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Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Entomology

Facing the heat: behavioral and molecular underpinnings of climate hardiness in bumblebees

Nastacia Leigh Goodwin, Z Yan Wang

Published: 2025-04-26
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Behavioral Neurobiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Climate change heralds an era of increased heat waves, with an estimated 20-30 additional high heat days per year. While climate change is upon us, we still have little understanding of the organismal impacts of high heat and how to combat them. Insects, due to their short generation times and their sensitive ecological requirements, offer a powerful model for studying rapid physiological and [...]

Speciation in ants: Unlocking ant diversity to study speciation (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Patrick Heidbreder, Patrick Krapf, Marit Kuijt, et al.

Published: 2025-04-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Ants are among the most abundant terrestrial animals and play key roles in ecosystems across the globe. Their taxonomic and ecological diversity makes them a prime taxon for contributing to our understanding of the patterns and processes of speciation.However, studies often do not explicitly link their results to the broader framework of speciation and reproductive isolation. Here we combine [...]

AedesTraits: A global database of temperature–dependent trait responses in Aedes mosquitoes

Daniele Da Re, Veronica Andreo, Tomas San Miguel, et al.

Published: 2025-04-08
Subjects: Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences

Invasive Aedes mosquitoes are major vectors of arboviral diseases such as dengue, Zika, and chikungunya, posing an increasing threat to global public health. Their recent geographic expansion calls for predictive models to simulate population dynamics and transmission risk. Temperature is a key driver in these models, influencing traits that affect vector competence. While data on [...]

Pharmacophagy in Insects: Ecological and Evolutionary Perspectives on the Non-Nutritional Use of Plant Specialized Metabolites

Pragya Singh, Caroline Müller

Published: 2025-04-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences

Herbivorous insects can interact with plants in ways that go beyond nutrition, with plant specialized (secondary) metabolites (PSMs) mediating complex non-nutritional relationships. While PSMs often function as anti-herbivore defenses, many insects have evolved strategies to counteract and even exploit these compounds, using them for purposes such as their own defense against antagonists, [...]

Are tropical ant and termite assemblages along a forest recovery gradient habitat or dispersal limited?

Nina Grella, David A. Donoso, Jörg Müller, et al.

Published: 2025-03-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences

Regenerating forests comprise a significant proportion of forest ecosystems in the tropics. While we are beginning to understand assembly mechanisms of tree communities after anthropogenic disturbances, those of animal communities are still poorly understood. It has been shown that locally established ant communities clearly assemble along gradients of forest recovery from active agriculture over [...]

Modelling the distribution of the tick Ixodes ricinus in England and Wales using passive surveillance data from citizen science reports

Mark Gideon Burdon, Maximilian Ayling, Nyall Jamieson, et al.

Published: 2025-03-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Environmental Public Health, Public Health

Background: The tick Ixodes ricinus is the most common tick species in the UK and a significant vector of Borrelia burgdorferi s.l. (causative agent of Lyme borreliosis) and Tick-Borne Encephalitis virus (TBEv) to humans and Anaplasma phagocutphilum, Babesia divergens and louping ill virus to animals.Methods: The Tick Surveillance Scheme (TSS) administered by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) [...]

Agroecological farming promotes yield and biodiversity but may require subsidy to be profitable

Benjamin Woodcock Woodcock, Samantha Cook, Lucy Humles, et al.

Published: 2025-03-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

1. Intensive arable agriculture uses agrochemicals to replace ecosystem services (e.g. pest control and soil health) while simultaneously degrading others (e.g. pollination). Agroecological farming aims to reduce this reliance. Whether these practices maintain yields at a scale relevant to farm business viability is unclear. 2. In a 4-year replicated study across 17 English farms we assessed [...]

Transferable approaches to CRISPR-Cas9 induced genome editing in non-model insects: a brief guide

Hassan Mutasim Mohammed Ahmed, Lisha Zheng, Vera Sophie Hunnekuhl

Published: 2025-02-28
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Animal Sciences, Entomology, Genetics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics, Other Genetics and Genomics, Zoology

Despite the large variety of insect species with divergent morphological, developmental and physiological features questions on gene function could for a long time only be addressed in few model species. The adoption of the bacterial CRISPR-Cas system for genome editing in eukaryotic cells widened the scope of the field of functional genetics: for the first time the creation of heritable genetic [...]

There is no such thing as an herbivore: incidental and intentional ingestion profoundly affects both herbivores and plant-dwelling invertebrates.

Eric Lopresti, Eric F. LoPresti

Published: 2025-02-27
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Real-life ‘herbivores’ are not the herbivores of our simplistic ecological and behavioral models – real-life herbivores constantly consume other organisms both incidentally and intentionally, with the ‘prey’ usually consisting of plant-dwelling arthropods, smaller invertebrates, and carrion. A remarkable amount of disparate literature has amassed on these phenomena, yet the implications of these [...]

Northward expansion of the thermal limit for the tick Ixodes ricinus over the past 40 years

Daniele Da Re, Gaelle Gilson, Quentin Dalaiden, et al.

Published: 2025-02-15
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Population Biology

The tick Ixodes ricinus is the main pathogen vector in Europe. Many speculations have been made about the effect of past climate change on the potential distribution of this ectothermic organism, despite a poor understanding of how climate change has resulted in distribution changes to date. In this study, we used a public cross-sectional dataset of I. ricinus abundance at the northern edge of [...]

Assessment of Urban Bias in Iberian Butterfly Sampling through Citizen Science Data

Diego Gil-Tapetado, Mario Alamo

Published: 2025-01-24
Subjects: Entomology, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Citizen science platforms have revolutionized biodiversity monitoring by enabling large-scale data collection. However, concerns about potential biases, such as urban sampling bias, have raised questions about the quality and representativeness of these datasets. This study assesses the spatial distribution of butterfly observations collected through the citizen science platform Biodiversidad [...]

The Development and Evolution of Arthropod Tagmata

Ariel D Chipman

Published: 2024-12-11
Subjects: Biology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Developmental Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences

The segmented body plan is a hallmark of the arthropod body plan. Morphological segments are formed during embryogenesis, through a complex procedure involving the activation of a series of gene regulatory networks. The segments of the arthropod body are organized into functional units known as tagmata, and these tagmata are different among the arthropod classes (e.g. head, thorax and abdomen in [...]

Enhancing Canopy Research in Africa: Insights from Tree Climbing Workshop in Ghana

Bismark Ofosu-Bamfo, Steven Pearce, Victoria Tough, et al.

Published: 2024-11-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology

The report shares the background and experience executing a tree climbing workshop in Ghana. In most cases, canopy research in Africa is conducted under the umbrella of parachute science, leaving local scientists deprived of canopy access skills and equipment. Consequently, tropical Africa experiences a closed canopy so far as canopy ecology is concerned. In May 2024, ten (10) early career [...]

Effect of bulb type on moth trap catch and composition in UK gardens

Reuben O'Connell Booth, William E Kunin

Published: 2024-11-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Research Methods in Life Sciences

Abstract 1. A wide variety of light sources are employed to trap moths, differing in brightness and spectrum. Relatively little is known about how these factors affect the resulting sample. 2. We analyse 7 moth trap bulb types using 10 years of records from the Garden Moth Scheme to provide the largest and most comprehensive comparison of moth trap bulb types to date. 3. 125W Mercury Vapour (MV) [...]

Pollinator ethanology: A comment on Bowland et al.

Krzysztof Miler

Published: 2024-11-13
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Nutrition, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Toxicology, Zoology

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