Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biology
Evaluating population resilience to anticipated stressors using integrated population modeling: a case study of Peregrine Falcons
Published: 2026-03-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Population Biology
Reliable estimates of demographic parameters are fundamental to understanding population dynamics and guiding conservation efforts. Integrated population models (IPMs) provide a powerful framework for jointly analyzing diverse data sources to estimate demographic rates and population trajectories, evaluate resilience to environmental stressors, and project population dynamics info the future. We [...]
Assessing the contribution of greenhouse gas emissions towards organisational biodiversity footprints
Published: 2026-03-15
Subjects: Biology
Organisations play a key role in addressing climate change and biodiversity loss, which are closely connected. Biodiversity footprinting has initially suggested that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions may contribute to a large proportion of many organisation’s biodiversity impacts. If true, mitigating GHG emissions could help organisations to tackle their climate and biodiversity liabilities in [...]
Who leads diversity efforts in science? Evidence of minority tax in DEI committees of international learned societies in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Published: 2026-03-10
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Learned societies are key in shaping scientific communities, yet many face inequities rooted in their histories and governance. The inequities can be addressed by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committees or officers, but little is known about these organisational structures. We present the first analysis of 70 DEI structures across 50 international ecology and evolutionary biology [...]
Composite virulence: useful metric or conceptual trap?
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Animal Experimentation and Research, Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, Immunopathology, Life Sciences, Medical Microbiology, Microbiology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Immunology and Infectious Disease, Parasitic Diseases, Parasitology, Pathogenic Microbiology, Plant Pathology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Zoology
Virulence, the harm an infection causes to its host, is a cornerstone concept in ecology and evolution, yet it remains difficult to quantify because infection impact is multidimensional, dynamic, and context-dependent. Infections can reduce host performance through multiple, partially redundant routes (including mortality, fecundity loss, behavioural impairment, and physiological disruption), [...]
Anergiobiosis: a testable framework for microbial life under extreme energy flux limitation
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Microbiology
"Aeonophily" was recently suggested as a new category of extremophily for ultra-slow-growing subsurface microorganisms. This terminology misdescribes the physiological state of slow growth as potential extremophilic specialization. Unlike temperature or salinity, time cannot be manipulated to demonstrate a growth optimum, making aeonophily untestable as currently framed. We propose [...]
A systematic map and comprehensive database of animal organ sizes
Published: 2026-02-12
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
The relationship between individual organ size and overall body size in animals is a fundamental biological phenomenon that spans multiple disciplines. However, a comprehensive synthesis of the sources of variation in organ-specific scaling remains lacking, even among mammals, the most extensively studied vertebrate group. We developed a systematic map and compiled a large database of paired [...]
Life cycle complexity drives variation in thermal tolerance and plasticity
Published: 2026-02-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Accumulating evidence suggests that heat tolerance varies substantially across insect development, yet patterns of variation remain difficult to generalise across species. We discuss how the diversity of insect developmental strategies shapes both the intensity and predictability of thermal environments across ontogeny, and how this likely generates variation in heat tolerance, plasticity, and [...]
The origins and diversification of hummingbird pollination in Bromeliaceae
Published: 2026-02-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Plant Sciences
Bromeliaceae are a model group for understanding explosive Neotropical diversification, combining remarkable ecological breadth and high species richness, despite relatively recent evolutionary origins. Multiple drivers are hypothesised to accelerate bromeliad diversification, and hummingbird pollination is frequently proposed to be among the strongest. However, our understanding has been limited [...]
A framework for understanding how and why animals die
Published: 2026-01-19
Subjects: Biology
Mortality is a fundamental demographic process that shapes both populations and ecological communities. Yet, how and why animals die is just as important as the simple fact of whether or not they do. A richer understanding about drivers of death across taxa is needed to advance ecological theory and to improve conservation practice. Both require identifying the causal pathways that lead to death; [...]
Phylogenetic Perspectives on Heavy Metal Hyperaccumulation in Fungal Lineages
Published: 2026-01-19
Subjects: Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Microbiology, Other Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
Across the fungal kingdom, the ability to hyperaccumulate and sequester toxic heavy metals from the environment appears to have evolved multiple times. Although in plants, animals, and bacteria the evolution of heavy metal hyperaccumulation is well studied, and despite potential applications of hyperaccumulation in mycoremediation, fungi are under-investigated. Here, we compile a novel dataset [...]
The interplay between epigenetic mechanisms and deleterious mutations: implications for fitness, evolution and conservation
Published: 2026-01-13
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics
Understanding the causal effects of genetic mutations is essential for explaining fitness variation, forecasting evolutionary trajectories and assessing extinction risk, yet remains a fundamental challenge, particularly in natural populations. While amino acid substitutions can alter protein structure and function, mutations affecting gene regulation can also have significant fitness [...]
Bridging Science and Policy: A Global Review of Socio-ecological Indicators Guiding Biodiversity Action
Published: 2026-01-13
Subjects: Biology, Community-based Research, Environmental Monitoring, Human Ecology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Nature and Society Relations, Other Political Science, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability
1. Biodiversity continues to decline despite a proliferation of indicators intended to inform conservation policy. We asked which socio-ecological indicators are actually reaching decision-makers, how they are used, and where critical gaps persist. 2. Following a scoping-review protocol and PRISMA workflow, we screened 906 documents in Web of Science and Scopus and analyzed 43 studies that [...]
Neuroethology of Corpse-Directed Behaviors in Bees
Published: 2026-01-02
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences
Across taxa, social animals inevitably encounter dying or dead conspecifics and respond in patterned ways, yet the mechanisms underlying these behaviors remain understudied. Bees offer a powerful comparative system for exploring the neuroethology of corpse-directed behaviors. Across the bee phylogeny, sociality has been gained and lost multiple times, resulting in species that range from solitary [...]
Evaluating the vulnerability of critical early life stages in plants during heat extremes
Published: 2025-12-31
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Plants, their seeds, and their gametes show remarkable resilience and responsiveness to environmental conditions. However, worsening climate change with more severe and frequent extreme climatic events, like heatwaves and hot droughts, will likely push beyond physiological limits of many species. If such events occur during important points of development and reproduction – rather than mature [...]
An analysis of passerine egg traits across the city mosaic: Urbanisation does not affect egg size and pigmentation patterns
Published: 2025-12-24
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
1. Rapid urbanisation provides remarkable opportunities to study how sudden, extreme changes impact wildlife. Compared to natural areas, cities are characterised by factors affecting both abiotic (e.g. climate, pollution, habitat fragmentation) and biotic (e.g. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), species composition, phenology) components of the ecosystem, ultimately changing the [...]