Preprints
There are 2124 Preprints listed.
Minimal viable sound systems for language evolution
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Physiology, Systems Biology
Human vocal gamut covers 3000 unique speech sounds comprising the world’s languages, with each new speaker having to learn the sounds of its new language. Since large, expandable repertoires are facilitated by vocal learning, this capacity has long been considered a prerequisite for speech and language evolution. The postulation of a vocal learning and repertoire size ceiling has, however, never [...]
Grazer-induced bioluminescence and toxicity in marine dinoflagellates
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Plant Biology
Marine copepods are the most abundant type of multicellular zooplankton in the global oceans. They imprint their surrounding waters with a unique bouquet of polar lipids; copepodamides. Copepodamides are recognized by prey organisms, who respond by inducing defensive traits including bioluminescence, toxin production, colony size plasticity and structural modifications. Copepodamides are [...]
Advancing Amazonian botanical knowledge: a detailed ecological characterization of an open ombrophile forest, southwest Amazonian Brazil
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Biodiversity inventories present excellent opportunities for ecological investigations and the classification of different threats to the community, nonetheless these applications are not frequently employed. Our main objective was to determine the tree and palm community within a one-hectare areas, also exploring the association between functional attributes and the projected threat of category [...]
A novel method to estimate actual infrastructure-induced mortality by integrating sampling biases
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Human infrastructures are among the most impactful threads to wildlife. While estimates exist on the number of animals killed by these structures over a given period, such estimates typically do no account for several detection biases. Consequently, true mortality rates may be severely underestimated, as well as their impact on populations and species. 2. We present a hierarchical Bayesian [...]
Pattern-informed energetics: Energy allocation modeling for predicting trait variation and population persistence
Published: 2025-03-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physiology
Ecosystem processes emerge from complex interactions between environmental conditions, individual behavior, fitness, and population dynamics. A central mechanism driving these relationships is energetics, yet many energy budget models lack an empirical foundation for how organisms allocate energy when resources are limited. Without accounting for real-world variability in energy use, these models [...]
Modelling the distribution of the tick Ixodes ricinus in England and Wales using passive surveillance data from citizen science reports
Published: 2025-03-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Environmental Public Health, Public Health
Background: The tick Ixodes ricinus is the most common tick species in the UK and a significant vector of Borrelia burgdorferi s.l. (causative agent of Lyme borreliosis) and Tick-Borne Encephalitis virus (TBEv) to humans and Anaplasma phagocutphilum, Babesia divergens and louping ill virus to animals.Methods: The Tick Surveillance Scheme (TSS) administered by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) [...]
AmphiTherm: a comprehensive database of amphibian thermal tolerance and preference
Published: 2025-03-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Thermal traits are crucial to our understanding of the ecology and physiology of ectothermic animals. While rising global temperatures have increasingly pushed research towards the study of upper thermal limits, lower thermal limits and thermal preferences are essential for defining the thermal niche of ectotherms. Through a systematic review of the literature in seven languages, we expanded an [...]
The Physical and Chemical Basis for Temperature Effects on Metabolic Rate and Biological Processes – A Brief History
Published: 2025-03-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Java Transitional
Published: 2025-03-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Java Transitional is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Southern Java and Cocos-Keeling/Christmas Island. The Java Transitional mangrove province mapped extent in 2020 was 159.9 km2, representing 0.1% of the global mangrove area. The biota is characterized by 34 species of true mangroves. Java [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the North Brazil Shelf
Published: 2025-03-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mangroves of the North Brazil Shelf (NBS) are a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Amazonia, Guianan, Northeastern Brazil, and the Southern Caribbean. The NBS mangrove province had a mapped extent in 2020 of 13204.0 km2, representing 9.0% of the global mangrove area. The biota is characterized by Rhizophora [...]
Winds of change: Charting a pathway to ecosystem monitoring using airborne environmental DNA
Published: 2025-03-06
Subjects: Genetics
Airborne environmental DNA (airborne eDNA) analysis leverages the globally ubiquitous medium of air to deliver broad species distribution data and support ecosystem monitoring across diverse environments. As this emerging technology matures, addressing critical challenges and seizing key opportunities will be essential to fully realise its potentially transformative impact. In June 2024, the [...]
Challenges and opportunities when assessing exposure of financial investments to ecosystem regime shifts
Published: 2025-03-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Financial investments will be affected by ecological regime shifts through the loss of natural resources underpinning dependencies of most economic sectors. We suggest one possible pathway to link industry and products to the likelihood of ecological regime shifts. The challenges and opportunities are discussed at each step, including datasets, methods and metrics. To this end, we identify recent [...]
Individual variation in perceived density and its impacts on the realization of ecological niches
Published: 2025-03-06
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Organisms gain information about their local environment using different senses. Variation in both reception and assessment of stimuli leads to differences among individuals in their perception of environments. Here, we highlight the importance of acknowledging and investigating such individual differences by focusing on perceived density, the individual’s assessment of local density. We [...]
Monitoring ecological corridors for nature and people
Published: 2025-03-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Ecological corridors designed to maintain ecological connectivity between protected and conserved areas is a conservation strategy that is increasingly embraced around the world. Monitoring corridor effectiveness is essential to gauge progress toward connectivity conservation objectives; it also fosters learning among diverse rightsholders and interested parties. In particular, monitoring how [...]
Mining for Species, Locations, Habitats, and Ecosystems from Scientific Papers in Invasion Biology: A Large-Scale Exploratory Study with Large Language Models
Published: 2025-03-05
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
This paper presents an exploratory study that harnesses the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) to mine key ecological entities from invasion biology literature. Specifically, we focus on extracting species names, their locations, associated habitats, and ecosystems, information that is critical for understanding species spread, predicting future invasions, and informing conservation [...]