Preprints
There are 3119 Preprints listed.
Social networks and information silos influence conservation knowledge in tourist populations
Published: 2026-04-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Marine tourism is a rapidly expanding industry with significant impacts on marine ecosystems and species. The behavior of individuals engaging with these ecosystems for economic or recreational purposes plays a strong role in the success of conservation efforts. To mitigate some of the negative effects human actions can have on ecosystems, effective dissemination of conservation knowledge and [...]
A selection-based framework for evaluating transgenerational phenotypic plasticity under environmental change
Published: 2026-04-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Rapid environmental change has intensified interest in inter- and transgenerational phenotypic plasticity (TGP) as a potential mechanism by which populations may buffer the fitness consequences of climate change. Parental environments frequently induce shifts in offspring phenotypes, and such responses are often implicitly assumed to enhance offspring fitness and thus population persistence. [...]
Quantifying information content using population genetics concepts and equations to develop new insights into information distribution in human communities
Published: 2026-04-03
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Information evolves within human societies in ways that parallel the evolution of genes in biological populations. Applying classical population genetics equations, we developed a framework in which the rates of learning and forgetting define the net balance of informational change, and directional exchange among groups can be represented as information flow. We apply this framework to a 43-year [...]
Crop species and climate shape amphibian communities and conservation significance of coffee agroforests in the Western Ghats
Published: 2026-04-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Shade coffee agroforests are recognized as refuges for biodiversity and potential allies in conservation across the human-modified tropics. However, biodiversity is strongly influenced by coffee cultivation methods and climates, both of which vary widely and are increasingly dynamic. In this context, one significant but understudied change is the shift in cultivated species from arabica (Coffea [...]
Male scent-marks predict fitness via socio-spatial dominance, but not female choice, in a lacertid lizard
Published: 2026-04-03
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Zoology
Chemical communication via scent-marks is widely recognised as a key mediator of sexual selection in lizards, yet their role remains contentious because we mostly ignore how scent-mark composition ultimately impacts male fitness in nature. Male scent-marks are often proposed to function as condition-dependent honest sexual signals mediating female choice, but an arising alternative hypothesis is [...]
Horsehair worm infection reshapes host trait architecture via allometric and sex-specific allocation shifts
Published: 2026-04-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Parasites can profoundly modify host phenotype, yet most studies emphasize behavioral manipulation rather than changes in morphology. From a functional perspective, organismal performance depends on proportional investment among traits, suggesting that parasitism may alter trait architecture through changes in allometry rather than simply reducing body size. 2. Here we test whether infection [...]
Fish in sand and gravel habitats in the North Sea and adjacent shelf seas: A systematic literature review
Published: 2026-04-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Sedimentary habitats such as sand and gravel are among the most widespread seafloor environments in shelf ecosystems, yet fish–habitat relationships in these substrates remain poorly understood. Although these habitats support diverse and productive benthic communities, ecological information on how fish use them is fragmented, limiting the effectiveness of conservation frameworks such as EUNIS, [...]
Endosymbiotic mutualism can constrain host diversity and evolved complexity
Published: 2026-04-03
Subjects: Evolution, Life Sciences
Coevolutionary arms races between hosts and parasites are known to promote the evolution of complex traits in hosts. However, the evolutionary effects of mutualistic endosymbionts (symbionts that live inside a host) are less well understood. Here, we use populations of self-replicating computer programs (digital organisms) to investigate the effects of trait matching mutualisms on evolution. We [...]
Transmission mode impacts parasite spread in spatially structured environments
Published: 2026-04-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
The spread of parasites and pathogens is shaped by their transmission to new hosts and often inherently linked to the spatial structure of host populations. Transmission modes are typically classified as either horizontal — between individuals — or vertical, from parent to offspring. While some parasites rely exclusively on one mode, many use both. We investigate how transmission mode impacts the [...]
Vegetation responses to managed river flow events and regimes
Published: 2026-04-02
Subjects: Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Vegetation communities are an important part of riverine ecosystems and can be severely impacted by changed flow conditions in regulated waterways, making them a priority for waterway management. Environmental flows are a commonly used tool to mitigate some of the impacts from regulated flow regimes and provide benefits to vegetation communities. Ongoing and effective use of environmental flows [...]
Policy Pathways for Enabling Mussel Shell Reuse in Marine Restoration in Chile
Published: 2026-04-02
Subjects: Environmental Law, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences
Chile is the world’s second-largest producer of mussels and the leading exporter, harvesting approximately 400,000 t/year, of which about 30% becomes shell waste. While this biomaterial poses a growing disposal challenge, it also represents an opportunity for marine ecological restoration. In southern Chile, where mussel farming is concentrated, efforts to reuse shells as nature-based solutions [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the South-west Australian Shelf
Published: 2026-04-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mangroves of the South-west Australian shelf is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Great Australian Bight, Houtman, Leeuwin, South Australian Gulfs, and Western Bassian. The South-west Australian shelf mangrove province mapped extent in 2020 was 198.8 km2 across, representing 0.1% of the global mangrove area. [...]
Efficient Bayesian implementations of capture-recapture models with Stan
Published: 2026-04-02
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Survival Analysis
Capture-recapture (CR) methods are a mainstay of ecological statistics for estimating demographic parameters and population sizes in animal populations. The advent of Bayesian methods made complex hierarchical formulations accessible to practitioners, largely relying on conditional likelihood formulations with latent discrete parameters. However, modern gradient-based MCMC methods that are the [...]
Celtic rainforest and ancient woodland indicator plants on an anthropogenic site at the Holy Loch, Argylll, Scotland
Published: 2026-04-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
This study documents the floristic, bryological and rainforest lichen composition of a young, anthropogenic woodland at Holy Loch Nature Reserve (HLNR), Argyll. Although the woodland is no more than 75 years old and established on upper, roadside saltmarsh and on an adjacent, capped industrial landfill, it supports a species assemblage characteristic of hyper-oceanic temperate rainforest. Surveys [...]
An evolving view of phylogenetic biogeography
Published: 2026-04-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Biogeography is intrinsically linked to evolution as a process and to systematics as a practice. Phylogenetic biogeography, in particular, studies the distribution of life in space over time through the lens of common ancestry. Over the past century, new biological and geological discoveries, theoretical frameworks, and methodological techniques revolutionized how we understand why species have [...]