Preprints
There are 3191 Preprints listed.
Opportunities, Enablers and Requirements in Advancing Earth Observation for Scaling Nature Finance
Published: 2026-04-30
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Leveraging Earth Observation for Nature Finance (LEON) project, supported by the European Space Agency (ESA), seeks to transform the use of Earth Observation (EO) data in enabling, mobilising and scaling nature-positive finance globally. This report builds upon six months of structured research, landscape analysis and multi-stakeholder engagement to map the opportunities and requirements for [...]
Earth Observation to Scale Nature Finance: Survey 2025
Published: 2026-04-30
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
This report presents the results of the LEON User Requirements Survey conducted in summer 2025 to understand how Earth Observation (EO) data can support the mobilisation and scaling of nature finance. The survey targeted financial institutions, data providers, and other stakeholders engaged in nature-related investment, risk management, and policy. A total of 27 organisations responded to the [...]
A National Application of the Species Habitat Index for Ethiopia Reveals Uneven Habitat Change Across Plant Groups and Ecosystems
Published: 2026-04-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
Accelerating delivery of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) requires indicators that can detect species-level habitat change at policy-relevant scales. The Species Habitat Index (SHI) offers a method to optimise resource allocation and enhance national biodiversity reporting, but its broader utilisation has been constrained by significant data gaps, particularly for taxa [...]
Parasite species identity reshapes geographic patterns of morphology in the hermit crab Pagurus filholi across Japan
Published: 2026-04-29
Subjects: Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Geographic variation in morphological traits of marine invertebrates is commonly attributed to local adaptation or phenotypic plasticity, yet such interpretations can be confounded when parasite assemblages — and their morphological effects on hosts — differ systematically among localities. Here, we tested whether the identity of five parasite species—rhizocephalans Peltogaster postica and [...]
The Positive Influence of Compost and Cover Crops on Key Soil Health Indicators in Nut Orchards
Published: 2026-04-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
Sustainable management practices in nut orchards are crucial for enhancing soil health and minimizing environmental impacts associated with conventional production. Over three years, this study evaluated the effects of stacked soil health practices in five nut orchards (almonds and walnuts) in California. Experimental plots received annual applications of 19 Mg/ha of yard waste and manure [...]
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 [...]
Functional diversity of tundra vascular plants over space and time
Published: 2026-04-29
Subjects: Biodiversity
Aim: Rapid warming across the tundra biome is driving widespread changes in vascular plant community composition. While species turnover is well-documented, the ramifications for tundra functional diversity are unknown. Here, we quantify biome-scale spatial gradients and temporal trends in the functional diversity of tundra vegetation for the first time. Location: A biome-scale synthesis of in [...]
Representational limits in detecting ecological change
Published: 2026-04-29
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, [...]
Virtual Population Analysis of the critically endangered Scalloped Hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini) in the Eastern Tropical Pacific
Published: 2026-04-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
The scalloped hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini) is one of the most critically endangered shark species in the Eastern Tropical Pacific (ETP). Despite its wide distribution and relatively high fecundity, overfishing and bycatch have led to sustained population declines across the region. We developed a spatially implicit, stage-structured, two-sex virtual population model for the ETP population of S. [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the East Central and Southeast Australian Shelf
Published: 2026-04-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mangroves of the East Central and Southeast Australian Shelf is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Bassian, Cape Howe, Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands, Manning-Hawkesbury, Tweed-Moreton, and Western Bassian. The East Central and Southeast Australian Shelf mangrove province mapped extent in 2020 was 462.2 km2, [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Northwest Australian and Sahul Shelf
Published: 2026-04-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Northwest Australia and Sahul shelf is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Arafura Sea, Arnhem Coast to Gulf of Carpentaria, Bonaparte Coast, Exmouth to Broome, Gulf of Papua, Houtman, Lesser Sunda, Ningaloo, Shark Bay, Southeast Papua New Guinea and Torres Strait Northern Great Barrier Reef. In [...]
Wolf – human interactions in a shared landscape: spatio-temporal distribution and visitors' perception in The Hoge Veluwe National Park
Published: 2026-04-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Large carnivores are increasingly recolonizing human-dominated landscapes, yet the mechanisms enabling their persistence in intensively used landscapes and how this shapes risk perception and tolerance remain insufficiently understood. In particular, few studies have integrated fine-scale ecological data with on-site assessments of visitor perceptions from the same recreational area. Using the [...]
Status and conservation assessment of southern marginal populations of the Golden Eagle Aquila chrysaetos under IUCN criteria
Published: 2026-04-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
The Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) is one of the most widely distributed raptors worldwide and is currently classified as Least Concern at the global scale. However, global assessments may obscure pronounced regional asymmetries in population status and extinction risk, particularly at the geographical margins of a species’ range. At the southern edge of its distribution, encompassing the [...]
Plasmidomics: studying plasmids as ecological entities beyond their hosts
Published: 2026-04-25
Subjects: Bacteriology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences
Plasmids are autonomous mobile genetic elements whose ecology extends beyond individual bacterial hosts. As molecular symbionts, they traverse strains, species, and environments, disseminating adaptive genes and shaping microbial community structure through dynamics that are often decoupled from host taxonomy. Plasmidomics—the omics discipline dedicated to the study of plasmids—has revealed that [...]
Expanding the uptake of conservation technology: insights from efforts to share conservation bioacoustics capacity in Indonesia and Malaysia
Published: 2026-04-24
Subjects: Education, Life Sciences
Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) of terrestrial habitats has grown exponentially over the last three decades, given recent technological advances and the utility of this approach in providing information on acoustically active animals, their habitats, and human activities across large spatial and temporal scales. Yet, just 1% of PAM studies were conducted in Southeast Asia, despite the region’s [...]