Preprints
There are 3604 Preprints listed.
Socioeconomic policy and large mature trees are vital for moor macaque (Macaca maura) conservation in anthropogenically-modified landscapes
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Energy Policy, Environmental Law, Environmental Policy, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation, Population Biology, Zoology
Despite conservation efforts, intensifying anthropogenic pressure is transforming tropical forests into anthropogenically-dominated landscapes. We investigated how current anthropogenic pressure and socioeconomic-climate policies influence tropical forest ecology, using the Endangered moor macaque (Macaca maura) in southwestern Sulawesi, Indonesia, as an example species. Deploying camera traps [...]
Humans simplified trophic structures in island lake ecosystems
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Lakes on oceanic islands are exceptionally vulnerable ecosystems and serve as natural archives of long-term environmental change, yet long-term reconstructions spanning multiple trophic levels remain rare. We reconstruct 2,000 years of ecological change across nine Azorean lakes by analysing sediment records of community composition and trophic-guild richness for aquatic producers and consumers, [...]
Populations of cooperatively breeding birds are buffered against annual variation in precipitation and temperature
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Cooperative breeding is a reproductive system wherein other than parents care for offspring. It has been suggested to provide advantages in harsh and unpredictable climates. Support for this idea stems from detailed population studies, or phyla-wide comparative studies, but both approaches are insufficient to assess the demographic benefits of cooperative breeding. Here, we use abundance [...]
What’s in flower? Phenological temperature sensitivities in a restricted alpine flora
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
As climate warming continues, cues for shifts in plant reproductive timing will be a key mediator of species success. To examine the links between temperature and flowering time in the Australian alpine, we used climate records and 18,000 flowering observations spanning 12 years for 52 alpine plant species from the Snowy Mountains, Australia. We modelled three phenological traits (flowering [...]
Beneath the surface: physiology, behaviour, and performance of fossorial amphibians and reptiles
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Integrative Biology
Fossoriality has evolved recurrently in amphibians and reptiles, exposing organisms to a distinctive physical environment that has favoured diverse morphological, physiological, behavioural, and biomechanical adaptations to enable life beneath the surface. Despite substantial progress over recent decades, research has largely examined these traits independently, limiting our understanding of how [...]
Why we need ecology and evolution for a better understanding of misdirected behaviour
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Animal behaviour emerges from the complex interaction between internal states, as well as biotic and abiotic environmental conditions. When observed behavioural responses differ from researchers’ expectations, they are often described as “misdirected behaviour” and potentially maladaptive. However, several factors including genetic background and developmental conditions, sensory perception and [...]
Prevalence of Gastrointestinal Parasites in Goats and Sheep in Mbula Kuli, Adamawa State, Nigeria
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Gastrointestinal (GI) parasitism is a major constraint to small ruminant productivity in Nigeria, causing reduced growth, weight loss, and economic losses to herders. This study assessed the prevalence of gastrointestinal parasites in goats and sheep in Mbula Kuli, Adamawa State, Nigeria, between 2025 and 2026. A total of 110 faecal samples (40 from goats and 70 from sheep) were collected and [...]
Interacting effects of canopy geometry and display activity timing shape conditions for visual signalling in Victoria’s riflebird
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Integrative Biology, Ornithology, Zoology
Lighting conditions in forests are highly variable in both space and time and depend on the interacting effects of canopy geometry, weather, and the time of day. This has strong implications for visual signalling, because different species sharing the same forest habitat may display in dramatically different microhabitats favouring disparate signal phenotypes. However, relatively little is known [...]
Modelling Invasive Insect Spread with Citizen Science Data: A Dynamic Occupancy-Detection Model
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biostatistics, Statistical Models
Human-mediated biological invasions are accelerating worldwide, but detecting early incursions and tracking their spread remains difficult. Opportunistic citizen science platforms, such as iNaturalist and eBird, generate large volumes of presence-only records, offering new opportunities to detect and monitor invasive species. However, these data come with uneven sampling effort, strong spatial [...]
Q&A: Genetic Lineages
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Evolution, Genetics, Population Biology
Genetic lineages are key to understanding evolution in complex scenarios and the evolution of genetic systems. However, they are often misunderstood; for example, confused with alleles or pedigrees. Here, we provide an accessible introduction to genetic lineages in question and answer format, from their definition as a physical object in space-time to their empirical characterization through [...]
The effect of environmental change on plastic sex-ratio strategies
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Offspring sex ratio manipulation has been widely studied, with numerous adaptive explanations proposed for biased sex ratios. While sex-ratio trends have been observed in many species, such patterns often disappear over time within populations or differ across populations. Environmental change is frequently proposed as underlying these inconsistencies, particularly for strategies relying on [...]
wildtag.ai: an open-access end-to-end offline AI-assisted desktop application for managing camera trap projects
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Bioinformatics, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Camera traps generate massive volumes of data, yet their decision-support potential is diluted by the bottleneck of manual processing. Automated classification has largely solved this, but classification alone does not remove the barriers to adoption: it must be coupled with the means to turn predictions into a verified, shareable dataset, which no existing tool does end-to-end, offline, and [...]
Sex-specific divergence in microhabitat use and activity patterns in fire salamanders: temperature matters
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology
Human-driven climate change and habitat degradation cause alterations in the spatial and temporal availability of natural resources, forcing wildlife to adjust their interactions with the environment in order to survive. To identify changes and promote effective conservation measures within the limited suitable habitats available, it is crucial to better understand habitat use. Activity patterns [...]
Multivariate social strategies buffer the fitness consequences of phenotype–environment mismatches
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
How organisms adapt to environmental change is a fundamental question in biology. Environmental shifts frequently induce mismatches between an organism's phenotype and its surroundings, including the social environments created by interacting individuals. Such mismatches can be mitigated by modifying one's own phenotype through plasticity, adjusting the environment, or selecting environments [...]
From Nesting to Emergence at a Half-Century Communal Wood Turtle (Glyptemys insculpta) Nesting Site: Species Phenology Across a Full Protected Season, Hatchling Consumption by Yellow Jackets (Vespula sp.), and Nest Protection by Overlaid Netting
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Long-term records that connect a turtle nesting season to the hatchling emergence it produces, at daily resolution and across multiple species, are rare. At a communal nesting site in Washburn County, Wisconsin, protected and monitored by our family for over five decades, we surveyed both ends of the 2026 season daily: the nesting period (25 May–13 June; 171 turtle sightings of five species, 143 [...]