Preprints
There are 3880 Preprints listed.
How Much of the Forest Do Citizen Scientists Actually Record? A Decade of iNaturalist Sampling in the Hyrcanian Forests
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Forest Sciences
Citizen-science records increasingly inform biodiversity research and conservation planning, yet how much of a large forest they actually cover is rarely measured. We analyzed 1,700 research-grade iNaturalist records from the Hyrcanian Forest, northern Iran (2015–2025), on a 10 × 10 km grid, comparing observed coverage with null models. Annual records rose from 48 to 386, but occupied only 43.7% [...]
Design and reporting principles for experimental cancer evolution
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Evolutionary processes are inherently stochastic, such that independently evolving populations exposed to identical conditions may not follow identical trajectories. In cancer, this stochasticity contributes to diverse resistance pathways in tumor cell populations exposed to the same therapeutic pressures. Experimental evolution provides a controlled framework for studying these dynamics by [...]
A Context-Aware Framework for Biological Health Index Harmonization and Machine Learning-Aided Health Forecasting of Waterbodies
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Computational Engineering, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
National biological monitoring repositories, such as the U.S. EPA’s STORET/WQX, accumulate ecological health scores of water bodies from many agencies using heterogeneous biological indices and scoring conventions. Due to the different standards these agencies adhere to, these scores are not directly comparable. This difference in health score scales and benchmarks undermines large-scale [...]
A circulation-based hypothesis for vertebrate body plan evolution and endothermy
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
The emergence of novel vertebrate body plans and endothermy remain central questions in evolutionary science. Although gene regulatory networks provide powerful explanatory frameworks, the contribution of systemic physiology to vertebrate evolution warrants further investigation. Here, a hypothetical circulation-based model is proposed that integrates the redox and magnetic properties of blood [...]
Sleep as Obligate Phenotypic Switching: An Ultimate Explanation for Temporal Niche Partitioning
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
Why does natural selection mandate an involuntary, internally generated state change rather than permit flexible behavioral inactivity? Existing theories explain what sleep accomplishes – synaptic homeostasis, metabolite clearance, energy conservation – but these are proximate mechanisms, not ultimate explanations: themselves products of selection, yet adaptations acquired by the sleeping state [...]
Noise as a global change driver: a meta-analysis of its fitness consequences for birds
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
Anthropogenic noise is a widespread yet underappreciated global pollutant. Despite mounting evidence that noise may affect the physiology and behaviour of birds, its consequences for fitness, and thus its capacity to impact population and evolutionary processes, remain unclear. Here, we conduct a pre-registered systematic review and meta-analysis of the causal effects of anthropogenic noise on [...]
Reef fish biodiversity guarantees productivity
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Biodiversity loss on coral reefs may threaten their functioning and services to humanity. However, the impacts of biodiversity change on reef fish productivity, a key function that sustains millions of humans, are not well understood. Here, we compiled a global dataset of coral reef fish surveys to examine whether assemblage biodiversity promotes productivity, in both space and time. Diversity [...]
Signals of ecological decline and increasing genomic inbreeding in Western Hudson Bay polar bears
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate change is a leading cause of population declines. Predicting the evolutionary consequences of such declines can be challenging for long-lived species because slow generation times and the overlap of individuals from multiple generations within a population can obscure signals of genetic diversity losses. We integrated four decades of environmental, demographic, and genomic data from the [...]
Weeds are plants of human-modified environments, not plants out of place
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
The question “What makes a plant a weed?” has persisted in both the agricultural sciences and plant ecology and evolution for well over a hundred years. Various authors—agriculturists focused on crop yield, ecologists examining community assembly, and plant biologists interested in adaptation—have each defined the term weed. However, these definitions, developed from unique vantage points, have [...]
Rethinking success and quality in ecological forecasting
Published: 2026-10-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Ecological forecasts are increasingly required to inform science, policy and action in the face of rapid environmental and societal change. However, differences in how developers and end-users judge the value of ecological forecasts may limit their utility and uptake in real-world decision-making. Here, we use a participatory approach to propose a novel, holistic framework for the evaluation of [...]
Polar bear conflict risk behaviour is shaped by maternal, individual, and environmental effects, not heritability
Published: 2026-10-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
As ecosystems transform under the combined pressures of climate change and human activity, interactions between humans and wildlife are becoming increasingly common. Human-wildlife conflict is often managed by either targeting repeatedly involved individuals or modifying the conditions that make conflict more likely. Choosing which approach to emphasize depends partly on whether individual [...]
Spatial crime scripting and meso-level analyses of illegal pangolin trade
Published: 2026-10-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Human-related threats such as poaching and illegal trade remain the dominant risk to pangolin conservation. Using crime science focused on illegal pangolin hunting, we compare expert vs. community member’s spatio-temporal knowledge about the different stages of pangolin poaching and trade process at a national scale; explore spatial trajectories between stages; and explore spatial predictors of [...]
Phylogenetic, allometric, and functional group structure in chemical sensitivity across aquatic taxa
Published: 2026-10-28
Subjects: Toxicology
Chemical risk assessment across diverse communities remains challenging because most chemical-species pairs are empirically untested. Identifying phylogenetic, allometric, and functional group structure in chemical sensitivity may support cross-species extrapolation and community risk assessment, yet how these factors explain sensitivity across diverse taxa and chemicals remains poorly [...]
Considering more complex covariate responses improves predictive performance in dynamic occupancy models
Published: 2026-10-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Finding the right level of model complexity is a key challenge in most contexts, including ecology where data are often messy and underlying patterns complex. Dynamic occupancy models (DOMs) are increasingly used for modelling species distributions. DOMs have advantages over traditional species distribution models because their hierarchical structure allows them to explicitly model changes in [...]
Comparing covariate selection strategies for predictive dynamic occupancy models
Published: 2026-10-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Predicting how species will redistribute under global environmental change is a prerequisite for effective conservation. Dynamic occupancy models (DOMs) are increasingly popular tools for modelling range dynamics. DOMs estimate local colonisation and extinction probabilities while accounting for imperfect detection to capture the processes behind changing patterns of species occurrence. Covariate [...]