Preprints
There are 2709 Preprints listed.
Response to “Radiolarian evolution: Analytical challenges in estimating the diversity and origin of Nature’s stars”
Published: 2025-11-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Genetics and Genomics, Marine Biology
We appreciate Daniel Lahr’s concern (Lahr, 2025) on the interpretation and conclusions of our study “Extant diversity, biogeography, and evolutionary history of Radiolaria” (Sandin et al., 2025). Given that some of these comments were already addressed in our original study following reviewers comments and that such issues are well known in the molecular diversity and evolution fields we [...]
Microevolutionary consequences of social structure in wild spotted hyenas
Published: 2025-11-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Social structure - arising from non-random associations and interactions among conspecifics - is a defining feature of most animal populations, yet evolutionary theory typically assumes genetic and social homogeneity. This disconnect limits our ability to predict how natural populations evolve. We combined nearly 30 years of behavioural, life-history, and genomic data from wild spotted hyenas [...]
Dispersion tests in generalised linear mixed-effects models - a methods comparison and practical guide
Published: 2025-11-14
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistical Models
1. Underdispersion and overdispersion are common issues when analysing ecological data with generalised linear (mixed) models (GLMs/GLMMs). Overdispersion, the phenomenon where observations spread wider than expected by the fitted model, leads to anti-conservative p-values and, thus, to inflated type I error. In contrast, underdispersion, a narrower spread of the data than expected, causes overly [...]
Ecological, demographic and social factors shape helping decisions at different spatial scales in a facultative cooperative breeder
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The fitness consequences of cooperative breeding are increasingly well understood, but the ecological and demographic factors driving helping remain contentious. Comparative and single-species studies have identified factors that promote the evolution of helping, but analyses typically test single hypotheses so the relative importance of different factors, and the spatial scale of their [...]
Paradigms and Principles for Integrating Nature Technologies in Biodiversity Monitoring
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Biodiversity
Employing a combination of nature technologies such as satellite data, eDNA, camera traps, passive acoustic sensors, and GPS monitors can augment traditional biodiversity measurements to help respond to increasing demand for understanding conservation status and outcomes. However, there is no clear guidance or consensus on how nature technologies are best integrated. We aim to provide a robust [...]
Barking up the wrong tree? Indian street dog woes are emblematic of ecological governance failures for multispecies coexistence
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
On August 11, 2025, India’s Supreme Court mandated relocating 2.5 million dogs to address bites and zoonotic disease/death concerns—but reversed course twice since then—revealing that solutions require sequential waste management, education, and sterilization that prioritize addressing root demographic and behavioral drivers over reactive management.
Beta-Diversity Beyond Bias: A Scalable Framework for Reliable Diversity Analysis from Citizen Science Data
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Citizen science data offer unprecedented spatial and temporal coverage for biodiversity research, yet sampling biases compromise their reliability for β-diversity analyses. We introduce a comprehensive framework to address these challenges, integrating space–time scaling, quality thresholds, and multiple partitioning approaches to enhance detection of ecological signals. Applying our framework to [...]
Interacting disturbances reshape bird assemblages via divergent community trajectories across southeastern Australia
Published: 2025-11-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Species counts can remain stable even as ecological communities collapse. This paradox exposes a critical blind spot in biodiversity monitoring: richness metrics miss the compositional upheaval that defines modern ecological change. As human pressures intensify, specialists decline and generalists proliferate, creating numerically similar but functionally different communities. Using three [...]
The Queer & Trans Field Safety Assessment: a tool for protecting minoritized field scientists
Published: 2025-11-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Ecological fieldwork poses heightened risks for LGBTQIA+ scientists due to inadequate safety protocols and identity-based vulnerabilities. Best practices to improve safety for queer field researchers exist, yet over 50% of LGBTQIA+ field scientists report feeling unsupported, with structural and cultural barriers unaddressed. Our team of 15 researchers from the University of California developed [...]
The hidden structure of unstructured citizen science insect monitoring
Published: 2025-11-11
Subjects: Biodiversity
Insects are vastly under-represented in biodiversity monitoring, leading to uncertainties about their trends. Semi-structured monitoring, relying on protocol reporting than protocol standardization, has emerged as a promising and more flexible alternative to structured monitoring, retaining broad participation. We examined the potential opportunities and barriers for semi-structured monitoring of [...]
Identifying deforestation and defaunation fronts in Indonesia’s tropical forests
Published: 2025-11-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Tropical forests are central to global climate regulation and biodiversity conservation, yet continue to face intense pressure from agricultural expansion, resource extraction, and infrastructure development. Indonesia contains some of the world’s largest remaining tropical forests and exceptionally high vertebrate diversity, but its islands differ widely in both historic forest loss and emerging [...]
Taxonomic revisions, strategic decisions research and management priorities for the threatened greater glider complex
Published: 2025-11-11
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Collating and synthesising ecological information is critical for guiding effective conservation policy and management plans. This is especially pertinent for species of conservation concern. This task may be further complicated when taxonomic revisions of species and species complexes occur. Species previously managed as a single taxon may be reclassified into multiple species, and hence [...]
Another brick in the wall of European subterranean spider knowledge: adding Macaronesian species and their traits to the picture
Published: 2025-11-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Caves and other subterranean ecosystems impose highly selective environmental filters, driving the evolution of convergent and specialized traits in subterranean organisms. Here, we present the first comprehensive checklist and trait database for subterranean spiders of Macaronesia, thereby filling a significant knowledge gap relative to continental Europe. We compiled data through direct [...]
The ecology of resting behaviour in terrestrial vertebrates, and potential effects of anthropization
Published: 2025-11-10
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Inactive behaviours are a major component of animals’ lives, generally representing important proportions of time budgets. The conditions in which they occur are thus likely to have key effects on individual fitness. Yet, relatively little research has focused on the determinants and ecological consequences of inactive behaviours, likely in part because of the inherent difficulties associated [...]
Artificial light at night has life stage-specific effects on biological rhythms in a specialist insect
Published: 2025-11-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Artificial Light at Night (ALAN) has infiltrated many once-dark nightscapes, introducing a novel cue on biological clocks. Recent research has uncovered effects of ALAN on behavior, physiology, and fitness across taxa. However, questions remain about ALAN’s effects on key biological rhythm functions like diapause and sleep, and how disruptions to these rhythms can be linked to fitness declines. [...]