Preprints
There are 2714 Preprints listed.
Female driven reduction of sexual dimorphism in hominins
Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Sexual dimorphism is a key indicator of social structure and selective pressures in primate evolution, yet its evolutionary drivers in hominins remain contentious. Here, we combine cutting edge dimorphism estimation methods, with Bayesian phylogenetic comparative analyses to disentangle the sex-specific contributions and evolutionary dynamics underlying changes in body mass and canine size across [...]
A practical guide to species trend detection with unstructured data using local frequency scaling (Frescalo)
Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Accurately measuring biodiversity change remains a central challenge in ecology. Beyond the general idea of detection frameworks, which can help to estimate species trends under variable effort, other sampling-related biases in data collection remain a key challenge. Long-term standardized ecological data are rare, and most available datasets exhibit considerable spatial and temporal variation [...]
Biochemical oxygen demand as a proxy for dissolved organic carbon in Japanese rivers: Conservative estimates for ecological risk assessment
Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Engineering, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is a critical parameter for assessing metal bioavailability and toxicity in aquatic systems, but data from routine measurements in Japan are limited to specific sites. The goal of this study was to develop a statistical model to estimate DOC concentrations in Japanese rivers using biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) as a proxy. Because the relationship between BOD and [...]
Free-ranging dogs in the streets: foreseeing a multispecies coexistence crisis beyond shortsighted kindness or conflicts
Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Zoology
Coexistence solutions tout conflict mitigation goals for commensals and wildlife, often ignoring the lived multispecies entanglements. Tropical cities have become battlegrounds of misguided kindness and escalating conflicts with animals. Human niche expansion creates a paradox for free-ranging denizens: abundant food sources from waste, yet unprecedented ecological pressures from infrastructural [...]
Ground-nesting ants as architects of microbial landscapes
Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences
As soil ecosystem engineers, ground-nesting ants alter various physicochemical properties of soils globally. However, less is known about how ant behaviors including bioturbation and hygiene affect microbial communities, such as by altering habitat complexity, resource availability, and competitive dynamics. Interactions such as this are increasingly recognized as important components in shaping [...]
Conservation impacts and socio-demographic characteristics mediate perceptions of trophy hunting
Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Trophy hunting is a divisive topic in conservation, with recent events and policy proposals reigniting heated debates over its acceptability. To understand what shapes divergent opinions on trophy hunting, we conducted an opportunistic survey that gauged the degree to which the perceived acceptability of trophy hunting was influenced by a range of contextual factors (e.g. animal welfare, [...]
Two Metschnikowia nectar yeast species have similar volatile profiles, but elicit differential foraging in bee pollinators
Published: 2025-06-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Organismal Biological Physiology, Other Microbiology
Nectar yeasts are a highly specialized group of fungi that may play key roles in pollination ecology. Nectar yeasts lack an independent dispersal mechanism to access new habitats with fresh resources. Yeasts, bumble bee pollinators, and flowering plants likely take part in a series of diffuse mutualisms, wherein yeast attract bees that provide phoretic travel between flowers. This interaction [...]
Predicting future damage costs of non-native species using combined dynamical and cost-density equations
Published: 2025-06-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
Biological invasions threaten biodiversity, economic stability, and public health, and are exacerbated by intensive global trade and transport. The economic costs of these invasions have reached US$ trillions globally and are expected to continue increasing. However, while past invasion costs have been described across various contexts, there are few robust projections of future costs, limiting [...]
Faecal microbiome varies with social group, age and bovine tuberculosis infection in the European Badger (Meles meles)
Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology
Host-associated microbes are key components of animal health and physiology, with particular importance for determining responses to pathogen infection. The gut microbiota is highly variable at the individual level, being shaped by a multitude of factors including diet, social behaviour, and age. Yet the relative influence of these traits on microbiota composition, and the consequences of this [...]
Macroalgae morphological complexity affects the functional diversity of epifaunal annelid assemblages
Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology
Host structural complexity influences the diversity of associated epifaunal species, but its role in shaping functional trait diversity remains underexplored. We developed a trait-based framework to assess whether macroalgal structural complexity significantly influences the functional assembly of marine annelid epifauna in a sandstone reef system at Enseada dos Corais Beach (NE Brazil). Sampling [...]
Writing the pause: epitranscriptomics in the eco-evolutionary logic of dormancy
Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Dormancy has been widely recognized as an evolutionarily conserved strategy that enables cells and organisms to endure environmental stress, resource scarcity, or developmental arrest. While transcriptional regulation has been extensively studied in this context, increasing attention is being directed toward post-transcriptional mechanisms that allow rapid and energy-efficient control of gene [...]
Nutritional needs and social bonds: how early-life dependencies shape meerkat sociality
Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Across species, social systems vary in their extent of interactions, competition, cooperation, and cohesion. Though there has been considerable research on overall social structures, the dynamics of how an individual's social niche develops during early life and how biological needs of offspring shape sociality has received less attention. In this study, we took a longitudinal approach targeting [...]
High-frequency eDNA metabarcoding survey data of coastal fish across the Japanese Archipelago
Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The Japanese archipelago, spanning over 3,000 km from subarctic to subtropical zones (approximately 24°N to 45°N), hosts a diverse array of coastal fish communities shaped by pronounced latitudinal gradients. Here, we present a high-frequency environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding dataset of coastal fishes collected across the archipelago. Using the MiFish primer set targeting a hypervariable [...]
Going Global by Going Local: Impacts and Opportunities of Geographically Focused Data Integration
Published: 2025-06-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Biodiversity conservation is a global challenge that requires the integration of global and local data. Expanding global data infrastructures have opened unprecedented opportunities for biodiversity data storage, curation, and dissemination. Within one such infrastructure – the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) – these benefits are achieved by aggregating data from over 100 regional [...]
Multiple global-change drivers and cascading effects in Mediterranean ecosystems: Lessons from an iconic national park
Published: 2025-06-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Historically, Mediterranean systems, particularly the Mediterranean Basin, have been substantially impacted by multiple regional-scale disturbances resulting from complex interactive effects of global-change drivers. However, such effects are typically studied on isolated groups of organisms, often disregarding how ecological processes such as biotic interactions affect ecosystem responses to [...]