, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
In drafting On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin developed his thoughts through extensive correspondence with trusted colleagues, seeking feedback on ideas, manuscripts, and proofs. This informal peer-review process, like many others of its time, was based on personal trust, academic respect, and reputation rather than guided by any institution, and it helped pave the way for modern peer [...]
Modeling Mosquito Dynamics and West Nile Virus Risk in Canada: A Systematic Mapping Review of Approaches and Research Gaps
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Mosquito population dynamics are strongly shaped by environmental conditions and are central to mosquito-borne disease risk. In Canada, West Nile virus (WNV) remains the dominant mosquito-borne viral disease of public health concern, while climate change may alter mosquito distributions, seasonal activity, and the risk of WNV and other emerging mosquito-borne diseases. This systematic mapping [...]
Teaching dynamical systems modeling, analysis and simulation using a Lotka-Volterra Predation Narrative and a Numerus WebKit App
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Education, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Lotka-Volterra prey-predator (LVPP) equations are among the few ecological models that have become a standard part of the undergraduate mathematics curriculum. Rather than looking elsewhere for fresh examples, we use this familiar story as a single narrative thread along which the toolkit of dynamical systems analysis and simulation is introduced, one modeling assumption at a time. Five [...]
The unequal burden of biodiversity reporting
Published: 2026-10-15
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Discussions around the first review of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework reveal how the pursuit of more comprehensive measurement can obscure a challenge that will define the post-2030 agenda: ensuring that all countries and stakeholders are able to participate in and be represented by the systems used to evaluate global progress.
Reframing Mangroves as Socio-Ecological Coastal Infrastructure: Development and Application of a Six-Pillar Socio-Ecological Infrastructure Framework
Published: 2026-10-05
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Mangrove ecosystems are critical components of coastal socio-ecological systems, providing shoreline protection, biodiversity support, carbon sequestration, and livelihood opportunities for coastal communities. However, increasing pressures from climate change, coastal development, and environmental degradation threaten their resilience and long-term sustainability. This study proposes a [...]
Different Beta-Diversity Frameworks Reveal Contrasting Roles of Species Abundance Distributions and Spatial Aggregation
Published: 2026-09-24
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Aim Determining why community composition changes from place-to-place (spatial β-diversity) is central to advancing biodiversity theory and conservation of threatened species. Spatial β-diversity can occur most simply due to random sampling effects from the larger species-pool, such as the random placement and distribution of individuals and species. However, ecological processes can also [...]
Behavioural strategy and predator control: a coupled evolutionary predator-prey model for kiwi conservation in New Zealand
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Behavior and Ethology, Dynamic Systems, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Population Biology
Conservation management of endangered species can be enhanced by quantitative frameworks that simultaneously model behavioural adaptations alongside population dynamics. This paper presents a Coupled Evolutionary Predator-Prey Model (CEPPM) that integrates replicator dynamics from Evolutionary Game Theory with an extended Lotka-Volterra predator-prey framework, applied to kiwi (Apteryx spp.) [...]
Does roadless rule? Social-ecological consequences of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Roadless Rule, established 25 years ago to maintain 58.5 million federal forest acres in roadless condition, is one of the U.S.’s most expansive and debated natural resource experiments. We synthesize research on the effects of the Roadless Rule on biodiversity, wildfire, forest and watershed health, and economics to guide current and future decision making. Research shows the Roadless Rule [...]
Modelling irruptive species with hybrid machine learning: A case study of crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks on the Great Barrier Reef
Published: 2026-09-05
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Irruptions consist of rapid and severe increases in abundance, which for some species can result in significant economic and environmental damage. Forecasting the timing and location of these irruptions is crucial for effective management, however is difficult due to the complexity of the ecosystems in which they occur and the conditions under which they arise. Hybrid machine learning (ML) [...]
wildtag.ai: an open-access end-to-end offline AI-assisted desktop application for managing camera trap projects
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Bioinformatics, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Camera traps generate massive volumes of data, yet their decision-support potential is diluted by the bottleneck of manual processing. Automated classification has largely solved this, but classification alone does not remove the barriers to adoption: it must be coupled with the means to turn predictions into a verified, shareable dataset, which no existing tool does end-to-end, offline, and [...]
Measure what the coarsening removes: a precondition for interpreting spatial-resolution comparisons in ecological models
Published: 2026-08-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Ecological models increasingly use "scale-free" downscaled climate surfaces, assuming finer resolution predicts local response better. Even a comparison that varies resolution alone can fail to test it: over a small extent, coarsening barely changes the predictors. I provide a diagnostic detecting this before a model is fitted. Though the variance decomposition is classical, calibrating it [...]
Revisiting Taylor's law, rediscovering Smith's law: A dual framework for scaling heterogeneity
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Taylor's (1961) power law (TPL)—variance scales with mean density—originated in agricultural entomology but now spans the natural and social sciences and even the humanities. Cited over 8,000 times and featured in Nature for decades, its reach far exceeds its ecological origins. Yet TPL has been dormant in Nature for the past two decades, though it remains active in PNAS. Smith's (1938) law [...]
Ecological Patterns in Mammalian Vocal Frequencies: Evidence Across Body Sizes and Habitats
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Vocalisations in mammals are an important sensory modality that is used for various purposes in communication, courtship, territorial display, navigation, prey detection, predator avoidance, reproduction, and social coordination. These various call functions are differentiated from each other through certain properties. Call spectral properties are influenced by anatomical constraints, especially [...]
Insect movement and spatial dynamics determine trap crop effectiveness
Published: 2026-07-13
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Trap cropping diverts pest pressure away from cash crops, yet its effectiveness depends on pest movement behaviour and the retention or removal processes that occur after insects reach trap plants. We develop a one-dimensional movement-based modelling framework in which pest trajectories follow a biased correlated random walk within a spatially structured field containing trap-crop interception [...]
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 [...]