Preprints
There are 2533 Preprints listed.
Marine Conservation Leadership: Does Australia Deserve a Spot on the Podium?
Published: 2025-06-10
Subjects: Natural Resources and Conservation
Australia’s marine biodiversity is unmatched, and its conservation has been prominently championed over the past three decades by successive Federal and State governments, who have consistently portrayed the nation as a global leader in marine protection. Here, we question whether this reputation is justified. We highlight substantial—and in some cases catastrophic—declines in marine species and [...]
Colorful birds face heightened extinction risk around the world
Published: 2025-06-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Ornithology
Many of the functional traits that mediate extinction risk across the tree life relate indirectly to a species’ ability to persist in a changing world. Yet, there are certain traits such as coloration that directly affect human interactions with wildlife. Here, we use an existing dataset of color metrics for 4334 passerine bird species combined with global functional trait data to determine [...]
The interplay between ecological networks drives host-plasmid community dynamics
Published: 2025-06-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Plasmids drive bacterial evolution by transferring adaptive traits, such as metabolism and antimicrobial resistance, between members of microbial communities. There are trends and barriers to plasmid transmission, which likely emerge from both host-plasmid interactions (e.g. plasmid host ranges), and plasmid-plasmid interactions (e.g. plasmid incompatibility). However, while both interaction [...]
Delayed Reproduction as a Driver of Longevity
Published: 2025-06-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Understanding the evolutionary forces that shape aging is central to both biology and medicine. While classic theories—such as Medawar’s mutation accumulation, Williams’ antagonistic pleiotropy, and Kirkwood’s disposable soma—have provided foundational insights, the population-level consequences of reproductive timing remain underexplored. Here, I propose that delayed reproduction may intensify [...]
Generalized graphical mixed models connect ecological theory with widely used statistical models
Published: 2025-06-06
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Biodiversity, Environmental Sciences, Multivariate Analysis
Ecological dynamics are analyzed across multiple sites, times, and variables. Here, we introduce the family of generalized graphical mixed models (GGMMs) and show that it extends structural equation, generalized additive, and generalized linear mixed models. GGMMs represent ecological systems using a mathematical graph, where each analytic unit (node for each site-time-variable) has a direct [...]
Best practices for moving from correlation to causation in ecological research
Published: 2025-06-06
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistical Methodology
In ecology, causal questions are ubiquitous, yet the literature describing systematic approaches to answering these questions is vast and fragmented across different traditions (e.g., randomization, structural equation modeling, convergent cross mapping). In our Perspective, we connect the causal assumptions, tasks, frameworks, and methods across these traditions, thereby providing a synthesis of [...]
Subterranean environments contribute to three-quarters of classified ecosystem services
Published: 2025-06-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Beneath the Earth’s surface lies a network of interconnected caves, voids, and systems of fissures forming in rocks of sedimentary, igneous, or metamorphic origin. Though largely inaccessible to humans, this hidden realm supports and regulates services critical to ecological health and human well-being. Subterranean ecosystems are integral to major biogeochemical cycles, sustain diverse surface [...]
Evolution of Nassauvia Comm. ex Juss. (Asteraceae; Nassauvieae): new insights from old data
Published: 2025-06-06
Subjects: Biodiversity
The present work collated and reanalyzed DNA sequences for species of Nassauvia Comm. ex Juss. (including erstwhile Triptilion Ruiz & Pav.) (Asteraceae, Nassauvieae) reported in several previously published phylogenetic analyses. These sequences included: (i) the nuclear ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacer region (ITS) and (ii) 5’ external transcribed spacer (ETS), and (iii) the [...]
Withdrawn: Which phenotypic traits are under selection under warm, dry climates in black spruce?
Published: 2025-06-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
• Trees are increasingly at risk of maladaptation to their environment as climates change rapidly world-wide. Although adaptive evolution by natural selection is a key mechanism by which populations and species can avoid extinction in changing environments, we have limited information regarding the phenotypic traits under selection under warm and dry environments. We answer the following research [...]
Systematic mapping and bibliometric analysis of meta-analyses on animal cognition
Published: 2025-06-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Psychiatry and Psychology
Meta-analyses play an important role in empirically synthesising research and guiding future directions. The field of animal cognition is rapidly expanding, with both empirical and review papers increasing at a faster rate than those in the life sciences overall. However, the use of meta-analyses, their methodological rigour, and the geographic distribution of research activity remain unclear. We [...]
Vaccination and immigration rates influence raccoon rabies elimination and recolonization in simulated urban-suburban landscapes
Published: 2025-06-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
The raccoon variant of the rabies virus (RRV) is managed in the eastern United States and Canada via distribution of oral rabies vaccine (ORV) baits. The goal of ORV distribution is to reach seroprevalence rates (an index of population immunity) of at least 60%, the threshold thought to eliminate RRV. Seroprevalence rates in urban areas rarely reach target levels, predictably leading to rabies [...]
Relative High Fitness and Genome-wide Diversity May Facilitate Plastic and Active Foragers' Diversification
Published: 2025-06-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Explaining the variation in diversification rates across the Tree of Life is an important challenge for evolutionary biologists. Growing evidence suggests that key innovations or historical contingency give rise to high diversification rates, but the genetic mechanisms through which this process may occur remain poorly investigated. Based on fitness landscapes, a high diversification is [...]
Seabird range contraction and dispersal under climate change
Published: 2025-06-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Many marine ectotherms have historically adapted to local climate change by evolving smaller body sizes, reducing their energy demands in warmer waters but limiting their dispersal and speciation rate. Whether endothermic marine species respond similarly remains unclear, as temperature minimally affects their size diversity, and the drivers of their dispersal and speciation are poorly understood. [...]
Orphan and de novo Genes in Fungi and Animals: Identification, Origins and Functions
Published: 2025-06-03
Subjects: Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
Genes that don't have identifiable homologs in other species have been an intriguing and interesting topic of research for many years. These so-called orphan genes were first studied in yeast and since then, they have been found in many other species. This has fostered a whole field of research aiming at tracing back their evolutionary origin and functional significance. Orphan genes represent an [...]
Towards causal predictions of site-level treatment effects for applied ecology
Published: 2025-06-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
With limited land and resources available to implement conservation actions, efforts must be effectively targeted to individual places. This demands predictions of how individual sites respond to alternative interventions. Meta-learner algorithms for predicting individual level treatment effects (ITEs) have been pioneered in marketing and medicine, but they have not been tested in ecology. We [...]