Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Zoology
The myth of the metabolic baseline: how sleep-wake cycles undermine a foundational assumption in organismal biology
Published: 2025-08-28
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Life Sciences, Physiology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Zoology
Basal and standard metabolic rates (BMR and SMR) are cornerstones of physiological ecology and are assumed to be relatively fixed intrinsic properties of organisms that represent the minimum energy required to sustain life. However, this assumption is conceptually flawed. Many core maintenance processes underlying SMR are temporally partitioned across sleep and wakefulness and are not [...]
Modelling complex habitat use for threatened bat species decision-making in landscapes with competing priorities
Published: 2025-08-26
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Zoology
Species distribution models (SDMs) provide valuable information to aid conservation decisions, particularly in landscapes where economic and biodiversity priorities compete. Generating SDMs for species that rely on discrete habitat types for different activities (e.g. roosting or foraging) can be challenging, and result in outputs that are not appropriately tailored for end use. We collated [...]
Catalogue of Papilionoidea from Noguera de Albarracín (Teruel, Spain), including new distributional data for the Sierra de Albarracín (Insecta: Lepidoptera)
Published: 2025-08-20
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Zoology
We present a catalogue of butterflies from Noguera de Albarracín (Teruel, Spain), based on field surveys conducted in 2024 and 2025 within the framework of the Iberozoa Entomology Course. A total of 52 species were recorded, representing 20.15% of the Iberian butterfly fauna. The material belongs to 5 families, 13 subfamilies, 33 genera and 52 species. Lycaenidae was the richest family with 16 [...]
Weather conditions are systematically associated with long-range nonroutine movements in a large scavenger
Published: 2025-08-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology
Movement data are valuable for the conservation of Old World vultures, as these move across large distances and experience a wide range of threats. As vultures rely on soaring flight, the interplay of solar radiation, as well as wind direction and strength, is crucial for both short- and long-range movements. However, no study explored the extent to which weather conditions can predict long-range [...]
Strain-specific thermal acclimation, but little evidence of transgenerational plasticity, in an asexual crustacean
Published: 2025-08-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Transgenerational plasticity has been suggested as a means for species to succeed in rapidly changing environments, such as increased temperature brought on by climate change. However, the evidence for this phenomenon in animals is mixed. The freshwater crustacean Daphnia magna displays transgenerational plasticity in response to environmental cues such as the presence of predators or food, but [...]
Trapper Citizen Science: an open-source camera trap platform for citizen science in wildlife research and management
Published: 2025-08-11
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Computational Engineering, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Engineering, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Zoology
Effective wildlife monitoring is essential for biodiversity conservation and sustainable management, particularly in the face of rapid environmental changes and human-wildlife interactions. Advances in camera trap technology and citizen science, here used to denote non-professional involvement in scientific research, irrespective of citizenship status, have revolutionized ecological data [...]
Tracking the hidden niches: Movement-based insights into northern lapwing intraspecific variation and conservation
Published: 2025-08-01
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Entomology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Other Animal Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Zoology
Context. Global monitoring data reveal farmland bird population declines, primarily driven by agricultural intensification, chemical inputs, and climate shifts. The northern lapwing (Vanellus vanellus), a ground-nesting wader adapted to lowland agricultural matrices, exemplifies this decline across Europe. Objectives. This study quantified intraspecific variation in habitat selection to evaluate [...]
Exploring the Integration of Traditional Ecological Knowledge with Artificial Intelligence to Mitigate Human-Wildlife Conflict in Kerala, India
Published: 2025-08-01
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Increasing human-wildlife conflict (HWC) in forest-fringe landscapes necessitates innovative and culturally acceptable mitigation strategies. This note proposes integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to mitigate HWC in Kerala. The proposition aims to translate African rural traditional knowledge of using alarm calls of Guinea fowls (Numida meleagris) [...]
Physical and Migration Metrics of White Storks (Ciconia ciconia) and the influence that landfills play in their variation
Published: 2025-07-24
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Zoology
1. White storks (Ciconia Ciconia) are a traditionally fully migratory species and their numbers in western Europe were decimated in the last century. Their numbers have since boomed and they have altered their migratory strategy to have become a partially migratory species. This change has been ascribed in large part to anthropogenic food subsidies, particularly in the form of landfill sites. 2. [...]
Genetic evidence for the rediscovery in the wild of the critically endangered Sahara killifish Apricaphanius saourensis (Cyprinodontiformes: Aphaniidae)
Published: 2025-07-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Zoology
Apricaphanius saourensis was described in 2006 from the Saoura River in western Algeria, and is currently listed as possibly extinct in the wild. We recently discovered an aphaniid population in a very isolated secondary wadi of the Guir River about 115 Km northwest of A. saourensis’ type locality, which we hypothesized could belong to A. saourensis based on images taken from living individuals. [...]
Discrepancies between wolf distribution estimates from opportunistic mortality records and probabilistic field-based surveys
Published: 2025-07-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Life Sciences, Zoology
The gray wolf (Canis lupus) has expanded its distribution in Europe, where some countries implemented population monitoring schemes through structured surveys. However, increasing wolf populations has also resulted in a growing number of wolves being found dead each year. Although these opportunistic reports are promising for population monitoring, their accuracy in reflecting wolf distribution [...]
The influence of the incubation environment and parental care on Tokay gecko (Gekko gecko, Gekkonidae) development in captivity
Published: 2025-07-17
Subjects: Other Animal Sciences, Zoology
Parental effects, non-genetic effects that parents exert on their offspring, can result in adaptive phenotypes that ensure offspring survival. In captivity, reptiles often experience unnatural incubation and rearing conditions due to limited nest site choices, which can negatively impact individual development and welfare. Incubation temperature and humidity are especially critical for reptile [...]
Non-lethal imaging and modeling approaches for estimating dry mass in aquatic larvae
Published: 2025-06-28
Subjects: Developmental Biology, Integrative Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences, Zoology
Body mass is crucial for scaling and comparing physiological rates. For example, dry body mass is important in determining an organism’s metabolic rate since it excludes metabolically inactive water weight. Obtaining repeated measurements of body mass throughout an individual’s lifetime is trivial. In contrast, we are normally able to obtain only a single estimate of dry body mass per individual [...]
The role of osmorespiratory compromise in metabolism and hypoxia tolerance of a purportedly oxyconforming teleost
Published: 2025-06-26
Subjects: Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Physiology, Zoology
Fish must manage the competing demands of ion balance and gas exchange across the gills – a physiological tension known as the osmorespiratory compromise. In dynamic estuarine environments, the osmorespiratory compromise may be exacerbated by variable salinity and periods of hypoxia that demand high respiratory work. This study examined whether exposure to isosmotic conditions (9 ppt) lowers [...]
Free-ranging dogs in the streets: foreseeing a multispecies coexistence crisis beyond shortsighted kindness or conflicts
Published: 2025-06-21
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Zoology
Coexistence solutions tout conflict mitigation goals for commensals and wildlife, often ignoring the lived multispecies entanglements. Tropical cities have become battlegrounds of misguided kindness and escalating conflicts with animals. Human niche expansion creates a paradox for free-ranging denizens: abundant food sources from waste, yet unprecedented ecological pressures from infrastructural [...]