Preprints
There are 3922 Preprints listed.
Leaf palatability is driven by trait variation within Quercus robur crowns
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Plant–herbivore interactions vary across spatial and temporal scales in response to environmental gradients. However, despite substantial variation in leaf traits even within individuals and under similar environmental conditions, the role of leaf traits in shaping leaf palatability remains poorly understood. Here, we disentangled the effects of leaf trait variation from those of crown strata [...]
psmc-rs: fast PSMC inference that reproduces the reference implementation
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Evolution, Genomics, Population Biology
The pairwise sequentially Markovian coalescent (PSMC) infers the history of effective population size from a single diploid genome and is one of the most widely used methods of population genomics. Its reference implementation, the C program psmc, runs on one thread, which makes bootstraps and large cohorts slow. We present psmc-rs, a reimplementation of PSMC in Rust that fits the same model as C [...]
MetaWeave: a reproducible framework for the spatial inference of ecological networks
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Life Sciences
A regional species-interaction network, or metaweb, describes interactions that potentially occur among species within a region. MetaWeave is an R package that combines regional metawebs, local species assemblages, and alternative interaction models to reconstruct local networks. Its main feature is to separate the effects of interaction assumptions from changes in community composition. We [...]
Colony compactness predicts growth and survival in corals
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology
Understanding differences in growth and survival rates across species is a key element of anticipating how ecosystems are likely to respond to global change. However, measuring vital rates for highly diverse assemblages with many rare species is often unfeasible. Identifying links between traits and vital rates that apply across entire groups of species can provide a way to infer assemblage-wide [...]
Developing indicators of watershed health through public consultations and positing the use of ecological place-based approach in watershed management planning
Published: 2026-11-07
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Physical and Environmental Geography
Watershed health assessment is essential in the identification of issues and in the development of a plan to find solutions to issues. Watershed health is assessed based on a suite of watershed health indicators (WHI) often selected by technical experts. Stakeholders’ input into the selection of WHIs is necessary. Additionally, the importance of each indicator varies in different areas of a large [...]
Thirty years after “The Naturalists Are Dying Off”: Regrounding Conservation Biology in a predictive era
Published: 2026-11-06
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Thirty years after Reed Noss warned that naturalists were dying off, conservation biology has entered an era of unprecedented analytical capacity, driven by global biodiversity databases, remote sensing, and artificial intelligence. This transformation has coincided with declining visibility and support for field-based natural history and taxonomy. The resulting losses extend beyond primary [...]
Acquire and rewire: mobile genetic elements co-opt the bacterial core genome
Published: 2026-11-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Microbiology
It is assumed that bacterial genomes are streamlined, with genes encoding core functions integrated with one another and with aligned fitness interests. Such genes can gain little from horizontal transfer, as any recipient would already carry its own copy better adapted to resident networks. These restrictions motivated the ‘complexity hypothesis’, which predicts that core genes are rarely [...]
Vulnerability of Atlantic salmon to climate warming across the life cycle
Published: 2026-11-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate change is inducing more frequent and severe heat waves than organisms have encountered in recent evolutionary history. Predicting the consequences of extreme temperatures for biodiversity depends on understanding how thermal tolerance varies within species, yet this is limited by a lack of empirical data across all life stages, particularly those predicted to be most vulnerable: embryos [...]
A physics-forced spatial Ecopath with Ecosim model reproduces spring bloom timing in the Strait of Georgia
Published: 2026-11-06
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Marine ecosystem models rarely simulate lower trophic level (LTL) production from physical conditions; production is usually prescribed or supplied by a separate biogeochemical model. We tested whether Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) can reproduce physically controlled LTL dynamics without a dedicated biogeochemical model. The Strait of Georgia Ecosystem Model of Lower Trophic Levels (SOGEM-LTL) [...]
The Geography of Speciation Across Andean-Centred Clades
Published: 2026-11-06
Subjects: Evolution, Life Sciences
Aim: Mountains harbour a disproportionate share of global biodiversity, yet the geographic pathways through which this diversity arises remain debated. In the Andes, diversification has been linked both to geographic isolation generated by complex topography and climatic dynamics, and to ecological divergence across steep environmental gradients. Here, we assess the predominant geographic modes [...]
Seven myths about causal inference in ecology: clarifications and common ground
Published: 2026-11-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Identifying and quantifying causal relationships from data is a central goal in ecology and conservation. To achieve this goal, ecologists are increasingly applying frameworks and methods from the broader, multidisciplinary causal inference literature. These applications have generated both enthusiasm and skepticism. Here, we address seven common sources of skepticism that we see as myths. Much [...]
Marine Group II Archaea: A Review with a Focus on the Arctic Ocean
Published: 2026-11-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Microbiology
Marine Group II (MGII) archaea are among the most abundant planktonic archaea in the global ocean, yet no cultured representative exists, and most of what is known about them comes from 16S rRNA gene surveys and metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs). Here we review the taxonomy, biogeography, physiology, and metabolism of MGII archaea, now proposed as the order Candidatus Poseidoniales, with its [...]
Parental divergence as a predictor of hybridization outcomes
Published: 2026-11-06
Subjects: Evolution, Genomics
Hybridization can generate both fitness benefits and genetic incompatibilities, yet predicting how these opposing effects shape hybrid fitness and genome evolution remains a major challenge in evolutionary genomics. Parental genetic divergence is expected to play a central role, as increasing divergence can promote heterosis and adaptive novelty while simultaneously increasing incompatibilities [...]
Can't see the forbs for the grasses – Forb ecology in Indian grasslands
Published: 2026-11-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Grasslands are one of the world's most widespread and diverse ecosystems. However, ecological research in grasslands has largely focused on grasses and woody plants, while forbs, which are non-graminoid herbaceous plants, are often overlooked despite their considerable contributions to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning of grasslands. In this review we synthesize current knowledge on the [...]
BioCosmos: computer vision and large language models for large-scale image-based biodiversity data and trait exploration
Published: 2026-11-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Millions of natural history specimen images are now online, but poor discoverability keeps their rich phenotypic and evolutionary data out of reach for most users. We developed BioCosmos, a web platform that combines conventional biodiversity databases with emerging computer vision and large language models for image retrieval, visual feature recognition, and natural language queries. Its first [...]