Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biology
From Individuals to Networks: The Role of Variation in Plant-Pollinator Communities' Responses to Global Change
Published: 2026-05-27
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
1. Plant–pollinator communities are critical for biodiversity, ecosystem function, and human well-being. Yet our ability to predict divergent species responses to environmental change, the risk of abrupt collapse, or the potential for recovery in plant-pollinator systems remains limited. 2. Here, we argue that individual variation within species may play a critical but underappreciated role in [...]
Inferring genomic landscapes with the integrative sequentially Markov coalescent (iSMC)
Published: 2026-05-27
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Biology, Computational Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences
The integrative Sequentially Markovian Coalescent (iSMC) is an extension of the sequentially Markovian Coalescent (SMC) model allowing for parameter heterogeneity along the genome, such as recombination and mutation rates. Heterogeneous parameters follow an autocorrelation process that modulates the genealogical process, extending the hidden state space and adding as few as two extra parameters [...]
A viral mimic increases body temperature but does not affect mass or inflammation in a wild frugivorous bat
Published: 2026-05-27
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences
The acute phase response is a component of innate immunity that helps fight infections. Understanding variation in this response is particularly critical in bats, which can be asymptomatic hosts of pathogens that cause disease in other animals. Although bats are most famously tolerant of viruses, research on the bat acute phase response has focused predominantly on bacterial antigens. To improve [...]
A systematic review on the effectiveness of salmonid spawning habitat improvements, and recommendations to potentially increase productivity of depressed Newfoundland Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) populations
Published: 2026-05-22
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Colossal Disinformation
Published: 2026-05-20
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
I have a position: de-extinction is almost impossible, however, deëxtinction, a word invented by the world’s first “de-extinction” company Colossal Laboratories & Bioscience’s can be (Max 2025); hereafter Colossal, which they define as the creation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that appear and act like extinct species, is possible. It’s branding, not science. I and other critics of [...]
Cold treatment benefits Mediterranean orchid seedlings cultivated in vitro
Published: 2026-05-11
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences
1. Effective ex situ propagation is increasingly critical for the conservation and restoration of terrestrial orchids threatened by habitat loss, over-collection and climate change. However, large-scale propagation remains constrained by developmental bottlenecks during the transition from protocorms to established plantlets with storage organs. Cold exposure is often recommended to improve [...]
Assessing the sensitivity and robustness of the Living Planet Index through simulated population dynamics: strengths, stability, and challenges
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Understanding population change through time is crucial for effective conservation of biodiversity. The Living Planet Index (LPI) is a key indicator for tracking global species abundance trends under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, offering a picture of population change over time. However, the sensitivity of the index to zero values or to the number of missing values in time [...]
The evolutionary link between food, condiments and medicine
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Anthropology, Biodiversity, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Food Science, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The deep relationship between humans and plants is of great interest to ethnobotanists, human ecologists, and evolutionary biologists. Humans have incorporated thousands of plant species into both traditional medicine and our diets, as foods and condiments. Many of these provide not only calories but also micronutrients and other bioactive compounds that contribute to health [1]. The boundaries [...]
Making survival spatial: an integrated model for territory occupancy and capture-recapture data
Published: 2026-05-05
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Knowledge about spatial variation in survival is central to understanding population dynamics and guiding conservation, yet assessing it is very hard. This limitation arises because capture-mark-recapture (CMR) data required for such inference must be collected over large spatial extents, which is logistically demanding and seldom possible. By contrast, territory occupancy (TO) data are typically [...]
Does the substrate on which cryptogams grow matter for limno-terrestrial meiofauna?
Published: 2026-05-04
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Cryptogam habitats support a wide range of limno-terrestrial meiofauna, but the factors that shape their communities are still not well understood. The physical substrate that cryptogams grow on (e.g., soil, the base of a tree, or its trunk) can influence local moisture, temperature, and nutrient conditions, yet its role in structuring meiofaunal assemblages has rarely been tested systematically. [...]
Sex differential effects of developmental heat stress on life-history and reproductive traits
Published: 2026-05-01
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Global warming has led to increased mean global temperatures with projections suggesting continued warming throughout this century, posing an escalating threat to biological systems worldwide. Ectotherms are most vulnerable to this change as heat stress conditions can have severe implications on their development, mating interactions, and fitness. However, the sex-specific effects of [...]
Representational limits in detecting ecological change
Published: 2026-04-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biology, Biotechnology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Food Science, Forest Sciences, Genetics and Genomics, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Laboratory and Basic Science Research Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Microbiology, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Other Life Sciences, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Physiology, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Systems Biology
Detecting ecological change remains a persistent challenge, even in systems with extensive monitoring data and increasingly sophisticated analytical tools. Uncertainty is usually attributed to stochasticity, limited observations, or imperfect models. Here, I argue that an additional and largely overlooked constraint arises from representational limits: systematic ways in which graphs, indicators, [...]
Dwarf males function as males but retain female-biased transcriptional profiles in an androdioecious barnacle
Published: 2026-04-24
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences
Sexual systems exhibit remarkable diversity, yet how alternative reproductive strategies are implemented at the level of gene expression remains poorly understood. In androdioecious species, males coexist with hermaphrodites and function exclusively as sperm donors, raising the question of whether the males’ transcriptional profiles are fully masculinized or retain features of hermaphroditic [...]
The promise and challenge of environmental epigenomics in a rapidly changing world
Published: 2026-04-22
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biology, Environmental Studies, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
There has been a fast-paced research effort on the role of epigenetic mechanisms in facilitating organisms’ capacity to cope with rapid environmental change, highlighted by several recent reviews and special issues on this topic. What is important, along with this momentum, is to pause and reflect on both the promises and challenges of linking detailed molecular mechanisms to broad patterns of [...]
Plastic shifts in thermal preference and thermoregulation strategy across ontogeny in an invasive fly
Published: 2026-04-21
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology
Behavioural thermoregulation allows ectotherms to escape extreme or seek optimal temperatures. Its precision can impact survival and fitness under changing conditions and its plasticity can be an adaptive strategy when the plasticity of thermal limits is insufficient to buffer against warming. We explore the developmental and intergenerational plasticity of behavioural thermoregulation strategies [...]