Preprints
There are 3916 Preprints listed.
Ecological and evolutionary significance of bark feeding: implications for mammal and plant
Published: 2026-11-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Bark feeding is a widespread but under-reported form of mammalian herbivory that can buffer herbivores against seasonal food shortages while imposing disproportionate damage on woody plants. Despite its ecological significance, the drivers and adaptations underlying bark feeding remain poorly understood. Here we synthesise evidence for the ecological and evolutionary significance of bark feeding [...]
Closing the reference gap for Australo-Papuan rodents: a 431-mitogenome library for environmental DNA and species discovery
Published: 2026-11-10
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics
As biodiversity declines at an unprecedented rate, rapid and scalable approaches to monitoring species are increasingly needed, particularly in poorly known and highly threatened groups. Environmental DNA (eDNA) is increasingly enabling high-throughput monitoring to inform conservation. However, species-level monitoring through eDNA relies on comprehensive reference databases and short, [...]
SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF LARGE-SCALE VEGETATION FIRES IN 2026: SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL IMPACT IN THE DEPARTMENT OF TOLIMA
Published: 2026-11-10
Subjects: Engineering
Fire regimes in the Colombian Andes have undergone extreme changes due to climate change. Given the institutional gap in detailed official mapping to assess the scale of this disaster, this study conducted a spatial analysis of the 2026 season of large-scale vegetation fires to quantify their extent and socio-ecological impact in Tolima. Using Sentinel-2 imagery, burn scars larger than 0.5 [...]
The false paradox of phylogenetic signal: repeated origins of fossoriality in Xenarthra
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Evolution
Phylogenetic signal is often read as evolutionary conservatism, but the same pattern can arise from retention of the ancestral state and repeated origins of the derived state. We tested this in Xenarthra using phylogenetic comparative analyses, ancestral state reconstructions, climatic associations, and tests of correlated evolution with diet, across 24 extant and extinct taxa and 2002 posterior [...]
Current knowledge and research gaps in Cerrado seed ecology: from seed viability to ecological restoration
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Plant Biology
Although seed ecology underpins plant recruitment, conservation, and restoration, knowledge in this field in the Cerrado, the largest Neotropical savanna, remains fragmented across taxa, regions, environmental factors, and stages of the seed life cycle. Here we conducted a scoping review to map existing evidence, identify gaps, and synthesise ecological patterns in this megadiverse biome. We [...]
NAHPU: An integrated approach to natural history data acquisition and management in the extended specimen era
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Life Sciences
Natural history museums collect, curate, and distribute the data that underpin biodiversity science. Modern, holistic collection practices have increased the number of specimen parts, associated parasites, and derivative digital assets, challenging researchers to maintain data integrity for a vast set of data types representing the extended specimen. We developed the NAHPU digital field catalog [...]
Movement-surface interactions of flying insects in three-dimensional space
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Three-dimensional movement is increasingly measurable for flying insects. However, modelling approaches have lagged behind, limiting mechanistic understanding of how flight behaviour influences interception by planar trapping surfaces. We simulate insect movement in three-dimensional space using biased and correlated random walks, distinguishing panel contact from edge leakage and accounting for [...]
30×30 Is Not Enough: Indigenous Governance Literature Reveals Conditions for Effective and Equitable Conservation
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy
Achieving 30×30 requires more than expanding conserved areas; it also depends on how conservation is governed. We conducted a global scoping review of 110 empirical studies (2002–2024) involving Indigenous Peoples, examining governance arrangements, governance principles, ecological, social, and cultural outcomes, and thematic overlap with Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) [...]
Evolutionary origins of a latitudinal plant height gradient
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Latitudinal gradients are among the most pervasive patterns in biodiversity, yet their evolutionary origins remain poorly understood, especially in plants. Here we identify a latitudinal gradient in plant height within cacti, an iconic and rapidly evolving plant family spanning the Americas, with taller species inhabiting warmer, lower latitudes. To uncover how this gradient arose, we [...]
Leaf palatability is driven by trait variation within Quercus robur crowns
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Plant–herbivore interactions vary across spatial and temporal scales in response to environmental gradients. However, despite substantial variation in leaf traits even within individuals and under similar environmental conditions, the role of leaf traits in shaping leaf palatability remains poorly understood. Here, we disentangled the effects of leaf trait variation from those of crown strata [...]
psmc-rs: fast PSMC inference that reproduces the reference implementation
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Evolution, Genomics, Population Biology
The pairwise sequentially Markovian coalescent (PSMC) infers the history of effective population size from a single diploid genome and is one of the most widely used methods of population genomics. Its reference implementation, the C program psmc, runs on one thread, which makes bootstraps and large cohorts slow. We present psmc-rs, a reimplementation of PSMC in Rust that fits the same model as C [...]
MetaWeave: a reproducible framework for the spatial inference of ecological networks
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Life Sciences
A regional species-interaction network, or metaweb, describes interactions that potentially occur among species within a region. MetaWeave is an R package that combines regional metawebs, local species assemblages, and alternative interaction models to reconstruct local networks. Its main feature is to separate the effects of interaction assumptions from changes in community composition. We [...]
Colony compactness predicts growth and survival in corals
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology
Understanding differences in growth and survival rates across species is a key element of anticipating how ecosystems are likely to respond to global change. However, measuring vital rates for highly diverse assemblages with many rare species is often unfeasible. Identifying links between traits and vital rates that apply across entire groups of species can provide a way to infer assemblage-wide [...]
Developing indicators of watershed health through public consultations and positing the use of ecological place-based approach in watershed management planning
Published: 2026-11-07
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Physical and Environmental Geography
Watershed health assessment is essential in the identification of issues and in the development of a plan to find solutions to issues. Watershed health is assessed based on a suite of watershed health indicators (WHI) often selected by technical experts. Stakeholders’ input into the selection of WHIs is necessary. Additionally, the importance of each indicator varies in different areas of a large [...]
Thirty years after “The Naturalists Are Dying Off”: Regrounding Conservation Biology in a predictive era
Published: 2026-11-06
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Thirty years after Reed Noss warned that naturalists were dying off, conservation biology has entered an era of unprecedented analytical capacity, driven by global biodiversity databases, remote sensing, and artificial intelligence. This transformation has coincided with declining visibility and support for field-based natural history and taxonomy. The resulting losses extend beyond primary [...]