Preprints
There are 3503 Preprints listed.
Life-history traits do not always evolve in response to changing thermal environments
Published: 2026-08-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Integrative Biology, Zoology
Quantifying animals' capacity to evolve in response to changing environments is central to predicting ecological responses to climate change. However, empirical evidence for evolutionary responses to changing temperatures remains mixed, and we know little about how selection alters trait variance or generates trade-offs among traits. Here, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of 44 [...]
Beyond single species seed orchards: A multi-species framework for tropical tree breeding and forest management
Published: 2026-08-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Conventional forest tree breeding has largely focused on species that perform well in monoculture systems, where genetic evaluation, seed production, and management can be optimized under uniform conditions. While this approach has delivered substantial genetic gains, it does not adequately address the growing demand for forests that function as diverse, climate resilient ecosystems. Most [...]
Somatic evolution of metabolic reprograming: mutation limited or selection limited?
Published: 2026-08-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Somatic mutations can potentially be responsible for metabolic reprogramming, but the crucial question is whether the evolution would be mutation limited or selection limited. Mathematical and statistical considerations make the case for selection limited evolution stronger, e.g. somatic evolution of cancer is shown to be selection limited than mutation limited. Although some insights are [...]
Wolf–Deer Movement After the 2021 Wolf Harvest, by North-South Gradient and Proximity to Towns using a Five-County Camera Record (2018–2025)
Published: 2026-08-03
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Previous analysis of a wolf-enriched extract of the Snapshot Wisconsin camera network for five northwestern counties (Barron, Burnett, Bayfield, Douglas, and Sawyer; 525 cameras, 294,031 camera-days, 634,214 detections, 2018–2025; 1,856 wolf detections on 197 cameras) established patterns in the way gray wolves (Canis lupus) follow, select which class of deer to follow, and how strongly they [...]
An Interpretable Machine Learning Framework for River Water Hardness Classification
Published: 2026-08-03
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Sustainability
Determining water hardness in the field currently relies on laboratory Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) titration or single-proxy electrical conductivity (EC) measurements, both of which have significant limitations. This study investigates whether routine in situ physicochemical parameters can accurately classify river water hardness without laboratory analysis. Using samples from a river [...]
Bias and complementarity in species occurrence data from citizen science, museum, and social media collections
Published: 2026-08-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Effective biodiversity policy and spatial planning depend on species occurrence data. Yet data that informs conservation decisions typically originate from heterogeneous sources that potentially introduce systematic biases that shape downstream ecological inference and policy outcomes. To explore these potential biases, we analysed reptile location data from Bangladesh and India – a mega-diverse [...]
A scalable multi-resolution framework for connectivity-based biodiversity indicators
Published: 2026-08-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Landscape connectivity links local habitat condition to broader ecological processes including dispersal, recolonisation, range shifts, and species persistence, that underpin biodiversity responses to land-use and climate change. Several established biodiversity indicators — habitat connectedness (including as an input to the Biodiversity Habitat Index, BHI), Protected Area Connectedness Index [...]
Reconstructing the Early Evolution of Insect-Bacterial Mutualism through Natural Symbiotic Systems, Experimental Evolution, and Symbiosis Engineering
Published: 2026-08-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
The evolutionary transition from free-living bacteria to mutualistic symbionts remains a central question in symbiosis research. Traditionally, this process has been inferred from comparative analyses of extant symbiotic systems, which provide evolutionary snapshots but offer limited insight into the processes connecting them. Recent studies of the stinkbug Plautia stali and its bacterial [...]
Leveraging Large Scale, Open-Access Population Data to Calculate Genetic Indicators: A Continental Assessment of European Birds
Published: 2026-08-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) committed countries worldwide to conserving and restoring genetic diversity. Yet, translating complex genetic data into actionable metrics remains formidable for most stakeholders, especially when DNA-based data are unavailable. Proxy metrics such as the KMGBF headline indicator (A.4) using effective population size (Ne) and the [...]
The series of genetic codes that preceded our own
Published: 2026-08-01
Subjects: Evolution, Genetics, Paleobiology
We produce a working hypothesis for the steps by which the canonical genetic code might have been constructed. We assume amino acids were added in the order inferred from their enrichment or depletion in ancestrally reconstructed sequences dating back to the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) relative to that in ancient but post-LUCA controls. To convert this ordering into a time series of [...]
Principles of Effective Guidance to Support the Implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
Published: 2026-08-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Effective guidance is necessary for conservation practitioners to implement targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF). However, there is a need to determine what properties make good guidance: easily accessible, widely usable and addressing specific needs to be implemented quickly by end-users. Alongside a rapid review of tools and guidance resources (T&G) [...]
A modeling lens on landscapes-of-peril and other ecological drivers of zoonoses
Published: 2026-08-01
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences
Ecological systems are driven by a complex suite of environmental conditions, interactions among individuals, and reciprocal behavioral and biological responses of organisms to the ecosystems they inhabit. Individuals may, in turn, reshape those systems, generating feedback that alters the ecological drivers influencing subsequent system dynamics. Extractive and competitive processes are embedded [...]
Mapping monitoring resources to support progress tracking of global biodiversity-related commitments
Published: 2026-08-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Policy, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability
To address global biodiversity declines, governments have committed to ambitious biodiversity-related international policy goals and targets. In parallel, there has been rapid growth in datasets and monitoring resources, which has collectively increased the capacity to track progress towards these global commitments. However, a clear overview of how resources map to these commitments is lacking, [...]
Stage-dependent host use reveals reproductive and nursery habitats in the sea urchin-associated amphipod Dactylopleustes yoshimurai
Published: 2026-08-01
Subjects: Marine Biology
Host-associated symbionts are often described by a single host species, yet host use may be partitioned among life stages and host conditions. The sea urchin-associated amphipod Dactylopleustes yoshimurai commonly occurs on Strongylocentrotus intermedius in Otsuchi Bay, Japan, where juveniles frequently aggregate on disease lesions, whereas ovigerous females are rarely found. This pattern [...]
Bridging the data gap in freshwater biodiversity conservation monitoring: global indicators and online data systems
Published: 2026-08-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Freshwater ecosystems are among the most threatened on Earth. Global efforts to conserve biodiversity through multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) explicitly include goals contributing to freshwater ecosystems, but monitoring their impact is often constrained by issues around data availability and access, affecting countries’ ability to plan conservation responses and apply adaptive [...]