Preprints
There are 2386 Preprints listed.
Bridging the scales: what can microbial ecologists learn from classic ecology?
Published: 2025-07-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Microbiology
The fields of ecology and microbiology have historically developed independently of one another, resulting in each having unique methods, terminology, and concepts. Microbial ecology aims to synthesise these perspectives, merging the molecular and reductionist strengths of the microbiologist with the systems-level viewpoint of the ecologist. However, unifying disciplines with independent [...]
Emerging tools to advance neuroethology in butterflies and moths
Published: 2025-06-30
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Entomology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Butterflies and moths have played historically important roles in developing our understanding of both ecology and evolutionary biology, and neuroethology. In both contexts, the diversity of behavioral strategies and specializations displayed by different Lepidoptera make them informative case studies. However, as in neuroscience more broadly, lepidopteran neuroethology has tended to focus on [...]
A call for phylogenetic context to understand geographic variation and host specificity in the parasitic copepod genus Salmincola
Published: 2025-06-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Freshwater parasitic copepods appear to exhibit great taxonomic diversity. However, little is known about gene flow between species or whether there is incongruence between morphological and phylogenetic species definitions. Additionally, little is known about what evolutionary factors may contribute to speciation across various lineages. The copepod genus Salmincola, which includes common [...]
Body condition as a shared response to environment in a commercially important demersal fish assemblage
Published: 2025-06-28
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology
Measures of an organism's weight at a given length are often considered reliable indicators of energy reserves or `condition', which can be related to fecundity and risk of mortality. Understanding the impact of environmental change on fish condition may therefore be critical for sustainable management of human activities in marine ecosystems. We investigated how changes in Canadian Pacific [...]
Non-lethal imaging and modeling approaches for estimating dry mass in aquatic larvae
Published: 2025-06-28
Subjects: Developmental Biology, Integrative Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences, Zoology
Body mass is crucial for scaling and comparing physiological rates. For example, dry body mass is important in determining an organism’s metabolic rate since it excludes metabolically inactive water weight. Obtaining repeated measurements of body mass throughout an individual’s lifetime is trivial. In contrast, we are normally able to obtain only a single estimate of dry body mass per individual [...]
Predator-prey interactions as drivers of cognitive evolution
Published: 2025-06-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Despite decades of research, how and why cognition varies between and within species remains hotly debated. Social interactions and environmental variability are the leading hypotheses for cognitive evolution, but these factors fail to account for large amounts of cognitive variation. Evidence is mounting that interactions between predators and prey are a key driver of cognition, but research on [...]
Unveiling the spatial link between geodiversity and biodiversity: a multi-taxon study in the South of France
Published: 2025-06-26
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Context: Addressing global environmental challenges requires an integrative conservation approach that spans multiple taxonomic groups and trophic levels. The "Conserving Nature’s Stage" (CNS) strategy promotes the protection of geodiversity -abiotic heterogeneity of the Earth’s surface and subsurface- as an holistic metric for biodiversity and ecosystems conservation, yet its relationship with [...]
The role of osmorespiratory compromise in metabolism and hypoxia tolerance of a purportedly oxyconforming teleost
Published: 2025-06-26
Subjects: Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Physiology, Zoology
Fish must manage the competing demands of ion balance and gas exchange across the gills – a physiological tension known as the osmorespiratory compromise. In dynamic estuarine environments, the osmorespiratory compromise may be exacerbated by variable salinity and periods of hypoxia that demand high respiratory work. This study examined whether exposure to isosmotic conditions (9 ppt) lowers [...]
Democratizing 3D ecology: Mobile neural radiance field for scalable ecosystem mapping in change detection
Published: 2025-06-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
High-resolution, three-dimensional monitoring is increasingly essential for capturing ecological dynamics, yet conventional approaches such as terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and photogrammetry remain limited by cost, accessibility, and technical barriers. Here, we introduce and evaluate the application of mobile neural radiance field (NeRF) methods for ecological research. Leveraging [...]
Demographic causes of the pesticide crash in the peregrine falcon
Published: 2025-06-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Population crashes in many avian predators during the 1950–70s, caused by organochlorine pesticides, belong to the most spectacular cases in the history of conservation and ecotoxicology. Negative effects of DDT on eggshell thickness, leading to egg breakage and declining productivity, are well-documented. In addition, cyclodiene pesticides such as Dieldrin were strongly suspected to contribute [...]
Hotspots, refuges, and rising risk: mapping tropical hunting pressure across space and time
Published: 2025-06-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Hunting is a major driver of global extinctions, yet the spatial footprint and temporal trend of this pressure is lacking at global scale, limiting our ability to achieve international policy targets. Here, we present the first standardized global maps of hunting pressure across the tropics, based on a machine learning algorithm trained on 2,463 hunted and non-hunted tropical sites, spatially and [...]
Rethinking Stress Through an Ecological Genomic Lens: From Predatory Pressures to Modern Mismatch
Published: 2025-06-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
Stress, traditionally seen as a psychological issue with physiological conse- quences, is now viewed as part of an evolutionary continuum. While modern stressors have shifted from immediate threats to chronic psychosocial chal- lenges, our physiological responses remain the same. In contrast, stress in the wild is acute; today’s chronic stressors keep the body in a prolonged fight- or-flight [...]
Time to publish ethically: DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly journals in ecology and evolutionary biology.
Published: 2025-06-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
The scientific publishing market is dysfunctional: academia pays a lot for publishing, much more than the actual cost. Transitioning to ethical publishing is a collective challenge requiring to inform scientists about the problem and its potential solutions. We introduce DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly journals in ecology and evolutionary biology (https://dafnee.isem-evolution.fr/). [...]
Assessment of environmental and public health impacts of dog parks in residential neighborhoods: A case study in Toronto, Canada
Published: 2025-06-24
Subjects: Public Health
The number of pet dogs has been increasing over the last decade, causing more challenges for dog owners taking care of their pets, particularly in current small apartments, as well as larger impacts on public health and environment. Dog owners usually use outdoor public spaces for their dogs to play and defecate. Public spaces are common sites of dog fecal contamination with prevalent rates of [...]
Prompting large language models for quality ecological statistics
Published: 2025-06-24
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Large language models (LLMs) are rapidly transforming scientific workflows, including statistical analyses in ecological sciences. While these AI tools offer impressive capabilities for code generation and analytical guidance, evaluations reveal significant limitations in their reasoning for standard statistical tests. Ecological statistics typically require special consideration due to spatial [...]