Preprints
There are 2348 Preprints listed.
Pleistocene origins of cultural and linguistic diversification: how Homo sapiens and Neanderthals differed
Published: 2025-05-31
Subjects: Life Sciences
It is now widely assumed that Neanderthals possessed a human language-like communication system. What is yet unclear is how different this was from ours. Here we ask whether the communication system of Neanderthals shared a key feature of human languages: ergodicity. Ergodicity allows linguistic evolution to continue for purposes of social differentiation without changing the species-wide [...]
Mapping the next forest generation – the potential of national forest inventory data for identifying regeneration gaps
Published: 2025-05-31
Subjects: Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Plant Sciences
In light of global change and forest disturbances, there is an increasing recognition of the importance of forest regeneration to ensure future generations of trees. However, despite the importance of forest regeneration, there is a lack in spatial information on the current availability of trees in the seedling and sapling stage. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the potential to predict [...]
Quality, quantity, and the adaptive function of social relationships
Published: 2025-05-31
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology
Affiliative social relationships have clear links to fitness in a variety of species, yet exactly why that is the case remains elusive. One major development has been the recognition that animals form different kinds of social relationships. These likely represent distinct evolutionary strategies, beneficial in different environments. To set the stage for investigating this idea systematically, [...]
A systematic map of forest disturbance impacts on soil and litter fauna: knowledge gaps and a roadmap for future research
Published: 2025-05-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Anthropogenic climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of natural disturbances such as fires, droughts, wind damage, and insect and pathogen outbreaks in forests. The impacts of these disturbances on aboveground biodiversity are relatively well known, but this is not true for belowground biodiversity, particularly soil fauna. While a number of syntheses exist summarising the [...]
Gendered male and high-income country authors dominate publication at a One Health research organization
Published: 2025-05-28
Subjects: Life Sciences, Publishing, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Authorship on academic publications carries substantial weight for researchers in science fields. One’s position in a list of authors is typically used to signal information about author contributions and status, with the first and last authorship positions regarded as the most prestigious and important for career advancement. Therefore, any inequities that exist in the allocation of publication [...]
Herbarium specimens reveal regional patterns of tallgrass prairie invasion and changing species abundance across 130 years
Published: 2025-05-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences
The spread of non-native species is an acute threat to global biodiversity. However, a lack of long-term, spatially widespread occurrence data has prevented investigation of how multi-species invasions affect native assemblages. We harnessed more than 65,000 digitized herbarium specimens across 522 species to study how relative abundances of native and non-native species have changed since the [...]
Social plasticity across contexts in bobwhite quail
Published: 2025-05-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
An animal’s social network centrality has been linked to social benefits. However, the inverse effect of providing benefits to conspecifics on one’s centrality has received less attention. We investigated effects of foraging success, and accompanying food access provided to others, on an individual’s relationships in multiple social contexts using three captive groups of bobwhite quail (Colinus [...]
Exploring the factors underlying adaptive social plasticity in foragers using an agent-based model
Published: 2025-05-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Recent studies in group-living species suggest that being a valuable group member (a source of information or other resources) should increase social connectedness. This is because individuals may recognize and associate more with valuable individuals to increase the chances of benefiting from their activity, a process we refer to here as adaptive social plasticity. However, it is still unclear [...]
A Critical Evaluation of Ecological, Environmental, and Legal Consequences of Cedrus libani Afforestation and Monoculture Plantations in Lebanon: The Case of Mount Sannine
Published: 2025-05-28
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
Cedrus libani (Cedar of Lebanon) is ecologically and culturally significant, but vulnerable due to historical decline and ongoing threats. This has driven extensive afforestation and reforestation efforts in Lebanon. Initiatives like the Sannine Project, however, often utilize large-scale monoculture plantations, frequently as afforestation on land without confirmed historical dense forest cover. [...]
Strong impact of the recent Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza panzootic on population dynamics of a long-lived bird
Published: 2025-05-27
Subjects: Other Immunology and Infectious Disease, Population Biology
Since 2020, the spread of a new Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza virus (HPAIV-H5N1) has triggered the most severe wildlife panzootic ever recorded, with suspected population crashes in hundreds of species. Yet, no study has evaluated the demographic mechanisms underlying these declines. We used Integrated Population Models and population forecasts to evaluate the demographic impact of HPAIV-H5N1 [...]
The role of touch in marine mammal sociality: a review and future directions
Published: 2025-05-27
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences
While social living has many advantages, it also has significant challenges associated with differences in individual interests, abilities, and intentions. Individuals in social species rely on diverse behaviours and signals across senses to mediate their relationships. In some species—particularly primates—touch plays a key role in establishing, affirming, and repairing social bonds. However, [...]
Assessing the species habitats in Colombia’s tropical dry forest over a 20 years period
Published: 2025-05-27
Subjects: Forest Management, Other Life Sciences
Countries worldwide are collaborating under the Convention on Biological Diversity to address biodiversity loss. As part of this effort, the monitoring framework of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (K-M GBF) includes a set of indicators to track progress toward its goals and targets. One of these is the Species Habitat Index (SHI), a component indicator supporting Goal A, which [...]
Impacts of carbon farming practices on biodiversity at the farm scale
Published: 2025-05-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Biodiversity loss from intensive agriculture poses a major threat to the long-term sustainability and resilience of food production systems. Sustainable land management practices, such as carbon farming, offer promising alternatives, but their biodiversity impacts and the most effective methods for detecting these impacts remain poorly understood. 2. We surveyed 19 farms in boreal Finland to [...]
Collectomics in plant biodiversity research - looking into the past to understand the present and shape the future
Published: 2025-05-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Global biodiversity is changing at unprecedented rates during the Anthropocene. Whereas current biodiversity patterns can be observed directly, information from the recent past is far less easily retrieved yet urgently needed to understand present observations and predict future developments. For plants, herbaria offer such a unique glimpse into the past. Evaluation of plant specimens allows [...]
Meta-CHANS: Linking Metacommunity Ecology with Coupled Human and Nature Systems to Foster Conservation Management
Published: 2025-05-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Spatial processes shape both ecological dynamics and human decision-making. Here, we propose a unifying framework – Meta-CHANS – that integrates metacommunity ecology into the concept of Coupled Human And Natural Systems (CHANS). We highlight how recent theoretical and methodological advances, especially in species distribution modeling and process inference, allow the identification of dominant [...]