Preprints
There are 2828 Preprints listed.
Community structure of macroinvertebrates in freshwater rock pools of the Brazilian semiarid region
Published: 2025-12-23
Subjects: Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Freshwater rock pools (FRPs) are temporary aquatic environments that provide refuge for biodiversity in regions with low precipitation. The macroinvertebrate communities of FRPs in the Brazilian semi-arid region constitute an important link between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, given their dependency on both to complete their life cycles. The knowledge about FRPs and their resident biota [...]
Cryptic Degradation in Urban Forests: Decoupled Collapse of Soil Methane Sink and Understory Regeneration
Published: 2025-12-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Urban forests are typically assessed by canopy metrics, assuming that tree persistence indicates ecosystem health. We present evidence of "cryptic degradation" (a functional decoupling between canopy biomass and belowground processes) using 25 years of data from the Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES). We document two concurrent phenomena: (1) a 59% reduction in soil methane (CH4) uptake beginning [...]
Interactive effects between drought and warming in field manipulative experiments across grasslands globally: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Published: 2025-12-23
Subjects: Biology
Aim Interactions between temperature and moisture are possible whereby increases in temperature can result in decreases in soil moisture, exacerbating drought conditions. Both uptake by and emission of carbon from grassland ecosystems are, in large part, governed by temperature and moisture. It is unclear how grasslands will respond to concurrent warming and drought conditions in the future [...]
Social structure in northern bottlenose whales: Stable relationships without stable groups
Published: 2025-12-23
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology
Uncovering the drivers and function(s) of social relationships across a wide range of species is key to understanding the ecology and evolution of social behaviour. Northern bottlenose whales have been identified as a particularly important case study for social evolution. Unlike other large, toothed whale species which live in kin-based social units, northern bottlenose whales appear to form [...]
Idiosyncrasies of Cistanthe ipniana Hershk. (C. sect. Rosulatae; Montiaceae)
Published: 2025-12-23
Subjects: Biodiversity
Cistanthe ipniana Hershk. [C. sect. Rosulatae (Reiche) Hershk.; Montiaceae] was described briefly based on collections from Huasco Province, Atacama Region, Chile. The species is distinctive in having flower morphology essentially identical to that of C. litoralis and C. longiscapa, to which it is very closely related genetically, but a distinctive vegetative form identical to that of C. [...]
Local data matters: Improving biodiversity risk and impact assessment through a data quality focus
Published: 2025-12-23
Subjects: Biodiversity
Widespread degradation of nature has increased pressure on corporations and financial institutions to assess and mitigate their biodiversity impact, however, collecting relevant local data can be costly. The increasing availability of biodiversity and Earth observation (EO) data suggest that impact can instead be assessed cost-effectively through extrapolation using existing data and [...]
The Singularity at the Heart of Evolutionary Biology: Organismal Selection and the Thermodynamic Origin of Life
Published: 2025-12-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The origin of the first organism presents as a fundamental discontinuity in evolutionary biology. While population‑centred theories of natural selection succeed when reproduction and heredity exist, they cannot explain life’s emergence from non‑living matter. Building on the conceptual framework of Organismal Selection, this work proposes a physical model in which the transition from lifeless [...]
A plain language review and guidance for modeling animal habitat-selection
Published: 2025-12-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Animal habitat selection is the process of how individual organisms disproportionately use habitat compared to what is available to them. Understanding habitat selection is important for the study of ecology and conservation. However, learning the foundations of making inference or prediction on animal habitat selection can be quite challenging. Foremost, the literature is large and highly [...]
Escaping the net: Assessing midwater gear selectivity for the Joint United States and Canada Integrated Ecosystem and Pacific hake (Merluccius productus) Acoustic-Trawl survey
Published: 2025-12-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
Acoustic-trawl surveys use trawl catches to validate the species and size composition of fish aggregations detected acoustically. However, certain sizes of fish may be more likely to escape some trawls, which can bias the size and age distribution of the catch used to estimate biomass. To quantify size-selectivity, we studied 3 midwater trawls used for the United States and Canada joint survey of [...]
Operationalising resilience-based management at scale: a meta-adaptive blueprint from the Great Barrier Reef Crown-of-Thorns Starfish Control Program
Published: 2025-12-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology
Resilience-based management (RBM) has been widely adopted as a future focused extension of adaptive management to address mounting climate change impacts on coral reef ecosystems, yet there are few demonstrated examples of RBM operating effectively at large spatial and institutional scales. The Crown-of-Thorns Starfish (COTS) Control Program on the Great Barrier Reef illustrates how RBM can be [...]
Coevolution of social network structure and life history in toothed whales
Published: 2025-12-18
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Marine Biology
Toothed whales offer a 34 million year-long natural experiment for the evolution of complex mammalian societies. However, quantitative comparative analyses of social structure in these species are lacking. Here, we draw on existing social network analyses to compare social structure across toothed whales. We consider published measures of two social network traits across all toothed whales: [...]
Moving Target(s): One Health at changing human-livestock-wildlife interfaces in tropical ecosystems
Published: 2025-12-18
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Food Science, Life Sciences, Systems Biology
One Health approaches currently conceptualized for Western landscapes require fundamental rethinking for tropics, where human-livestock-wildlife interfaces exist as variegated mosaics rather than discrete zones. This overview examines why tropical ecosystems involve (i) Human mobility patterns shifting continuously through rural-urban migration and globalization (ii) Livestock health [...]
Reanalysis of “Historical redlining is associated with increasing geographical disparities in bird biodiversity sampling in the United States”
Published: 2025-12-18
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Ellis-Soto et al. (2023, Nature Human Behaviour) investigated whether the density and completeness of bird biodiversity sampling from citizen science observations across US cities covary with 1930s neighbourhood classifications based on perceived mortgage investment risk, a practice known as “redlining”. They claimed that worst-rated neighbourhoods were the most under-sampled urban areas for bird [...]
Living on the edge: ecological and evolutionary dynamics along invasion fronts
Published: 2025-12-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Invasion fronts are the edges of non-native species’ ranges and represent dynamic, non-equilibrium boundaries where colonization, ecological interactions, and rapid evolutionary processes converge. Although biological invasions are increasingly well studied, mechanisms operating at these advancing margins remain conceptually fragmented despite their disproportionate influence on spread dynamics, [...]
Nest construction behaviour, including the repair and re-use of a depredated nest, in the Variegated Fairy-wren (Malurus lamberti)
Published: 2025-12-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Documenting the diversity of nest construction behaviours is essential for understanding a species’ life-history. The Variegated Fairy-wren Malurus lamberti is a socially complex species whose nest building habits remain poorly described. Here, we report three nest construction behaviors that were observed during the 2024 breeding season at our study site in south-east Queensland, which have not [...]