Preprints
There are 3287 Preprints listed.
China must revise its regulation for managing non-native invasive species
Published: 2026-05-28
Subjects: Political Science, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Biological invasions are a leading contributor to the global biodiversity crisis, yet existing regulatory frameworks are challenged by definitions of ‘non-native’ species that are based on geopolitical rather than ecological boundaries. This perspective highlights the critical disconnect between administrative jurisdictions and biogeographic units, with focus on China’s biosecurity laws. These [...]
Navigating Spatial Trade-offs in Restoration Planning: A Multi-Objective Optimization Framework Integrating Ecological Feasibility
Published: 2026-05-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ecosystem restoration requires decision-support tools capable of balancing ecological benefits under limited resources while explicitly accounting for the long-term likelihood of restoration success. Despite its recognized importance, ecological feasibility has rarely been formulated as an optimization objective in spatial planning, typically being treated only as a constraint or biophysical [...]
The effectiveness of overwintering Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) in cold-dry storage
Published: 2026-05-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
In the northernmost part of the Eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) range, oyster farmers face challenges maintaining stock through freezing winters. To avoid leaving oysters exposed to variable field conditions, many farmers overwinter oysters outside of the water in cold-dry storage (CDS). Here, we sought to add to the limited but growing empirical research examining the effectiveness of CDS [...]
From Individuals to Networks: The Role of Variation in Plant-Pollinator Communities' Responses to Global Change
Published: 2026-05-28
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
1. Plant–pollinator communities are critical for biodiversity, ecosystem function, and human well-being. Yet our ability to predict divergent species responses to environmental change, the risk of abrupt collapse, or the potential for recovery in plant-pollinator systems remains limited. 2. Here, we argue that individual variation within species may play a critical but underappreciated role in [...]
Bayesian adaptive design for citizen science data collection: Exploring tensions between data and design
Published: 2026-05-28
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
1. Bayesian adaptive design can be applied in spatial settings where future survey locations need to be selected based on already available data. An important use case of adaptive design is the recommendation of locations for opportunistic, citizen science collection of species observation data, where some areas are already overrepresented and others are severely undersampled. 2. This work [...]
Inferring genomic landscapes with the integrative sequentially Markov coalescent (iSMC)
Published: 2026-05-28
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Biology, Computational Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences
The integrative Sequentially Markovian Coalescent (iSMC) is an extension of the sequentially Markovian Coalescent (SMC) model allowing for parameter heterogeneity along the genome, such as recombination and mutation rates. Heterogeneous parameters follow an autocorrelation process that modulates the genealogical process, extending the hidden state space and adding as few as two extra parameters [...]
A viral mimic increases body temperature but does not affect mass or inflammation in a wild frugivorous bat
Published: 2026-05-28
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences
The acute phase response is a component of innate immunity that helps fight infections. Understanding variation in this response is particularly critical in bats, which can be asymptomatic hosts of pathogens that cause disease in other animals. Although bats are most famously tolerant of viruses, research on the bat acute phase response has focused predominantly on bacterial antigens. To improve [...]
Intra- and Interannual Dynamics of Remotely Sensed Functional Diversity in Temperate Forests from Sentinel-2 Time Series
Published: 2026-05-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Forest Sciences, Geography, Remote Sensing
Monitoring biodiversity change requires approaches that capture ecological dynamics across space and time. Satellite remote sensing provides unique opportunities for such monitoring, but most studies of functional diversity rely on single-date imagery, typically at peak greenness, neglecting seasonal variability. Here, we used multi-year, dense Sentinel-2 time series (2017-2021) to assess [...]
Precision Microbiome Stewardship: Moving Aquaculture from Transient Supplementation to Systemic Resilience
Published: 2026-05-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Toward a unified tolerance–resistance framework across biological stressors and scales
Published: 2026-05-27
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences
Ecotoxicology and immunology both explore how organisms cope with external stressors that disrupt homeostasis, yet these fields have developed largely in parallel. While immunology has formalized the distinction between resistance (i.e reducing stressor burden) and disease tolerance (i.e. mitigating damage without reducing burden), ecotoxicology has traditionally focussed on stressor fate, [...]
“Ecological and Conservation Governance Condition Analysis Using Ecological Diversity Indices: A Study of Bhawal National Park”
Published: 2026-05-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Education, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
Abstract: Once a historical biodiversity hotspot, the Bhawal National Park (BNP) in Bangladesh faces severe threats to its ecological integrity, despite its protected status. Located approximately 40 km north of Dhaka, the park’s original coppice Sal forest (Shorea robusta) ecosystem is now fragmented and degraded due to illegal deforestation and encroachment, leading to a drastic decline in [...]
Ecological and evolutionary dynamics of chlamydiae endosymbionts in social amoeba host communities
Published: 2026-05-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
Endosymbiotic interactions have played fundamental roles in shaping the evolution of complex eukaryotes. However, how ecological processes shape endosymbioses that are still segregating in host populations have been less described. Here, we characterize the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of chlamydiae bacterial endosymbionts in dictyostelid social amoeba host communities. Our survey of over [...]
Towards a standard model for teaching the process of biological evolution
Published: 2026-05-25
Subjects: Education, Life Sciences
Evolution is widely considered to be one of the cornerstones of the biological sciences. Despite this importance, the process of biological evolution remains widely misunderstood among students, illustrating that evolution education is in need of an educational synthesis. The current paradigm for teaching the evolutionary process revolves around using population genetics models to illustrate the [...]
Primary and secondary invasion pathways: why the distinction matters
Published: 2026-05-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
The pathways through which non-native species are introduced and spread help shape the rate and geographic patterns of biological invasions. These pathways can be classified as primary, where non-native species cross jurisdictional or biogeographic boundaries, or secondary, where species move within these boundaries after introduction. Despite fundamental economic, political, social, and [...]
Biorestorer: A Framework for Synthetic Succession with a Qualitative System Level Illustration
Published: 2026-05-23
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Ecosystem restoration in severely degraded or soil-absent environments requires approaches that operate independently of natural soils and make effective use of locally available resources. The Biorestorer platform introduces synthetic succession as a systems-based eco-engineering framework structured in sequential functional phases and aligned with in situ resource utilization (ISRU) principles, [...]