Preprints
There are 2174 Preprints listed.
Taxonomic uncertainty: causes, consequences, and metrics
Published: 2025-03-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Taxonomic uncertainty is prevalent across many biological groups. Yet it remains overlooked in ecology, evolution, and conservation research, leading to potential misinterpretations of biodiversity patterns. Here, we synthesize the recent literature to define taxonomic uncertainty, examine its root causes and consequences, and present key metrics for its quantification. We argue that species [...]
A fundamental theory of actual error for species population monitoring
Published: 2025-03-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Progress towards many national and international targets to halt and reverse declines of species populations (abundances) will be measured against Multispecies Biodiversity Indicators (MSIs). Like any sample-based estimator, MSIs approximate some real-world quantity (the estimand), and the difference between the two is the ‘actual’ or realised statistical error. We propose a general estimator and [...]
Variation in successional niche turnover of multiple taxa in a recovering tropical rainforest
Published: 2025-03-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Understanding the niche turnover of ecological communities is fundamental for advancing successional theory and effective restoration. However, since niche preferences are known for a few taxa, ecosystem succession is only partially understood. To fill this gap, using a null model approach, we determined the niche optimal within eighteen ecological communities (bacteria, animals, and plants) [...]
Quantitative metabarcoding reveals the effects of ecological factors and invasive species on functional diversity of freshwater insects
Published: 2025-03-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Aquatic insects represent the majority of freshwater biodiversity, yet they are less studied than other taxa. Responses of aquatic communities to stressors are rarely assessed and are usually measured in terms of taxonomic richness derived from presence-absence data, despite certain mechanisms that may cause a reduction in the biomass of certain species, without causing their disappearance. The [...]
Recovery of phylogenetic diversity and phylogenetic structure in trees and animals along a chronosequence of tropical forest regeneration
Published: 2025-03-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Tropical forests are highly threatened habitats with the capacity to recover after disturbance. Integrating phylogenies in the study of forest recovery provides key information on the evolutionary relationships of communities through succession, and also serves as a proxy of their functional trait diversity and resilience capacity. We used phylogenetic and community data for trees and animal [...]
Evolution under fluctuating conditions and exposure to heatwaves in the seed beetle, Callosobruchus maculatus
Published: 2025-03-25
Subjects: Evolution
Heatwaves, temporary periods of elevated temperatures, are increasing both in magnitude and in frequency and have been shown to have devastating negative effects on a wide range of taxa. However, to date, most studies investigating the impacts of heatwaves have either focus on populations that have evolved under constant conditions prior to assaying or, more importantly, only investigated the [...]
Leaf litter Decomposition dynamics across a Recovering Tropical Forest in the lowland Ecuadorian Chocó
Published: 2025-03-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
Litter decomposition by arthropods, microbes, and fungi is a key ecosystem process in tropical forests, yet its response to forest disturbance and recovery remains poorly understood. To investigate decomposition dynamics across forest succession, we conducted an experiment in the Ecuadorian lowland Chocó (Esmeraldas) using a chronosequence approach. We deployed above- (AG) and belowground (BG) [...]
Quantifying macro-evolutionary patterns of trait mean and variance with phylogenetic location-scale models
Published: 2025-03-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Understanding how both the mean (location) and variance (scale) of traits differ among species and lineages is fundamental to unveiling macroevolutionary patterns. Yet, traditional phylogenetic comparative methods primarily focus on modelling mean trait values, often overlooking variability and heteroscedasticity that can provide critical insights into evolutionary dynamics. Here, we introduce [...]
Responses to climate change – insights and limitations from herbaceous plant model systems
Published: 2025-03-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Plant Sciences
Herbaceous plant species have been the focus of extensive, long-term research into climate change responses, but there has been little effort to synthesize results and predicted outlooks from different model species. We summarize research on climate change responses for eight intensively-studied herbaceous plant species. We establish generalities across species, examine limitations, interrogate [...]
Social tethers: density-dependent social tethers inhibit fitness
Published: 2025-03-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
Putative mechanisms affecting fitness that underlie why animals occupy a particular place are often in tension. A tension amplified in social animals, where individuals are often not free to make independent habitat selection or foraging decisions. The ideal free distribution (IFD) is a density-dependent emergent property describing how individuals should distribute themselves to maximize fitness [...]
Seasonal dynamics of epifaunal communities on the Sargassum beds of the coast of Noto Peninsula, Japan
Published: 2025-03-21
Subjects: Marine Biology
Epifaunal communities inhabiting seaweeds are key components of temperate rocky reef ecosystems, playing vital roles in nutrient cycling and biodiversity maintenance. However, limited research has addressed their seasonal dynamics in the semi-enclosed Sea of Japan. This study examined the seasonal changes in epifaunal communities associated with two dominant brown algae, Sargassum macrocarpum and [...]
Ten simple rules to follow when cleaning occurrence data in palaeobiology
Published: 2025-03-21
Subjects: Paleobiology
Large datasets of fossil occurrences, often downloaded from online community-maintained databases, are a vital resource for understanding broad-scale evolutionary patterns, such as how biodiversity has changed through time and space. Such datasets, however, are not infallible and must be ‘cleaned’ of inaccurate, incomplete, or duplicate data prior to analysis. Researchers must decide upon the [...]
Inbreeding and high developmental temperatures affect cognition and boldness in guppies (Poecilia reticulata)
Published: 2025-03-21
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Inbreeding impairs the cognitive abilities of humans, but its impact on cognition in other animals is poorly studied. For example, environmental stress (e.g. food limitation and extreme temperatures) often amplifies inbreeding depression in morphological traits, but whether cognition is similarly affected is unclear. We, therefore, tested if a higher temperature (30°C versus 26°C) during [...]
Paternity analysis reveals sexual selection on cognitive performance in mosquitofish
Published: 2025-03-21
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
In many animal species, cognitive abilities are under strong natural selection because decisions about foraging, habitat choice and predator avoidance affect fecundity and survival. But how has sexual selection, which is usually stronger on males than females, shaped the evolution of cognitive abilities that influence success when competing for mates or fertilizations? We aimed to investigate [...]
Gene flow and vertical stratification of pollination in the bat-pollinated liana species Marcgravia longifolia
Published: 2025-03-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
Pollen dispersal is a key driver of gene flow in plant populations, shaping their spatial genetic structure (SGS). In tropical forests, plant-pollinator interactions vary across vertical strata due to differences in microclimate, resource availability, and foraging behavior. Bats, an important tropical pollinator group, have been observed to exhibit vertical stratification in their foraging [...]