Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Systems Biology
CartograPlant: Bridging genomic, phenotypic, and environmental data to advance plant resilience and eco-evolutionary insight
Published: 2025-09-30
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Breeding and Genetics Life Sciences, Plant Pathology, Systems Biology
Climate change is threatening plant health and productivity at all spatial scales, and these impacts are further compounded by the rising incidence of invasive pests and pathogens. Effectively addressing these challenges requires a comprehensive understanding of plant demography as well as the mechanisms and drivers of adaptation. Achieving this understanding requires the integration of [...]
Opportunities for Cities to Cultivate Biodiversity
Published: 2025-08-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Plant Sciences, Public Policy, Recreation, Parks and Tourism Administration, Systems Biology, Urban Studies and Planning
Cities pose a major threat to global biodiversity in every sense of the word. Municipal leaders have opportunities to promote biodiversity efforts in their cities. Several studies have shown that managing resources with biodiversity in mind within cities is effective and benefits both human and non-human residents and visitors. Two major opportunities for biodiversity investment in urban areas [...]
A systems-modelling approach to predict biological responses to extreme heat
Published: 2025-07-16
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences, Systems Biology
Anthropogenic climate change is leading to more frequent and extreme heat waves. These short-term but large-scale events are radically re-shaping interactions among organisms – impacting biodiversity, community composition and ecosystem services crucial to natural systems and food security. Predicting heat wave impacts on interacting species requires an understanding of the processes driving [...]
Toxin resistance mechanisms span biological scales in the Royal Ground Snake (Colubridae: Erythrolamprus reginae)
Published: 2025-06-13
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genomics, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Molecular Biology, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Physiology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences, Systems Biology, Zoology
Exposure to multiple toxic compounds imposes selective pressures across biological levels. There are several known toxin resistance mechanisms–such as behavioral avoidance, metabolic detoxification, and target-site insensitivity but an integrative approach to consider multiple toxins and resistance strategies. Predators of amphibians, for example, must counteract multiple chemicals secreted by [...]
Minimal viable sound systems for language evolution
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Physiology, Systems Biology
Human vocal gamut covers 3000 unique speech sounds comprising the world’s languages, with each new speaker having to learn the sounds of its new language. Since large, expandable repertoires are facilitated by vocal learning, this capacity has long been considered a prerequisite for speech and language evolution. The postulation of a vocal learning and repertoire size ceiling has, however, never [...]
On the feasibility of nonadaptive, nonsequential abiogenesis. An alternative to the Oparin-Haldane model
Published: 2025-02-18
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Computational Biology, Evolution, Molecular Biology, Molecular Genetics, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences, Systems Biology
The emergence of life from non-living matter remains one of the most profound unresolved questions in natural philosophy. The Oparin-Haldane model assumes a gradualist evolution, where adaptive precursors are obligated. Yet, for more than a century, all experimental efforts have failed to achieve abiogenesis. May it be that this view is paradoxical in explaining how living matter arises without [...]
Bats in Habitats, Bats as Habitats: An integrative ecological framework for understanding synergistic interactions across levels of community organization
Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Systems Biology
Global biodiversity and ecosystem function are the result of complex networks of interactions and feedbacks between animals and their environments, which in turn are affected by the interactions and feedbacks between animals and the organisms they host. Understanding these complex networks, including the main drivers of and responses to ecological and environmental changes and their global [...]
Different sources of wind turbine data produce sharp differences in collision risk estimates for foraging vultures
Published: 2024-12-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Monitoring, Systems Biology, Zoology
Multiple studies assessed the collision risk of different vulture species with wind turbines. However, they relied on different sources of wind turbine data, and the effect of this data heterogeneity, on the estimated collision risk and the comparability of these assessments, has not been investigated. We used GPS and accelerometer data, collected from 6 adult Griffon Vultures living in Sardinia [...]
New technology for an ancient fish: A lamprey life cycle modeling tool with an R Shiny application
Published: 2024-11-25
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Population Biology, Systems Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Lampreys (Petromyzontiformes) are an ancient group of fishes with complex life histories. We created a life cycle model that includes an R Shiny interactive web application interface to simulate abundance by life stage. This will allow scientists and managers to connect available demographic information in a framework that can be applied to questions regarding lamprey biology and conservation. We [...]
Are microbes colimited by multiple resources?
Published: 2024-03-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Systems Biology
Resource colimitation --- the dependence of growth on multiple resources simultaneously --- has become an important topic in microbiology due both to the development of systems approaches to cell physiology and ecology, and to the relevance of colimitation to environmental science, biotechnology, and human health. Empirical tests of colimitation in microbes suggest that it may be common in [...]
The Pest Management Attitude scale: a tool for measuring consensus between experts and practitioners in invasion biology
Published: 2023-11-17
Subjects: Life Sciences, Other Anthropology, Other Psychology, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Systems Biology
Quantifying attitudes towards invasive alien species (IAS) is fundamental to understand the extent to which conservation scientists agree and can collaborate in their management. We tested the Pest Management Scale (PMS), originally invented to quantify attitudes towards invasive alien mammals in New Zealand, as a tool to quantify broader attitudes towards IAS among bioinvasion experts in [...]
How do microbes grow in nature? The role of population dynamics in microbial ecology and evolution
Published: 2023-02-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Evolution, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Systems Biology
The growth of microbial populations in nature is dynamic, as the cellular physiology and environment of these populations change. Population dynamics have wide-ranging consequences for ecology and evolution, determining how species interact and which mutations fix. Understanding these dynamics is also critical for clinical and environmental applications in which we need to promote or inhibit [...]
Evolution and impact of socially transferred materials
Published: 2022-05-28
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Cell and Developmental Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Physiology, Systems Biology
Since the dawn of life, transfers of metabolized material between individuals have led to great innovations of evolution. When metabolized material is transferred from one individual’s body to another (as with sperm, eggs, milk, symbionts), secondary manipulative molecules that induce a physiological response in the receiver are often transferred along with the primary cargo. The bioactive and [...]
Towards a cohesive understanding of ecological complexity
Published: 2022-04-15
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Systems Biology
Understanding phenomena typical of complex systems is key for progress in ecology and conservation amidst escalating global environmental change. However, myriad definitions of complexity hamper conceptual advancements and synthesis. Ecological complexity may be better understood by following the strong theoretical basis of complexity science. We conduct bibliometric and text-mining analyses to [...]
For the few, not the many: local economic conditions constrain the large-scale management of invasive mosquitoes
Published: 2022-01-07
Subjects: Economics, Entomology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Public Economics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Systems Biology
Invasive mosquitoes are an emerging ecological and sanitary issue. Many factors have been suggested as drivers or barriers to their control, still no study quantified their influence over mosquito management by local authorities, nor their interplay with local economic conditions. We assessed how multiple environmental, sanitary, and socio-economic factors affected the engagement of [...]