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Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Medicine and Health Sciences

Ecological Kinetics and Evolutionary Dynamics of Antibiotic Resistance in Complex Environments

Fernando Baquero, Teresa M Coque, Jeronimo Rodríguez-Beltrán, et al.

Published: 2025-08-28
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are common in the natural environment, including the microbiota of animal and human hosts. The local physical, chemical, and biological conditions of environmental patches and matrices vary in both qualitative and quantitative aspects. Often, these conditions diffuse in gradients, creating intersections that can either facilitate or inhibit the spread and evolution [...]

Cell Wall Bioactive Molecules as Signaling and Effector Agents in Bacterial Physiology and Virulence

Fernando Baquero, Juan A. Ayala, Rafael Cantón

Published: 2025-08-26
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences

The molecules that make up the bacterial cell wall should be seen not only as passive structural components of the murein sacculus that protect and enclose the inner membrane containing the bacterial cytoplasm. They are also active bioactive molecules released during bacterial replication, especially after cell lysis, leading to a deconstructive process. These molecules vary in structure from [...]

Parallel concepts and future opportunities across the biological control and invasion sciences

Ross N. Cuthbert, Nompumelelo Baso, Tressia Chikodza, et al.

Published: 2025-08-15
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences

The biological control and invasion sciences are long-standing research fields that have accrued enormous fundamental and applied interest. However, their theoretical and practical integration remains in its infancy. Utilizing an expert elicitation process with participants spanning these sciences, we identify conceptual parallels and future opportunities to strengthen links and address future [...]

Mitonuclear divergence predicts gradual speciation in animal hybrid zones

Derek Daniel Eddo, Bailey Rouse, Silu Wang

Published: 2025-08-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences

The core of speciation is the genetic incompatibilities underlying the evolution of reproductive isolation. Hybrid zones provide unique opportunities to unravel the evolutionary rate of reproductive isolation in the origin of species. The selection against hybrids accrues with increased genetic incompatibilities and drives the evolution of reproductive isolation in the face of gene flow. There [...]

Reevaluating Global Whale Strandings: A Review of Trypanosomiasis as a Potential Cause

SEYUP LEE

Published: 2025-07-18
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences

Whale mass strandings are enigmatic events with multifactorial causes. Conventional hypotheses include anthropogenic sonar exposure, navigational errors, and infectious diseases, yet many stranding events remain unexplained¹. Here we propose African trypanosomiasis (“sleeping sickness”) as an overlooked contributing factor. This perspective synthesizes evidence that Trypanosoma parasites, [...]

Toward Ecological Forecasting of West Nile Virus in Florida: Insights from Two Decades of Surveillance

Joseph Alex Baecher, V A Askshay, Robert Guralnick, et al.

Published: 2025-05-20
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistical Models, Virus Diseases

West Nile Virus (WNV) is the leading cause of mosquito-borne disease in the United States, yet transmission activity remains difficult to predict. This study used 20 years of digitized WNV seroconversion data from 526 sentinel chicken coops across Florida to develop spatiotemporal models with landscape and climate variables to predict WNV seroconversion at monthly and seasonal timescales. We [...]

Dragon Kill Points: applying a transparent working template to relieve authorship stress

April Robin Martinig, Spenser L. P. Burk, Szymon Marian Drobniak, et al.

Published: 2025-03-20
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Business, Education, Engineering, Law, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences

The concept of authorship, while straightforward in theory, proves to be remarkably complex in practice. While existing frameworks provide a foundation for classifying and ranking authorship roles, conflicts still arise when contributions are ambiguous or poorly documented. To address these issues, we propose Dragon Kill Points, adapted from multiplayer gaming, which tracks individual [...]

The human fingerprint of medicinal plant species diversity

Nawal Shrestha, Robbie Hart, David Harrison, et al.

Published: 2025-03-15
Subjects: Anthropology, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology, Environmental Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures

Medicinal plants have long been crucial to human civilizations, supporting both traditional and modern healthcare systems. However, the processes influencing the global diversity and distribution of medicinal plants remain underexplored. Their diversity, like that of other species groups, is shaped by abiotic and biotic influences, which include, in unique ways, human ecological (including [...]

