Preprints
There are 3677 Preprints listed.
Disentangling trait and phylogenetic signals in species co-occurrence: a Bayesian dyadic regression approach
Published: 2026-09-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aim: Understanding the factors shaping species co-occurrence is a central objective in ecology. Progress is hindered by correlations among species traits and phylogenetic relationships, which confound each other’s signals. Regression-based approaches hold promise to ameliorate this issue, but the current toolkit lacks methods that combine suitable likelihoods for co-occurrence data with latent [...]
Evolution of frugivory across a large radiation of non-seed-dispersing animals
Published: 2026-09-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
The origin of Angiosperm fleshy fruits, a novel nutritious resource, has led to the evolution of frugivory in a wide range of animals. While the (co)evolutionary dynamics between fruits and seed dispersers has received much attention, the evolution of frugivory in non-seed-dispersing animals remains overlooked. Here, we elucidate the macroevolution of frugivory in a large radiation of an insect, [...]
Trait-based functional indices reveal contrasting carbon-storage and biodiversity-support potential across urban tree species and parks in Bogotá
Published: 2026-09-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
Urban expansion increasingly challenges the capacity of cities to maintain ecological functions, while urban trees are expected to contribute to climate regulation and biodiversity conservation. However, urban forest management often lacks functionally explicit information linking species characteristics to their ecological potential and spatial variation across urban green spaces. Here, we [...]
Does tolerance to fast warming predict tolerance to slow warming in fishes?
Published: 2026-09-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Critical thermal maximum (CTmax) is widely used to quantify upper thermal limits in fishes, but its ecological relevance has been questioned because standard protocols use fast warming rates (0.3°C min-¹; 18°C h-¹) that rarely occur in nature, where thermal stress more typically unfolds over hours to days. Whether CTmax under fast warming predicts warming tolerance to slower, ecologically [...]
Climate-associated genomic differentiation in Lemmon’s willow, an important restoration species
Published: 2026-09-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Restoration practitioners are considering assisted gene flow to promote persistence of restored vegetation under future climatic conditions. However, for many important restoration species, the extent of climate-associated genomic differentiation remains unclear. Here, we examined climate-associated genomic differentiation in Lemmon’s willow (Salix lemmonii), a key species in Sierra Nevada meadow [...]
Temperature drives transcriptomic shifts in amphibian skin bacterial communities with consequences for fungal pathogen control
Published: 2026-09-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Genomics, Life Sciences
The chytrid fungi Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) and Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal) are two of the largest threats to amphibian populations worldwide. While the amphibian skin microbiome can inhibit these fungal pathogens, microbial composition varies substantially across host and environmental contexts. In addition, habitat-wide mitigation methods that capitalize on the thermal [...]
Migration timing depends on balancing the risks of exposure and escape from infection
Published: 2026-09-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
As anthropogenic changes alter animal migration routes, understanding the consequences of these changes is critical for conservation. One consequence of altered migratory routes is exposure to infection by new parasites (i.e., migratory exposure). Theoretical models aiming to understand migration-infection dynamics typically have focused on infection-related benefits (i.e., migratory escape) to [...]
Calibrating exchange-level claims about sperm whale codas against surrogates: overlap, ornamentation and rubato under independent pre-registered control
Published: 2026-09-15
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Marine Biology
Sharma et al. (Nat. Commun. 15:3617, 2024) report that sperm whale codas carry a combinatorial "phonetic alphabet" built from four dimensions, two of which — rubato (smooth modulation of coda duration across an exchange) and ornamentation (an extra click marking sequence edges) — are properties of coda sequences rather than of codas. Sequence-level claims presuppose a model of the exchange [...]
Traditional Ecological Relationship Family sharing an abundant home within nature requires recurring mutual adaptation rather than the extraction of knowledge by passing visitors
Published: 2026-09-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Relationship, not knowledge, is the unit for understanding people within nature; family is the fundamental form holding what is of value about life in a place — the residue and repository of a relationship kept across generations from the inside. Ecological science accumulates a wealth of knowledge from the outside; a family in relationship with nature is concerned with surviving, sustaining [...]
Relational acoustic geometry of over 20,000 common nightingale strophes: a framework for continuous vocal analysis
Published: 2026-09-15
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Ornithology
Large collections of complex animal vocalizations are often organized through predefined song categories, which provide powerful descriptive units but do not directly characterize continuous and representation-dependent relationships within the acoustic material. This study presents a field-grounded framework for examining such relationships without assigning vocalizations to categories in [...]
Identification of the Cichlid Fishes of Lake Malawi/Nyasa Part 2: Pseudotropheina (the ‘mbuna’ sub-radiation).
Published: 2026-09-15
Subjects: Life Sciences
With an estimated 900-1000 species, the cichlid fishes of Lake Malawi represent the largest known adaptive radiation of vertebrates from a single common ancestor in a limited geographical area, in this case a single lake. They provide an outstanding opportunity to study the rapid diversification of form and function on a limited genetic background and to attempt understand why lineages vary so [...]
Bridging the science-business gap: from biodiversity measurement to action
Published: 2026-09-15
Subjects: Business, Life Sciences
Biodiversity is the living fabric of our planet, and its loss poses growing risks to human well-being, ecological resilience, and business profitability. Yet businesses often lack the information and incentives to align decisions with nature stewardship. We argue that several conditions are essential to sustain biodiversity and a habitable planet. First, monitoring multiple components of [...]
Designing optimal biodiversity observation networks
Published: 2026-09-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Meeting the goals of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) requires a substantial increase in biodiversity monitoring effort, motivating the development of a Global Biodiversity Observing System (GBiOS). However, GBiOS cannot be built without a practical framework for designing effective biodiversity monitoring networks that balances budgetary constraints with competing policy objectives, which [...]
Acoustic Vector Sensing of Blue and Fin Whale Habitat Occupancy off Central California
Published: 2026-09-15
Subjects: Population Biology
Temporally varying geographic distributions of whale populations are difficult to visually monitor across large marine ecosystems. Acoustic vector sensing (AVS) of the powerful calls produced by baleen whales enables continuous monitoring over large areas with spatial information contained in the bearing estimates to whales. Using three years of AVS data in Monterey Bay National Marine [...]
Fire modulates millennial plant community assembly
Published: 2026-09-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
How ecological communities maintain resilience under recurrent disturbance remains unclear because the processes governing persistence often unfold over centuries to millennia. Using fossil pollen and charcoal records spanning up to 14,000 years from mountain ecosystems in Europe and Africa, we reconstructed temporal networks of community predictability to investigate the role of fire in [...]