Preprints
There are 3766 Preprints listed.
Amphibians and reptiles in bird nests and bird-excavated cavities: a mini review
Published: 2026-10-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Bird nests and bird-excavated cavities provide suitable environments for egg incubation and nestling development. However, bird-created structures are also exploited by a wide range of organisms, including taxa that are phylogenetically distant from the avian constructors. While birds, mammals, and invertebrates are well documented as secondary users of nests and cavities, the occurrence of [...]
Human disturbance and the magnitude and predictability of phenotypic divergence
Published: 2026-10-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Environmental change can drive phenotypic change within species, but it remains unclear whether such responses produce a general and predictable degree of phenotypic divergence across populations. We conducted a preregistered reanalysis of PROCEED v6.2, comprising 7,186 contrasts from 254 references and 253 species, to test whether the magnitude and predictability of phenotypic divergence differ [...]
Areas of high conservation priority for threatened terrestrial vertebrates are governed by novel ecological conditions
Published: 2026-10-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Over half of the terrestrial biosphere is exposed to highly novel conditions that differ from the historical state, resulting from anthropogenic pressures such as climate change, floristic disruption, and defaunation. Highly novel conditions result in unpredictable biodiversity outcomes, impacting the effectiveness of conservation and restoration actions and the ability for threatened species to [...]
Pine wilt disease as a holobiont disorder: microbiome assembly as a potential management target
Published: 2026-10-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Plant Pathology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Pine wilt disease (PWD), caused by the pinewood nematode (PWN) Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, continues to expand globally despite decades of pathogen-focused management. Here, we propose that disruption of microbiome assembly within the pine holobiont may contribute to disease progression and help explain variation in disease outcomes and responses to microbial interventions. Drawing on recent [...]
A scalable workflow for ecosystem condition assessment from Earth observation data
Published: 2026-10-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Quantifying ecosystem condition consistently across space and time is a central challenge in biodiversity monitoring, ecosystem accounting, and ecological restoration. Earth observation (EO) data provide extensive coverage, but translating remotely sensed ecosystem characteristics into ecologically meaningful measures of condition requires approaches that account for ecological context, and [...]
Network structure and species connectivity drive asymmetric fitness outcomes in coevolving antagonistic communities
Published: 2026-10-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Antagonistic interactions are fundamental drivers of ecological community structure, generating strong reciprocal selective pressures that shape the evolution of functional traits across interacting species. Despite their ecological importance, the coevolutionary dynamics of antagonistic communities remain far less understood than those of mutualistic systems. Here, we develop a trait-based [...]
An Analysis of Outdoor Recreation on Land Slated for Development; Implications for a Social-Ecological System in Boulder, Colorado
Published: 2026-10-06
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Robust evidence shows that outdoor recreation in natural areas, i.e. places that retain native, ecological character with minimal human intervention, produces public health benefits including physical benefits from exercise, reduced mental stress, increased community connections, heightened place identity, and even increased ecological awareness. But land use planners don’t always formally [...]
Reframing Mangroves as Socio-Ecological Coastal Infrastructure: Development and Application of a Six-Pillar Socio-Ecological Infrastructure Framework
Published: 2026-10-05
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Mangrove ecosystems are critical components of coastal socio-ecological systems, providing shoreline protection, biodiversity support, carbon sequestration, and livelihood opportunities for coastal communities. However, increasing pressures from climate change, coastal development, and environmental degradation threaten their resilience and long-term sustainability. This study proposes a [...]
Expanded Polystyrene Exposure and Nitrite-Related Absorbance in Eisenia fetida
Published: 2026-10-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Microplastic contamination can affect soil properties, microbial communities, and nutrient cycling. This study evaluated whether expanded polystyrene (EPS) microplastic exposure during vermicomposting affected nitrite-related absorbance in vermicast produced by Eisenia fetida. Fifty independent experimental units were divided into a control treatment without EPS (n = 25) and an EPS treatment (n = [...]
A finite-population bound on the selection limit
Published: 2026-10-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Fisher’s fundamental theorem is an identity. Given current gene frequencies, the partial change in mean fitness, holding genotypic fitnesses at their additive predictions, equals the additive genetic variance in fitness divided by mean fitness. Price gave that reading and Ewens proved the discrete-generation form. Lessard and Grafen have argued over what the partial change represents. Akin and [...]
Plasticity Decay and Attenuated Recovery (PDAR): A Hybrid Dynamical Model for the Historical Accessibility of Evolutionary Space
Published: 2026-10-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The evolutionary history of life is marked by a pronounced temporal asymmetry: an early, disproportionate generation of major morphological novelty, followed by extensive taxonomic diversification that does not appear to be accompanied by comparable expansion of morphological disparity. This paper develops a minimal hybrid dynamical model, termed Plasticity Decay and Attenuated Recovery (PDAR), [...]
Land-cover-specific network reconfiguration and spatial trajectories govern abrupt vegetation regime shifts across global drylands
Published: 2026-10-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
In drylands, abrupt vegetation changes may signal declining resilience and regime shifts, yet global assessments have largely focused on greenness trends while overlooking the role of spatial organization. Here we analyzed 15,898 1-km² landscape units across global drylands (aridity index < 0.65) using 30-m land cover and NDVI time series. We quantified multidimensional spatial structure via [...]
Weak and species-specific morphological change in Atlantic Forest birds across two decades of warming
Published: 2026-10-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Birds are widely expected to shrink as the climate warms, but few tropical studies span decades. In the central Amazon, mean body mass fell in all 77 species studied and a third of species lengthened their wings. We analysed 24 years (1995–2018) of morphology from 73 passerine species (12,571 live-capture records; ATLANTIC BIRD TRAITS) across the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, a region that warmed by [...]
Climate vulnerability assessment framework choice influences species prioritization and prediction of population decline
Published: 2026-10-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Climate change vulnerability assessments (CCVAs) are regarded as an essential strategy to conservation strategies but are rarely used to inform conservation planning and prioritize species for management and adaptation. The main factor inhibiting its use is the challenge of combining exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive-capacity variables and, especially, of evaluating the ability of frameworks to [...]
What, if anything, can studies of adaptation to altitude reveal about responses to climate change?
Published: 2026-09-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Understanding the impacts of global climate change on biodiversity is critical to its conservation. Existing frameworks within evolutionary biology can help us predict whether, and under what conditions, adaptation may be a sufficient means for population persistance in a changing environment. Here, we consider the relevance of mountain ranges as natural systems for studying this process. [...]