Preprints
There are 3417 Preprints listed.
Cetaceans of the Black and Azov Seas as Indicators of Habitat Quality via Stacked Species Distribution Models
Published: 2026-07-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Habitat degradation and biodiversity loss in the Black and Azov Seas necessitate improved tools for spatially explicit conservation planning. We employed stacked species distribution modelling (SSDM) to assess habitat quality for the three resident cetacean species—the common dolphin (Delphinus delphis ponticus), the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus ponticus), and the harbour porpoise [...]
Timing isn’t everything: impacts of maximum abundance and duration of a seasonal resource on consumer fitness
Published: 2026-07-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Phenological advances are among the most apparent biotic responses to warmer springs in mid- to high-latitude regions, with evidence that consumers are advancing less than the resources they rely on. Here, we extend the match/mismatch hypothesis to predict how the mean timing, maximum abundance and duration of the resource phenological distribution impacts on consumer fitness. Using data from 44 [...]
Analysis of in-situ biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management in Twenty-three selected Sacred Groves of Manipur within Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot : Bio-legal aspects
Published: 2026-07-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany, Environmental Law, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
In Manipur, Sacred Groves (SGs), known as “Umang Lai," which literally means ‘forest deities’, are worshipped in forest or thick vegetation areas. A total of 365 SGs have been officially reported in Manipur, a biodiversity hotspot of India. The concept of SG is founded on the traditional religious belief systems which aid in the sustainable and restrictive utilization of resources within it. [...]
Estimating the density dependence of stage-specific survival and fecundity using Integrated Population Models
Published: 2026-07-07
Subjects: Population Biology, Statistical Models
The density dependence of survival and reproduction parameters can change with age or stage, which is key to understand population regulation mechanisms. However, the multiplication of parameters in structured demographic models makes their estimation challenging. Integrated population models (IPMs) provide an interesting solution to this issue by combining different data sources. IPM simulation [...]
RSV G selection analyses support constraint of the CX3C/cystine-noose core and diversification in mucin-like regions
Published: 2026-07-07
Subjects: Evolution
The RSV attachment (G) glycoprotein is a highly variable surface antigen and an important target of humoral immunity, yet it contains a short central conserved region (CCR; RSV-A2 residues 157-198) with a CX3C chemokine-mimic motif and disulfide-bonded cystine noose. A pre-specified hypothesis was tested: FEL-positive diversifying sites are enriched in the CCR and/or the CX3C motif. Using a [...]
From a review to the field: Alternative coping styles under urbanisation
Published: 2026-07-06
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Endocrinology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physiology, Population Biology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences, Zoology
Under human-induced rapid environmental changes, behavioural and physiological responses of organisms are key to maintain homeostasis and minimise fitness loss. Both responses can be integrated, into among-individual correlations forming stress-coping styles or syndromes (SCS). Such SCS emerge from genetic correlations or adaptive trade-offs. In the context of environmental challenges, more [...]
What’s in a name? Bioinformatics and the challenge of using eDNA metabarcoding to report non-indigenous species detections
Published: 2026-07-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is increasingly employed for surveillance of non-indigenous species (NIS), offering the promise of simultaneous multi-taxon de-tection, scalability, and the capacity for early detection before populations become es-tablished. The sensitivity of metabarcoding that makes it attractive for NIS surveil-lance also creates a meaningful risk of erroneous detections [...]
Taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity of a Sierra Nevada subalpine meadow community along soil hydrological gradient
Published: 2026-07-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mountain meadows occupy about 2% of the Sierra Nevada Range but house many narrow endemic and imperiled species. In this study, we investigated plant community structure and assessed species, phylogenetic, and functional diversity of Dog Valley Meadow, a subalpine meadow in the northern Sierra Nevada Range, California. Variation in groundwater level creates three distinct meadow-type habitats – [...]
Drivers of temporal beta diversity and ecological resilience of plant communities across the United States
Published: 2026-07-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Long-term monitoring surveys offer more reliable assessments of biodiversity responses to climate change. In this study, we evaluated community shifts in 1105 1 m2 plots across 20 NEON sites, representing each of the 20 eco-climatic domains across the U.S. and Puerto Rico, using long-term plant surveys (5-10 years). We computed alpha, spatial and temporal beta, and gamma diversity for the plots [...]
Rodenticides now ubiquitous in wildlife of Italian landscapes
Published: 2026-07-03
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Life Sciences
Second Generation Anticoagulant Rodenticides (SGARs) are used to control synantropic rodents and therefore also affect non-target wildlife. However, no study tested for their presence across a whole assemblage of wildlife, limiting our understanding of their overall circulation and exposure pathways. We tested for SGARs in a large sample of terrestrial mammals (n = 403) and birds (n = 189), that [...]
Genome-wide strengthening of evolutionary constraint across the volvocine multicellularity gradient
Published: 2026-07-03
Subjects: Computational Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics
The evolutionary cost of maintaining somatic cell populations has been hypothesised to drive proteome-wide strengthening of constraint on coding sequence at the origin of multicellularity. Prior work on the volvocine clade has reported lower d_N/d_S in colonial than in unicellular relatives on 55 chloroplast genes (Hu et al. 2019) and on 105 nuclear single-copy orthogroups across colonial species [...]
Incorporating traits into consumer-resource models for a mechanistic trait ecology
Published: 2026-07-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
Traits provide a powerful way to infer community assembly processes, responses to environmental perturbations, and coexistence mechanisms, although most work has focused on plants and has not incorporated the role of trophic interactions. Here, we briefly review the main goals of trait-based ecology and highlight recent examples that use traits to study insect communities, specifically focusing [...]
Insects as agents of national security: entomological biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse in agriculture and forestry threaten geopolitical stability
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Biosecurity, Entomology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
1. In early 2026, the UK Government published a report assessing how global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse represent systematic threats to UK national security through cascading impacts to food security, land use and climate-related feedbacks. 2. Recontextualising biodiversity and ecosystem health as determinants of national security offers a novel perspective on long observed [...]
Partitioning environmental and philopatric drivers of nest site selection in an estuary-endemic turtle (Malaclemys terrapin)
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Abstract 1. Oviposition site selection is a critical maternal effect with direct implications for population-level adaptation to environmental change. This process is driven by a complex interplay of environmental, density-dependent, and social factors whose relative contributions to site selection are rarely quantified simultaneously. Natal philopatry, for example, is a maternal effect that can [...]
Anatomical responses of Cedrus libani (Lebanon Cedar) wood to mechanical stress
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Wood (secondary xylem) is a source of information about events that occurred during their lifespan. The aim of our research was to provide the pattern of modification of Lebanon cedar wood under the influence of mechanical stress, as a result of binding its trunk with string or wire. The wood samples were taken from a young Cedrus libani (14 years old - evaluated based on the number of growth [...]