Preprints
There are 3228 Preprints listed.
Optimizing sampling and monitoring of species interactions within Biodiversity Observation Networks
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Optimal monitoring strategies should be designed to efficiently monitor all essential facets of biodiversity. Yet, species interactions are often overlooked in monitoring designs compared to spatial coverage and species richness, partly due to the inherent difficulty of sampling and monitoring interactions compared to species distributions. Here, we used simulations to test the efficiency of [...]
The social environment has little impact on inbreeding depression in a social mammal
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Inbreeding depression describes the decline in fitness caused by breeding between relatives and is now known to be widespread in natural populations. Yet, its relative strength across different fitness components and its sensitivity to social and demographic environments are poorly understood. Using nearly 30 years of life-history, behavioural, pedigree and genomic data from a wild population of [...]
The presence of generalist plants in urban greenspaces predicts pollinator diversity
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Urban greenspaces are increasingly important for pollinator conservation, yet it remains unclear whether pollinator diversity is better predicted by overall plant richness or by the presence of particular plant species with central roles in the pollination network, referred to as hub species. Using community science observations from 39 urban greenspaces in Broward County, Florida, we constructed [...]
From repeated baseline HRV monitoring to activity-and-recovery assessment in a trained dolphin: a preliminary protocol report
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Heart rate variability (HRV) may provide useful physiological information for welfare assessment in managed dolphins. Previous preliminary work proposed HRV analysis as a potential tool for evaluating welfare-related physiological states in dolphins. As a further step, this preliminary protocol report documents the development and initial implementation of a baseline-informed [...]
Invasiveness reshapes the historical pattern of carp trait evolution
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Human-mediated invasions are increasingly recognised as contemporary ecological disturbances with profound impacts on microevolutionary processes. However, whether such impacts extend beyond microevolutionary change to alter long-term evolutionary trajectories across lineages remains poorly explored. Using a global phylogenetic analysis of nearly 1,400 carp species (freshwater fishes of the [...]
Identifying knowledge gaps on simultaneous above- and belowground organism responses to global change
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Global change affects all terrestrial organisms regardless if they live above or below the ground. Even though they are strongly linked by various direct and indirect interactions, organisms can respond very differently to global change stressors, due to different features of above- and belowground compartments. Many different organism groups have shown declines in diversity, abundance or biomass [...]
Multi-scale surveillance reveals substantial egg-laying winter activity in Aedes albopictus mosquito populations across temperate Europe
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
The Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), a competent vector for dengue, chikungunya, and Zika viruses, has expanded rapidly across temperate Europe. European vector surveillance typically operates May to October, assuming winter diapause precludes activity and transmission risk. However, recent field observations suggest sustained egg-laying winter activity in southern European populations, [...]
Assessing the sensitivity and robustness of the Living Planet Index through simulated population dynamics: strengths, stability, and challenges
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Understanding population change through time is crucial for effective conservation of biodiversity. The Living Planet Index (LPI) is a key indicator for tracking global species abundance trends under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, offering a picture of population change over time. However, the sensitivity of the index to zero values or to the number of missing values in time [...]
Exploring the legal, policy, ethical and practical implications of digitisation of botanical and fungal collections
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Collections-based institutions around the world hold an extraordinary wealth of information and knowledge through the specimens and associated information that they house.. In recent years, institutions holding botanical and fungal collections have invested significant energy and resources into the digitisation of these collections to make them more accessible and better connected. Digitisation [...]
Status of Large Carnivores and Wild Ungulates in North and South Balaghat Forest Divisions
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
The Balaghat forest circle, comprising the North and South Balaghat Forest Divisions in Madhya Pradesh, forms a vital component of the Central India Landscape. Strategically positioned between the Kanha and Pench Tiger Reserves, the region serves as a critical corridor for tiger (Panthera tigris) dispersal and long term genetic connectivity and therefore contributes significantly to the stability [...]
Pinpointing Fragility: Integrating Resilience Indicators into Risk Evaluation
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Ecosystems globally are increasingly threatened by climate change and human pressures, yet current ecosystem risk assessments predominantly emphasize exposure to stressors while overlooking intrinsic ecosystem resilience—the capacity to absorb and recover from disturbances. Here, we advocate for an integrated framework that explicitly incorporates resilience into ecosystem risk assessments and [...]
The number and changing global distribution of seagrass-proximate people
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Human Geography, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation
Seagrass meadows are increasingly recognised as critical natural capital, yet global seagrass conservation still lacks a basic human geography. Building on examples from forests, here, we provide the first global estimate of seagrass-proximate people, defined as people living within specified distances of known seagrass. We combined a global distribution layer of known, mapped and observed [...]
Record of male Dugong (Dugong dugon, Müller, 1776) in East Halmahera North Maluku Indonesia
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Dugong (Dugong dugon Müller, 1776) of the Order Sirenia is the only species of marine mammal in the family Dugongidae that inhabits tropical and subtropical waters of the Indo-Pacific (Nishiwaki and Marsh, 1985). Due to its slow life history and threats to its population, this species is listed as "Vulnerable" (VU) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (Marsh and Sobtzick, [...]
The evolutionary link between food, condiments and medicine
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Anthropology, Biodiversity, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Food Science, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The deep relationship between humans and plants is of great interest to ethnobotanists, human ecologists, and evolutionary biologists. Humans have incorporated thousands of plant species into both traditional medicine and our diets, as foods and condiments. Many of these provide not only calories but also micronutrients and other bioactive compounds that contribute to health [1]. The boundaries [...]
Making survival spatial: an integrated model for territory occupancy and capture-recapture data
Published: 2026-05-05
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Knowledge about spatial variation in survival is central to understanding population dynamics and guiding conservation, yet assessing it is very hard. This limitation arises because capture-mark-recapture (CMR) data required for such inference must be collected over large spatial extents, which is logistically demanding and seldom possible. By contrast, territory occupancy (TO) data are typically [...]