Beyond the obstetric dilemma: evolutionary maternal-fetal conflict causes health problems in pregnancy and childbirth

Dakota E McCoy, Jennifer Kotler, Brianna Weir, et al.

Published: 2025-03-03
Subjects: Anthropology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Life Sciences, Maternal and Child Health, Medicine and Health Sciences, Translational Medical Research

In excellent recent work, Webb and colleagues challenged the so-called “obstetric dilemma”—the long-standing hypothesis that human childbearing is particularly dangerous because we have a narrow pelvis but large infant heads (we are bipedal and smart). They showed that humans and chimpanzees have a comparable fetal-pelvic squeeze. What, then, causes risky childbirth in humans? Webb and colleagues [...]

Emergence, spread, and impact of high pathogenicity avian influenza H5 in wild birds and mammals of South America and Antarctica, October 2022 to March 2024

Thijs Kuiken, Ralph Eric Thijl Vanstreels, Ashley Banyard, et al.

Published: 2025-01-30
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences

The currently circulating high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) virus of the subtype H5 causes variable illness and death in wild and domestic birds and mammals, as well as in humans. This virus evolved from the Goose/Guangdong lineage of HPAI H5 virus, which emerged in commercial poultry in China in 1996, spilled over into wild birds, and spread through Asia, Europe, Africa and North America [...]

Antechodynamics and Antechokinetics: Dynamics and Kinetics of Antibiotic Resistance Molecules

Fernando Baquero, Rafael Cantón, Ana Elena Pérez-Cobas, et al.

Published: 2024-12-16
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences

Pharmacology of antimicrobial drugs comprises pharmacodynamics (PD) and pharmacokinetics (PK). PD refers to studying drugs' mode of action at different concentrations on their molecular targets and the resulting effect(s). PK refers to studying the way(s) by which drugs enter and are distributed to reach their targets in different compartments (such as tissues in the body) and how the local drug [...]

Greenspace modifies the associations between heat and mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies

Muhammad Mainuddin Patwary, Imran Chowdhury Sakib, Md Ismay Azam Badhon, et al.

Published: 2024-12-12
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences

Greenspace has been increasingly examined for its potential associations with heat-related mortality. However, quantitative synthesis of evidence on this association remains limited. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies published through July 20, 2025, examining the relationship between effect modification of greenspace on heat-related mortality risk. We [...]

One Earth + One Health: An agile, evolutionary, system-of-systems, convergence paradigm for societal challenges of the Anthropocene

John Charles Little, Roope Kaaronen, Michael Muthukrishna, et al.

Published: 2024-12-06
Subjects: Education, Engineering, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Evolutionary mechanisms enabled humans to profoundly transform Earth systems. Because the resulting Anthropocene systems are highly interdependent and dynamically evolving, often with accelerating rates of cultural and technological evolution, the ensuing family of societal challenges must be framed and addressed in a holistic fashion. An agile, evolutionary, system-of-systems, convergence [...]

Wildfire exposure and health outcomes: An umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses

Muhammad Mainuddin Patwary, Mondira Bardhan, Marvina Rahman Ritu, et al.

Published: 2024-10-08
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Introduction: Wildfires are a growing concern due to their significant impact on wildlife, air quality, and health, and are increasing under climate change. Although several systematic reviews have explored the relationship between wildfire smoke and human health outcomes, a comprehensive overview of the overall epidemiological evidence remains needed. Thus, this umbrella review aimed to [...]

Short-sighted evolution of virulence for invasive gut microbes: from hypothesis to tests.

Pauline Deirdre Scanlan, Fernando Baquero, Bruce R Levin

Published: 2024-07-25
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences

Why microbes harm their hosts is a fundamental question in evolutionary biology with broad relevance to our understanding of infectious diseases. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain this "evolution of virulence." In this perspective, we re-examine one of these hypotheses in the specific context of the human gut microbiome, namely short-sighted evolution. According to the [...]

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