Preprints
There are 3535 Preprints listed.
Reframing marine host-microbe symbioses: from taxonomic inventories to functional convergence
Published: 2026-08-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
In October 2025, the Trends in Host-Microbe Symbioses Symposium at the University of Padova (Italy) brought together a global community of researchers, with the aim of taking stock of the current trajectory of marine host-microbiome research. Integrating perspectives from ecology, evolution, biogeochemistry, and biotechnology, the symposium documented a clear transition from descriptive surveys [...]
Alignment dynamics: how environmental restoration reshapes disease risk
Published: 2026-08-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Ecological change can generate variable infectious disease outcomes even when it produces similar shifts in biodiversity, habitat structure, or pathogen hazard. Existing disease-ecology frameworks identify the components and pathways governing transmission, but less explicitly formalise how their relative timing and spatial organisation determine when transmission opportunities emerge. We argue [...]
Mate choice copying in non-human animals: an update of two meta-analyses
Published: 2026-08-14
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology
Mate choice copying, the use of social information from the mating decisions of others, is a taxonomically widespread form of social learning with the potential to shape sexual selection. Two meta-analyses concluded that social information moderately and positively biases mate choice, but both rest on literature searches now at least seven years old. Using a multilingual, [...]
Voluntary wheel use across animal taxa: motivation, enrichment, stereotypy and ethological interpretation
Published: 2026-08-14
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Exercise wheels are simple devices for recording animal movement, but they elicit surprisingly complex behaviours. In laboratory rodents, running wheels are key for studying voluntary exercise, circadian rhythms, motivation, energy balance, stress physiology and brain plasticity. Outside rodents, wheel-like devices have also been provided to rabbits, cats, squirrels, reptiles and invertebrates. [...]
How closed is “closed”? Ambiguity in British Columbia’s Closed Containment aquaculture regulations
Published: 2026-08-14
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Zoology
We examine disease-transmission risks to wild salmon associated with containment technologies proposed in 2025 under British Columbia’s transition away from open-net pen aquaculture. To ensure consistent terminology, and to avoid the mischaracterization of marine “semi-closed” flow-through systems as “closed containment,” we clarify categories of aquaculture production technologies and compare [...]
Beyond participation: Indigenous researchers leading biodiversity monitoring and territorial governance in the Amazon
Published: 2026-08-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Integrative Biology
Indigenous Territories harbor some of the world’s best-preserved ecosystems and are central to biodiversity conservation. Paradoxically, the knowledge of the people who have historically maintained these ecosystems remains underrepresented in conservation science. Here we present a collaborative program for monitoring biodiversity and water quality of the Nãnsêpôtiti (Iriri) River in the Panará [...]
Using large language models to identify reporting challenges for Target 6 implementation: a short validation against human assessment
Published: 2026-08-14
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Research Methods in Life Sciences
National reports and related biodiversity policy documents contain important information on implementation barriers, but extracting comparable evidence across many countries is timeconsuming. We tested whether large language models (LLMs) could provide a reliable firstpass synthesis of reported challenges relevant to Target 6 of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Human assessor [...]
Plant sex chromosome evolution in the phylogenomic era
Published: 2026-08-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Plants harbor a tremendous diversity of sexual systems, including various forms of chromosomal sex determination that have arisen repeatedly across major clades, especially in angiosperms. The causes and consequences of sex chromosome evolution are far-reaching, with implications for sexual system, mating system, and life history evolution, genome architecture, and speciation, extinction, and [...]
Reproduction is more sensitive to warming than adult lifespan across invertebrates
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Entomology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Studies estimating the effect of temperature on wild animal populations typically focus on survival as a proxy for population health. However, high and low temperatures can also negatively influence animal reproduction, and recent work suggests that the thermal sensitivity of reproduction is more important for population persistence that the thermal sensitivity of survival in some species groups. [...]
The life cycle of the tapeworm Dibothriocephalus latus in Switzerland: what we know, what we miss, and how it is sustained
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Dibothriocephalus latus is a broad fish tapeworm with a complex life cycle that requires three host stages - copepods, fish, and humans. Over the last 25 years, the prevalence of D. latus has noticeably declined in many parts of Europe, with the exception of the Alpine region. Recent studies have shown that D. latus is prevalent in fish from sub-alpine lakes, the second intermediate host, which [...]
Revisiting Taylor's law, rediscovering Smith's law: A dual framework for scaling heterogeneity
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Taylor's (1961) power law (TPL)—variance scales with mean density—originated in agricultural entomology but now spans the natural and social sciences and even the humanities. Cited over 8,000 times and featured in Nature for decades, its reach far exceeds its ecological origins. Yet TPL has been dormant in Nature for the past two decades, though it remains active in PNAS. Smith's (1938) law [...]
Lake Champlain fisheries and ecosystem in the context of the Laurentian Great Lakes: past research, current management issues, and future research priorities
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Lake Champlain is a large lake bordered by New York, Vermont, and Quebec. This bi-national, multi-jurisdictional lake shares many management issues and challenges with the much larger bi-national Laurentian Great Lakes, including a history of commercial fisheries, species declines and extirpations, sport fisheries supported by stocking, and invasion of non-native species. The bathymetric [...]
Integrating primary and meta-analytic effect size estimates on the effects of PFAS and organochlorine pesticides on human health outcomes
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences
Persistent organic pollutants such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and organochlorine pesticides are among the most extensively studied environmental contaminants, yet the evidence base remains fragmented across primary studies and meta-analyses, limiting its ability to chart new research directions. To address this fragmentation, we developed a unified database that links primary [...]
Ecological Patterns in Mammalian Vocal Frequencies: Evidence Across Body Sizes and Habitats
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Vocalisations in mammals are an important sensory modality that is used for various purposes in communication, courtship, territorial display, navigation, prey detection, predator avoidance, reproduction, and social coordination. These various call functions are differentiated from each other through certain properties. Call spectral properties are influenced by anatomical constraints, especially [...]
Chromosomal speciation through holocentric lenses
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Chromosomal rearrangements (CRs) can trigger speciation by acting as barriers to gene flow. Two main theoretical frameworks were developed on how they contribute to speciation: causing infertility in heterokaryotypes (hybrid dysfunction) or creating islands of divergence through recombination suppression. However, these theories were developed with monocentric chromosomes in mind. Species with [...]