Preprints
There are 3885 Preprints listed.
Mapping actor diversity is essential for advancing global seagrass conservation
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Human Geography, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy
Seagrass conservation is increasingly organised around global agendas for protection, restoration, climate mitigation, biodiversity recovery and nature-positive finance. The actor systems that determine whether these agendas succeed remain poorly described, if at all. We developed a heuristic actor-centred framework for seagrass social-ecological systems, combining a literature scan with [...]
Will AI inadvertently push a natural history renaissance?
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
As AI automates coding and statistical modelling, quantitative ecologists face an existential crisis. But automated analysis is only as good as the data it is fed, shifting the scarce resource from analysis to expert observation. Naturalists and field ecologists, increasingly ‘endangered’ species in the modern era, may experience a resurgence, if institutions act.
Achieving social and environmental justice: a call to integrate the human and the more-than-human in spatial decision making
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Urban Studies and Planning
Discrepancies between climate velocity and dispersal capacity threaten subalpine forests in Northern Italy
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Plant Sciences
The acceleration of anthropogenic warming is fundamentally altering the climatic space available to foundational conifer species in European alpine environments. This study evaluates the potential impacts of future climate scenarios on the spatial distribution and elevational displacement of four key taxa (Abies alba, Larix decidua, Picea abies, and Pinus sylvestris) in the Italian Alps. We [...]
Modeling Mosquito Dynamics and West Nile Virus Risk in Canada: A Systematic Mapping Review of Approaches and Research Gaps
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Mosquito population dynamics are strongly shaped by environmental conditions and are central to mosquito-borne disease risk. In Canada, West Nile virus (WNV) remains the dominant mosquito-borne viral disease of public health concern, while climate change may alter mosquito distributions, seasonal activity, and the risk of WNV and other emerging mosquito-borne diseases. This systematic mapping [...]
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 [...]