Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Entomology
EntoScan and BEEomass: a standardized imaging system and a physically motivated model for high-throughput dry biomass estimation of arthropods
Published: 2026-06-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Computational Biology, Computational Engineering, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Engineering, Entomology
Computer vision and AI are now widely used for automated insect classification, but their potential for estimating other traits, such as biomass, is not yet fully explored. Insect biomass is a key measure of ecosystem function, informing ecosystem services, food webs, and environmental change. It is also used to track population trends and estimate the contribution of insects to ecosystem carbon. [...]
Predator Experience Shapes Behaviour: Comparing Stone Wētā (Hemideina maori) Populations With and Without Weka (Gallirallus australis hectori)
Published: 2026-06-10
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Antipredator behaviour reflects both evolutionary history and individual experience, yet how populations respond to changes in predator exposure remains poorly understood, particularly for large invertebrates. We examined antipredator behaviour in two populations of stone wētā (Hemideina maori Pictet & Saussure, 1891) inhabiting weka-free Mou Tapu and nearby Mou Waho, where weka (Gallirallus [...]
Symbiont interactions bias measures of arthropod biodiversity
Published: 2026-06-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Entomology
Although arthropods comprise the majority of all named species, their biodiversity is relatively understudied. Here, we highlight how interactions between arthropods and their bacterial symbionts can pose challenges for biodiversity research, especially for estimating taxonomic, functional, and genetic diversity. We also argue that recent technological developments and biomonitoring schemes [...]
Trophic interactions of ants are robust to tree species loss
Published: 2026-06-05
Subjects: Entomology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. How changes in habitat conditions influence insect diversity has been intensively studied. However, whether trophic interactions of insects are also influenced by such changes is largely unknown. Higher habitat heterogeneity is often hypothesized to promote niche partitioning and complementarity in resource use among interacting species, yet evidence from animal interaction networks is sparse. [...]
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 [...]
Canopy closure re-establishes ants in young tree plantations, while low soil pH limits ant diversity
Published: 2026-05-28
Subjects: Entomology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Tree species richness is known to enhance biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, but its effects across trophic levels during forest restoration remain insufficiently understood. In reforestation on complex terrain, habitat complexity may moderate the effect of canopy closure on animal community reassembly, a relationship further shaped by the abiotic environment. 2. Ants, as key functional [...]
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 [...]
Removal and decomposition of fruit respond in opposite ways to canopy cover in a biodiversity experiment
Published: 2026-05-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology
Trees often produce more fruits than frugivores consume. As a result, many fruits fall to the ground, where they are either secondarily removed by vertebrates, potentially leading to seed dispersal, or they are decomposed by arthropods. Although often neglected, fallen fruits are an important component of forests and contribute to their functioning via these two distinct pathways. While fruit [...]
OdoCocktail-Japan: Primer sets to enrich environmental DNA of Japanese Odonata species
Published: 2026-05-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Entomology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Monitoring is essential to conserve and recover biodiversity. Environmental DNA (eDNA)-based metabarcoding analysis has been recognized as a cost-effective and efficient method to monitor species, but it still has limitations, such as insufficient reference databases and lack of primer sets suitable to detect target species. As biological indicators of freshwater habitats, Odonata species have [...]
Multi-scale surveillance reveals substantial egg-laying winter activity in Aedes albopictus mosquito populations across temperate Europe
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
The Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), a competent vector for dengue, chikungunya, and Zika viruses, has expanded rapidly across temperate Europe. European vector surveillance typically operates May to October, assuming winter diapause precludes activity and transmission risk. However, recent field observations suggest sustained egg-laying winter activity in southern European populations, [...]
Toward repurposing global passive air sampling networks for insect monitoring: Promises and pitfalls of airborne eDNA
Published: 2026-04-29
Subjects: Entomology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
1. Polyurethane foam passive air samplers (PUF-PAS) are widely deployed to monitor environmental pollutants, yet their capacity to capture biological signals such as environmental DNA (eDNA) remains largely unexplored. Recent advances in airborne eDNA research create a timely opportunity to evaluate PUF-PAS as a tool for biodiversity monitoring and to leverage existing global sampling networks [...]
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, [...]
Plastic shifts in thermal preference and thermoregulation strategy across ontogeny in an invasive fly
Published: 2026-04-21
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology
Behavioural thermoregulation allows ectotherms to escape extreme or seek optimal temperatures. Its precision can impact survival and fitness under changing conditions and its plasticity can be an adaptive strategy when the plasticity of thermal limits is insufficient to buffer against warming. We explore the developmental plasticity of behavioural thermoregulation strategies using the invasive [...]
Acute bacterial challenge in Drosophila reveals age and sex dependent feeding and macronutrient choice without generalised anorexia
Published: 2026-04-10
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Entomology, Integrative Biology, Zoology
Sickness behaviours are often interpreted as adaptive host responses that reallocate resources from performance to defence. Anorexia - a reduction in food intake - is one of the most frequently cited examples, yet evidence across insects is variable and rarely separates the effects of wounding, immune stimulation, and live infection. Here we use a factorial design in Drosophila melanogaster to [...]
Diversity and co-occurrence patterns of wood inhabiting insects along a tropical forest regeneration gradient
Published: 2026-04-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
More than 90% of global carbon released during dead wood decomposition comes from the tropics, where insects contribute significantly to this process, especially in lowland rainforests. Understanding community assembly of dead wood-inhabiting insects is therefore important. We investigated diversity patterns between habitats and host trees, and co-occurrence of wood-inhabiting ants, termites, and [...]