Preprints
There are 3840 Preprints listed.
ArHa: A globally standardised, relational database of arenavirus and hantavirus sampling in wild small mammal populations
Published: 2026-10-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Immunology and Infectious Disease, Virus Diseases
Arenaviruses and hantaviruses are globally distributed zoonotic pathogens primarily hosted by small mammals. Efforts to map their ecological drivers and predict spillover risk are hindered by the fragmentation of historical surveillance data across the primary literature, compounded by shifting host nomenclature and variable geographic precision. We present ArHa, a database of 123,101 host [...]
Confirmation of the presence of Squalius squalus (Bonaparte, 1837) in Sicily.
Published: 2026-10-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
The occurrence of the Italian chub Squalius squalus (Bonaparte, 1837) in Sicily has always been reported in the literature in a contradictory manner and without certain documentation, being regarded as doubtful by the most recent reviews of the xenodiversity of Sicilian inland waters. Recently, the DNA of the species was detected in an artificial lake. Here we report the first confirmed record of [...]
Benefits and challenges of public engagement: how can systemic changes enhance researcher well-being and sustained participation?
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Life Sciences
Discussions of public engagement typically emphasize its benefits for society and research outcomes, but far less attention has been given to its effects on researchers' well-being. In this viewpoint, we explore how public engagement can contribute to positive work experiences. Drawing on examples from our own projects, we illustrate how engagement activities can foster meaning, connection, [...]
Oak gall wasps lack conserved microbial symbionts
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Herbivorous insects frequently rely on microbial partners to exploit their host plants, yet for gall-inducing insect taxa, there were few attempts to comprehensively resolve their microbial associations. To address this gap, we characterised microbial abundance, composition and specificity in three Polish populations of cherry oak gall wasps (Cynips quercusfolii), a highly specialized [...]
From Temperate to Boreal -- Untangling the Importance of Environment, Space, and Species Co-distributions in Forest Plant Distributions
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aim Quantify how environmental conditions, spatial autocorrelation, and species co-distributions shape forest plant community at regional scale. Location Southern Québec, Canada, between the 45th and 53rd parallels. Period From 1986 to 2000. Major taxa studied Vascular plants, mosses, and lichens. Methods We analyzed the presence-absence of 224 plant species across 28,210 ecological [...]
Beyond static species distribution models: temporally dynamic, spatially nested models reduce extrapolation for future projections
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Entomology
Species distribution models are widely used to project biodiversity responses to climate change, but geographically restricted training data can truncate species’ climatic niches, increasing reliance on extrapolation. Spatially nested models can reduce this truncation by incorporating climatic information from species’ wider distributions. However, how accounting for interannual environmental [...]
SORTEE five years on: taking stock of the Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary biology
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
In five years, the Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (SORTEE) has grown from a small network of like-minded researchers into a grassroots, international community. Founded in late 2020, SORTEE works to make ecology and evolutionary biology more open, reliable, and transparent at a time when prevailing incentives in academia often reward novelty and [...]
Teaching dynamical systems modeling, analysis and simulation using a Lotka-Volterra Predation Narrative and a Numerus WebKit App
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Education, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Lotka-Volterra prey-predator (LVPP) equations are among the few ecological models that have become a standard part of the undergraduate mathematics curriculum. Rather than looking elsewhere for fresh examples, we use this familiar story as a single narrative thread along which the toolkit of dynamical systems analysis and simulation is introduced, one modeling assumption at a time. Five [...]
Human-mediated community assembly reshapes urban phytochemical diversity
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Plant Sciences
Human activities increasingly determine which plant species coexist, particularly in cities, yet whether this reshapes the chemical dimension of biodiversity remains largely unknown. Here, we investigated how human-mediated plant community assembly influences phytochemical diversity by integrating community composition, functional traits, phylogenetic relationships, leaf metabolomes, and floral [...]
Heathland above-ground biomass estimation using UAV and LiDAR
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Heathland is an important carbon sink and habitat for biodiversity. It is heavily managed Heathland is an important carbon sink and habitat for biodiversity. It is heavily managed through grazing and prescribed fire and faces increasing threats from wildfire and forest encroachment. Because the proportion of overall heathland carbon stock is predominately below-ground, above-ground biomass [...]
Abrupt reproductive responses to weather and shifting climatic signals across thermal contexts in trees
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Plant Sciences
Large inter-annual variation in tree seed production is widespread and closely linked to weather. Yet, we know little about the shape of these relationships, their dependence on resources, or their spatial consistency. We fitted boosted regression trees (eight species; 6,491 population-level observations; 352 sites), using prior seeding as proxy for resource status. Predictive performance ranged [...]
As open as possible, as protected as necessary: Proportionate governance for environmental DNA under the BBNJ Agreement
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Environmental Law, Marine Biology, Molecular Genetics
The Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement) establishes new arrangements for activities involving marine genetic resources and the sharing of resulting benefits. Direct pathways to resource utilisation are most apparent in conventional genetic workflows where whole organisms or tissues are collected [...]
The e14 cryptic prophage belongs to a temperate phage lineage distributed across Escherichia and retains genes with potential anti-phage defence functions
Published: 2026-10-22
Subjects: Bacteriology, Bioinformatics, Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Microbiology
The e14 region of Escherichia coli str. K-12 is a cryptic prophage that retains functional excision and integration machinery despite extensive loss of phage reproductive functions. However, its evolutionary relationship to other bacteriophages remains poorly resolved. Here, we identify related prophages across four Escherichia species, alongside related, independently isolated bacteriophages. [...]
Hydrodynamic Feedbacks in Coral Reefs: from Organisms to Geomorphic Development
Published: 2026-10-22
Subjects: Life Sciences
Coral reefs are shaped by tightly coupled interactions among geomorphology, hydrodynamic forcing, and ecological processes. In this review, we synthesize current knowledge on how hydrodynamic processes regulate coral reef functioning across scales, from exchanges at organismal surfaces to reef-scale morphodynamics. Hydrodynamic forcing governs mass and momentum transfer across scales through [...]
Where the fluke meets the snail: climate, ensemble models, and fasciolosis risk in Ukraine
Published: 2026-10-22
Subjects: Life Sciences
Fasciolosis, caused by the liver fluke Fasciola hepatica, is an economically important zoonotic disease that is endemic in Ukraine, yet the environmental drivers of its distribution remain insufficiently understood and no national-scale risk model has been produced. We compiled occurrence records for F. hepatica and its intermediate snail host Galba truncatula and used an ensemble species [...]