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Preprints

There are 2380 Preprints listed.

Coinfection interactions systematically influence parasite diversity estimates in simulated host populations

July Pilowsky, Greg Albery, Barbara Han, et al.

Published: 2025-02-05
Subjects: Life Sciences, Parasitology

Parasite diversity is a central component of epidemiological dynamics. Parasite diversity is commonly studied across animal populations and species using metrics like parasite species richness; although these metrics generally assume no interactions among parasite species within a community, such interactions are common and important, and could affect parasite diversity estimates in ways that are [...]

The collector practices that shape spatial, temporal, and taxonomic bias in herbaria

Ryan James Schmidt, Charles Davis, Lena Struwe, et al.

Published: 2025-02-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Natural history collections (NHCs) are essential for studying biodiversity. Although spatial, temporal, and taxonomic biases in NHCs affect analyses, the influence of collector practices on biases remains largely unexplored. We utilized one million digitized specimens collected in the northeastern United States from 237 herbaria and analyzed contributions from ~10,000 collectors. We investigated [...]

The business case for investing in biodiversity data

Fevziye Hasan, Jakob Nyström, Carina Andersson, et al.

Published: 2025-02-04
Subjects: Biodiversity

1. The private sector is increasingly aware of its dependence on biodiversity and the financial risks and opportunities involved. This has generated a lot of demand for investing in nature-positive solutions. There is an obvious and non-negotiable basis for such initiatives: biodiversity data. Without this data and the tools built from it, no actor can assess the effects on the ecosystems they [...]

Integrating Phylogeny and Functional Traits into Evaluations of Nestedness in Island Floras

Fabio Mologni, Peter J. Bellingham, Ewen K. Cameron, et al.

Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Questions Understanding the composition and structure of island floras is crucial for making informed conservation decisions. Island floras are often nested, i.e. lower species richness assemblages are frequently subsets of those higher in richness. However, the circumstances under which this occurs on islands are often unclear. Moreover, research in island biogeography rarely integrates [...]

Diverse hosts, diverse immune systems: evolutionary variation in bat immunology

Daniel J Becker, Amanda Vicente-Santos, Ashley Reers, et al.

Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Life Sciences

The ability of multiple bat species to host zoonotic pathogens without showing disease has fostered growing interest in bat immunology, indicating ways immune systems may differ between bats and other vertebrates. However, interspecific variation in immunological diversity among bats has only begun to be recognized. The order Chiroptera accounts for over 20% of all mammal species and shows [...]

Land use gradients drive spatial variation in Lassa fever host communities in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone.

David Simons, Rory Gibb, Umaru Bangura, et al.

Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Epidemiology, Life Sciences, Virus Diseases

The natal multimammate mouse (Mastomys natalensis) is the primary reservoir host of Lassa mammarenavirus (LASV), a zoonotic pathogen causing Lassa fever that is endemic to West Africa. The occurrence and abundance of this species is regulated by the human environment and biotic interactions with other small-mammal species, but these ecological drivers remain poorly understood in the regions [...]

Bats in Habitats, Bats as Habitats: An integrative ecological framework for understanding synergistic interactions across levels of community organization

Melissa Ingala, Hernani Oliveira, Lexi E. Frank, et al.

Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Systems Biology

Global biodiversity and ecosystem function are the result of complex networks of interactions and feedbacks between animals and their environments, which in turn are affected by the interactions and feedbacks between animals and the organisms they host. Understanding these complex networks, including the main drivers of and responses to ecological and environmental changes and their global [...]

Transmission of human handedness: a reanalysis

Rony Karstadt, Chloe Shiff, Tomer Oron, et al.

Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Evolution

Human handedness results from the interplay of genetic and cultural influences. A gene-culture co-evolutionary model for handedness was introduced by Laland et al. (1995), and the present study generalizes that model and the related analysis. We address ambiguities in the original methodology, particularly regarding maximum likelihood estimation, and incorporate sex differences in cultural [...]

Proposing a socialecological framework for successful grassland restoration in Germany – an overview and insights from the Grassworks project

Vicky M. Temperton, Ioana A. Patru-Duse, Alina Twerski, et al.

Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Life Sciences

Bending the biodiversity curve and delivering on biodiversity promises from international agreements and laws, including Kunming-Montreal and the EU Restoration Law, requires upscaling ecological restoration from smaller to larger spatial and temporal dimensions and across different spheres of society. Achieving this depends on a strong scientific evidence base and synthesis of effective [...]

Borealization of plant communities in the Arctic is driven by boreal-tundra species

Mariana García Criado, Isabel C Barrio, James D. M. Speed, et al.

Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Following rapid climate change, tundra plant communities are experiencing extensive compositional shifts. A conservation concern is the potential encroachment of boreal species into the tundra (‘borealization’). Tundra borealization has been sporadically reported, but not systematically quantified. Here, we synthesized data from across 32 study areas, spanning 1,137 plots and 287 vascular plant [...]

Measuring critical thermal maximum in aquatic ectotherms: a practical guide

Graham D Raby, Rachael Morgan, Anna H. Andreassen, et al.

Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology

Critical thermal limits, commonly quantified as CTmax (maximum) or CTmin (minimum), are core metrics in the thermal biology of aquatic ectotherms. CTmax, in particular, has recently surged in popularity due to its various applications, including understanding and predicting the responses of animals to climate warming. Despite its growing popularity, there is a limited literature aimed at [...]

Combined effects of land-use- and climate-driven stressors on stream fungi and organic matter decomposition

Aida Viza, Encarnación Fenoy, Meritxell Abril, et al.

Published: 2025-01-30
Subjects: Life Sciences

Freshwater microbial communities are essential for maintaining ecosystem functions and services, with aquatic fungi playing a particularly critical role in decomposing terrestrial organic matter entering streams and converting it into energy and nutrients that sustain higher trophic levels. However, freshwater ecosystems face growing threats from multiple stressors. The combined effects of these [...]

Forever an optimist? Investigating the temporal consistency of optimism within and across life phases in rats

Louisa Bierbaum, Viktoria Siewert, Carolin Mundinger, et al.

Published: 2025-01-30
Subjects: Life Sciences

It is long known from human psychology that people differ in their perception of the world, with some judging ambiguous information more positively (i.e., “optimists”) and some more negatively (i.e., “pessimists”). About 20 years ago, this knowledge was transferred to animal welfare science to assess emotional states in animals by quantifying optimistic or pessimistic judgement biases. More [...]

Emergence, spread, and impact of high pathogenicity avian influenza H5 in wild birds and mammals of South America and Antarctica, October 2022 to March 2024

Thijs Kuiken, Ralph Eric Thijl Vanstreels, Ashley Banyard, et al.

Published: 2025-01-30
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences

The currently circulating high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) virus of the subtype H5 causes variable illness and death in wild and domestic birds and mammals, as well as in humans. This virus evolved from the Goose/Guangdong lineage of HPAI H5 virus, which emerged in commercial poultry in China in 1996, spilled over into wild birds, and spread through Asia, Europe, Africa and North America [...]

Promoting the use of phylogenetic multinomial generalised mixed-effects model to understand the evolution of discrete traits

Ayumi Mizuno, Szymon Marian Drobniak, Coralie Williams, et al.

Published: 2025-01-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution

Phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) are fundamental tools for understanding trait evolution across species. While linear models are widely used for continuous traits in ecology and evolution, their application to discrete traits - particularly ordinal and nominal traits - remains limited. Researchers sometimes recategorise such traits into binary traits (0 or 1 data) to make them more [...]

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