Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Agriculture
Uptake of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in plants: A systematic review and meta-analysis research protocol
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) transfer from contaminated environments into plants, contributing to food chain accumulation and an exposure pathway central to human health risk assessment. Regulatory risk assessments commonly use plant bioconcentration factors (BCFs) to estimate dietary exposure and support the derivation of health-based guideline values, yet they have not been [...]
Biodiversity isn’t measured in tons: Making sense of nature in the context of sustainable agriculture
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies
In this review, we articulate several important, but often overlooked concepts, trends, and perspectives in the biodiversity monitoring space, specifically in the context of transforming agriculture and the wider food system. We describe the common approaches to biodiversity monitoring — those focused on species, communities, functions, habitats, etc — and the methods and tools commonly used to [...]
TRIPLE-IJ and SHIFT as a coupled framework for characterising entomopathogenic nematode performance under abiotic stress
Published: 2026-08-26
Subjects: Agriculture, Entomology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) of the families Steinernematidae and Heterorhabditidae are widely recognised as promising biological control agents, yet the translation of laboratory-demonstrated virulence into consistent field-scale efficacy remains an unresolved challenge. A central reason for this gap is the fragmented way EPN performance is conventionally characterised: infectivity and [...]
Influence of Selected Urban Tree Species on Soil Microbial Activity, Litter Decomposition, and Soil Chemical Properties in Akure, Southwestern Nigeria
Published: 2026-08-05
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Urban trees shape belowground ecological processes through litter deposition, root exudation, and interactions with soil microbial communities, yet species-specific effects are rarely incorporated into urban green-space management. This study evaluated the effects of five common urban tree species (Eucalyptus globulus, Azadirachta indica, Thuja occidentalis, Prunus dulcis, and Buddleja globosa) [...]
Microplastics in farmlands: A model of conditional fragmentation and source estimation
Published: 2026-07-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Soil Science
Microplastic (MP) pollution in agricultural systems has emerged as a critical environmental concern, yet quantitative models capturing the complex dynamics of MP fragmentation and accumulation remain underdeveloped. Here we present a cross-scale modeling framework that solves fragmentation mechanisms and input sources at the same time, and simulates the temporal evolution of MP size distributions [...]
Insects as agents of national security: entomological biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse in agriculture and forestry threaten geopolitical stability
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Biosecurity, Entomology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
1. In early 2026, the UK Government published a report assessing how global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse represent systematic threats to UK national security through cascading impacts to food security, land use and climate-related feedbacks. 2. Recontextualising biodiversity and ecosystem health as determinants of national security offers a novel perspective on long observed [...]
Motivations and organizational models for private sector biodiversity engagement
Published: 2026-06-02
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Private sector engagement is increasingly recognized as critical for addressing global biodiversity loss, yet the recent IPBES global assessment of business and biodiversity confirms that current economic conditions remain largely incompatible with the transformative change required. We conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with business leaders and sustainability practitioners across multiple [...]
Evaluating the potential of molecular dietary analysis of predators for the detection of emerging plant pests
Published: 2026-06-01
Subjects: Agriculture, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Biosecurity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Genetics, Laboratory and Basic Science Research Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Monitoring plant pests is crucial for maximising yields across agricultural and forest production systems, but also for the mitigation of invasive species spread. Traditional monitoring methods, such as mass trapping and direct observation, scale poorly and introduce latency between collection, detection and response. Since many plant pests are frequently consumed by predators, molecular dietary [...]
Towards Nature Positive supply chains: From biodiversity commitments to organisational action
Published: 2026-05-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Climate, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Policy, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Large organisations are critical to halting and reversing biodiversity loss, and increasingly making bold commitments for nature. However, translating commitments into action requires robust strategies to fully identify, quantify, trace, and act. This is particularly pertinent because most organisational impacts are hidden within complex supply chains. Here we present a novel, generalised, and [...]
Insufficient environmental protection by the European regulatory framework for pesticides
Published: 2026-05-20
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Health Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Toxicology
Schriever et al. (2025) argue that environmental risk assessment of pesticides in the European Union is sufficiently protective and that regulatory thresholds are rarely exceeded. Here, we re-examine these claims based on new and previous evidence from monitoring, systematic reviews, and different types of field studies. The clear outcome is that measured pesticide concentrations frequently [...]
Quantitative Metabarcoding for Invertebrate Pest Monitoring and Management
Published: 2026-05-19
Subjects: Agriculture, Entomology, Molecular Genetics
Invertebrate pests are one of the most significant threats to global agriculture. To monitor these pests, invertebrate trapping methods are commonly used to collect a representation of the diversity of pest species present in the ecosystem. Assessing and monitoring such diversity is key to inform pest management strategies, but due to the complexity of bulk trap samples from non-selective [...]
Robustness of pesticide and other environmental stressors as key drivers of stream macroinvertebrates in small agricultural catchments
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Robustness of multiple stressor rankings is essential for credible ecotoxicological assessments and policy guidance. A widely cited study of 101 small agricultural streams across Germany identified pesticide mixtures as the dominant stressor for stream macroinvertebrates, but its analytical robustness has since been questioned. Using a fully reproducible workflow, we reanalysed this dataset to [...]
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, [...]
Insect Pests on the Move: Climate, Soil, Land Use, and the Search for Contingent Generality
Published: 2026-02-09
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology
Climate change is reshaping the geographic distributions of insect pests, with major consequences for agriculture, forestry, and ecosystem stability. Species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used to project these changes, yet most rely primarily on climatic predictors and implicitly assume a degree of generality in species responses that may not hold across diverse taxa. Here, we evaluate [...]
The conditional ecology of pest suppression: A general mechanistic framework for predicting landscape effects on biological control
Published: 2026-02-03
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology
Landscape heterogeneity often increases natural enemy abundance, yet its effects on crop pest suppression are strikingly inconsistent across empirical studies. We developed a trait-based simulation framework to identify the general mechanisms linking landscape structure to realized pest load. Across >150 in silico experiments, we show that landscape attributes influence biological control by [...]