Preprints
There are 2713 Preprints listed.
Edge-of-range camera-trap records of Superb Lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae) in western and central-north Tasmania (2018–2025)
Published: 2025-11-18
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Ornithology
Tasmania’s Superb Lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae) was deliberately introduced to south‑east Tasmania in 1934 and has since dispersed across much of the island’s central bioregions. Despite this expansion, the Lyrebird’s future range dynamics remains uncertain, with recent modelling projecting that it will take over 50 years for the species to establish in the north-west of the island. Here we [...]
Humanity’s redistribution of global biomass flows
Published: 2025-11-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The biosphere is connected by flows of organic material (biomass), through biogenic (e.g., animal migration) or anthropogenic pathways (e.g., trade). We argue that humans have drastically altered Earth’s biomass flows by disrupting animal movement, directly transporting biomass and creating novel biotic pathways. In 2023, transnational anthropogenic transport of biomass through trade far exceeded [...]
Sex-specific mutation accumulation: A parsimonious explanation for sex differences in lifespan and ageing
Published: 2025-11-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
Sex differences in lifespan and ageing pervade the tree of life, yet their evolutionary origin is still debated. Adaptive trade-off models have long dominated the field but show mixed empirical support. Here we argue that sex-specific mutation accumulation is the most parsimonious evolutionary cause of sex-biased ageing. Because anisogamy and ecology shape reproductive and survival schedules, [...]
Bioclimatic modelling of the spread of Dirofilaria spp. in Europe, with a special focus on Ukraine
Published: 2025-11-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
Background: The zoonotic disease dirofilariosis, caused by Dirofilaria spp., is expanding geographically in Europe, a phenomenon increasingly linked to climate change. Understanding the environmental drivers of this spread is crucial for surveillance and public health planning. Objective: This study aims to model the ecological niche of Dirofilaria spp. in Europe, identify key climatic drivers, [...]
Response to “Radiolarian evolution: Analytical challenges in estimating the diversity and origin of Nature’s stars”
Published: 2025-11-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Genetics and Genomics, Marine Biology
We appreciate Daniel Lahr’s concern (Lahr, 2025) on the interpretation and conclusions of our study “Extant diversity, biogeography, and evolutionary history of Radiolaria” (Sandin et al., 2025). Given that some of these comments were already addressed in our original study following reviewers comments and that such issues are well known in the molecular diversity and evolution fields we [...]
Microevolutionary consequences of social structure in wild spotted hyenas
Published: 2025-11-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Social structure - arising from non-random associations and interactions among conspecifics - is a defining feature of most animal populations, yet evolutionary theory typically assumes genetic and social homogeneity. This disconnect limits our ability to predict how natural populations evolve. We combined nearly 30 years of behavioural, life-history, and genomic data from wild spotted hyenas [...]
Dispersion tests in generalised linear mixed-effects models - a methods comparison and practical guide
Published: 2025-11-14
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistical Models
1. Underdispersion and overdispersion are common issues when analysing ecological data with generalised linear (mixed) models (GLMs/GLMMs). Overdispersion, the phenomenon where observations spread wider than expected by the fitted model, leads to anti-conservative p-values and, thus, to inflated type I error. In contrast, underdispersion, a narrower spread of the data than expected, causes overly [...]
Ecological, demographic and social factors shape helping decisions at different spatial scales in a facultative cooperative breeder
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The fitness consequences of cooperative breeding are increasingly well understood, but the ecological and demographic factors driving helping remain contentious. Comparative and single-species studies have identified factors that promote the evolution of helping, but analyses typically test single hypotheses so the relative importance of different factors, and the spatial scale of their [...]
Paradigms and Principles for Integrating Nature Technologies in Biodiversity Monitoring
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Biodiversity
Employing a combination of nature technologies such as satellite data, eDNA, camera traps, passive acoustic sensors, and GPS monitors can augment traditional biodiversity measurements to help respond to increasing demand for understanding conservation status and outcomes. However, there is no clear guidance or consensus on how nature technologies are best integrated. We aim to provide a robust [...]
Barking up the wrong tree? Indian street dog woes are emblematic of ecological governance failures for multispecies coexistence
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
On August 11, 2025, India’s Supreme Court mandated relocating 2.5 million dogs to address bites and zoonotic disease/death concerns—but reversed course twice since then—revealing that solutions require sequential waste management, education, and sterilization that prioritize addressing root demographic and behavioral drivers over reactive management.
Beta-Diversity Beyond Bias: A Scalable Framework for Reliable Diversity Analysis from Citizen Science Data
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Citizen science data offer unprecedented spatial and temporal coverage for biodiversity research, yet sampling biases compromise their reliability for β-diversity analyses. We introduce a comprehensive framework to address these challenges, integrating space–time scaling, quality thresholds, and multiple partitioning approaches to enhance detection of ecological signals. Applying our framework to [...]
Interacting disturbances reshape bird assemblages via divergent community trajectories across southeastern Australia
Published: 2025-11-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Species counts can remain stable even as ecological communities collapse. This paradox exposes a critical blind spot in biodiversity monitoring: richness metrics miss the compositional upheaval that defines modern ecological change. As human pressures intensify, specialists decline and generalists proliferate, creating numerically similar but functionally different communities. Using three [...]
The Queer & Trans Field Safety Assessment: a tool for protecting minoritized field scientists
Published: 2025-11-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Ecological fieldwork poses heightened risks for LGBTQIA+ scientists due to inadequate safety protocols and identity-based vulnerabilities. Best practices to improve safety for queer field researchers exist, yet over 50% of LGBTQIA+ field scientists report feeling unsupported, with structural and cultural barriers unaddressed. Our team of 15 researchers from the University of California developed [...]
The hidden structure of unstructured citizen science insect monitoring
Published: 2025-11-11
Subjects: Biodiversity
Insects are vastly under-represented in biodiversity monitoring, leading to uncertainties about their trends. Semi-structured monitoring, relying on protocol reporting than protocol standardization, has emerged as a promising and more flexible alternative to structured monitoring, retaining broad participation. We examined the potential opportunities and barriers for semi-structured monitoring of [...]
Identifying deforestation and defaunation fronts in Indonesia’s tropical forests
Published: 2025-11-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Tropical forests are central to global climate regulation and biodiversity conservation, yet continue to face intense pressure from agricultural expansion, resource extraction, and infrastructure development. Indonesia contains some of the world’s largest remaining tropical forests and exceptionally high vertebrate diversity, but its islands differ widely in both historic forest loss and emerging [...]