Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biology
Will AI inadvertently push a natural history renaissance?
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
As AI automates coding and statistical modelling, quantitative ecologists face an existential crisis. But automated analysis is only as good as the data it is fed, shifting the scarce resource from analysis to expert observation. Naturalists and field ecologists, increasingly ‘endangered’ species in the modern era, may experience a resurgence, if institutions act.
Noise as a global change driver: a meta-analysis of its fitness consequences for birds
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
Anthropogenic noise is a widespread yet underappreciated global pollutant. Despite mounting evidence that noise may affect the physiology and behaviour of birds, its consequences for fitness, and thus its capacity to impact population and evolutionary processes, remain unclear. Here, we conduct a pre-registered systematic review and meta-analysis of the causal effects of anthropogenic noise on [...]
From Temperate to Boreal -- Untangling the Importance of Environment, Space, and Species Co-distributions in Forest Plant Distributions
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aim Quantify how environmental conditions, spatial autocorrelation, and species co-distributions shape forest plant community at regional scale. Location Southern Québec, Canada, between the 45th and 53rd parallels. Period From 1986 to 2000. Major taxa studied Vascular plants, mosses, and lichens. Methods We analyzed the presence-absence of 224 plant species across 28,210 ecological observation [...]
As open as possible, as protected as necessary: Proportionate governance for environmental DNA under the BBNJ Agreement
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Environmental Law, Marine Biology, Molecular Genetics
The Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement) establishes new arrangements for activities involving marine genetic resources and the sharing of resulting benefits. Direct pathways to resource utilisation are most apparent in conventional genetic workflows where whole organisms or tissues are collected [...]
The e14 cryptic prophage belongs to a temperate phage lineage distributed across Escherichia and retains genes with potential anti-phage defence functions
Published: 2026-10-22
Subjects: Bacteriology, Bioinformatics, Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Microbiology
The e14 region of Escherichia coli str. K-12 is a cryptic prophage that retains functional excision and integration machinery despite extensive loss of phage reproductive functions. However, its evolutionary relationship to other bacteriophages remains poorly resolved. Here, we identify related prophages across four Escherichia species, alongside related, independently isolated bacteriophages. [...]
From Risk to Application: What Critically Endangered means for the world's coral reefs
Published: 2026-10-22
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences
The first global risk assessment of coral reef ecosystems has found all fully assessed, shallow-water (photic) coral reef ecosystems are at an extremely high risk of ecological collapse in the next 50 years. This Critically Endangered risk assignment under the Red List of Ecosystems (RLE) applies to 122 of the 127 coral reef ecosystems (ecoregions) and was assessed by regional expert teams, [...]
The Doñana Digital Twin: integrating heterogeneous data into iterative, mechanistically grounded forecasts of biodiversity change
Published: 2026-10-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Integrative Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Natural ecosystems are increasingly impacted by multiple global-change drivers, and these impacts propagate non-linearly from individuals to populations and to communities. To anticipate ecological change under such complexities and mitigate negative impacts, we require integrated, mechanistically-grounded approaches to prediction. For mitigation strategies to be adaptive, predictions must also [...]
Beyond the Vertebrate Model: Insights from Insect Stress Responses
Published: 2026-10-15
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Animal Studies, Behavioral Neurobiology, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Genetics, Molecular Genetics, Systems Biology, Zoology
Stress responses are essential for survival, coordinating behavioural, physiological and molecular adjustments that enable organisms to cope with challenges. Most research has focused on vertebrates, leaving invertebrate stress physiology comparatively underexplored, particularly in insects. In this review, we compare insect and vertebrate stress responses to examine what insects reveal about the [...]
Frequent recovery of Sydowia polyspora from brown spot needle blight-associated loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) needles in Alabama
Published: 2026-10-13
Subjects: Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Plant Pathology
Sydowia polyspora is a widespread conifer-associated fungus that can function as an endophyte, saprophyte, or opportunistic pathogen, but its occurrence in southeastern pine systems remains poorly characterized. During surveys of symptomatic loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) in Washington and Cullman counties, Alabama, fungal isolates morphologically consistent with Sydowia spp. were recovered from [...]
Where are the hake going? How age, environmental signals, and shelf habitat shape Pacific Hake (Merluccius productus) summer distribution
Published: 2026-10-13
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology
Sustainably managing a multinational fishery on a transboundary, relatively long-lived and migratory fish stock is challenging, especially in a changing ocean environment. In a warming world, Pacific hake (Merluccius productus, Merluccidae), jointly managed by the U.S. and Canada, have been hypothesized to move north. However, in recent years the proportion of Pacific hake in the northern part of [...]
INSTAR: reporting items for invertebrate welfare in research
Published: 2026-09-24
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Concern for the welfare of research animals has expanded rapidly across taxa, with increasing focus on invertebrates. Recent evidence for affective experience in cephalopod, decapod and insect taxa, alongside shifts in public attitudes and regulation, has raised the stakes of how invertebrates are used and reported, yet no reporting standard adequately addresses them. Here we present INSTAR [...]
As invasions slow down, biosecurity must move inward
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Animal Studies, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies
Rates of non-native-species first records and establishment are slowing. This is encouraging, but it changes rather than resolves the biosecurity problem imposed by biological invasions. As external establishments decline while national non-native-species pools remain compositionally distinct, a growing share of remaining invasion opportunity should lie in redistribution among connected [...]
Multiple genetic routes to pelvic spine loss in brook stickleback
Published: 2026-09-10
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Pelvic spine loss has evolved repeatedly in stickleback species and represents an intriguing opportunity to study genetically parallel adaptation. While previous work has identified key loci associated with this trait, the extent to which different populations rely on the same genetic mechanisms remains unclear. The genetic basis of pelvic spine loss in Culaea inconstans (Kirtland 1840) has only [...]
A harmonised dataset of adult Culex pipiens mosquitoes from 17 administrative Italian regions, 2008–2022
Published: 2026-09-07
Subjects: Biology, Entomology
Culex pipiens s.l. is the primary vector of West Nile Virus in Italy. Despite the availability of abundant long-term surveillance data on adult Cx. pipiens observations in Italy, historical records are often fragmented across regional repositories with heterogeneous formats and metadata. This work introduces a comprehensive, harmonised dataset of adult Cx. pipiens observations collected across 17 [...]
What goes up, must come down: air–soil microbiome connectivity and its implications for ecosystem functioning
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Microbiology
Soils harbor Earth's largest reservoir of microbial diversity, yet enormous numbers of microorganisms are continuously aerosolized, transported through the atmosphere, and redeposited across landscapes. Although soil and the atmosphere have largely been studied separately, here, we propose a conceptual framework that views soils and the atmosphere as a coupled microbiome linked by bidirectional [...]