Preprints
There are 2238 Preprints listed.
Function of duet coordination in a territorial socially monogamous bird
Published: 2025-04-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Duetting, a cooperative vocal behaviour performed by mated pairs, is a distinctive vocal behaviour among many species in specifically primates and birds. The exact features of duets that may make them a stronger territorial signal is still inconclusive. One hypothesis is that the precision of duet coordination can indicate the quality or dedication of a pair, and thus the degree of threat posed [...]
High spatial pair cohesion during and after breeding in a socially monogamous territorial passerine
Published: 2025-04-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Long-term social monogamy, a prevalent mating system in avian species, is often associated with increased cooperation and coordination as well as reduced sexual conflict. Although many studies have highlighted the benefits of long-term partnerships for individuals, there remains a lack of insight into how closely partners associate with one another behaviourally. To date, studies investigating [...]
Quantifying the correlation between variance components: an extension to the double-hierarchical generalised linear model
Published: 2025-04-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. The variational properties of biological systems are an increasing focus of current research, and statistical methods are required for drawing inferences about the processes that determine them. 2. Double-hierarchical generalised linear models (DHGLM) are ideally suited for studying variational properties since they provide a direct way of modelling the distribution of variances. 3. Although [...]
Spatial and seasonal variation in avian dietary strategies
Published: 2025-04-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Diet is a fundamental aspect of vertebrate life history, shaping survival, recruitment, and ultimately fitness. While spatial variation in avian dietary traits has been extensively studied, seasonal dynamics at both species and assemblage levels remain largely unexplored, hindering our ability to uncover the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms underlying biodiversity patterns. Here, we present [...]
Environmental factors have a greater influence on photosynthetic capacity in C4 plants than C4 biochemical subtypes or growth forms
Published: 2025-04-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
• Our understanding of how photosynthesis varies among C4 species and across different growth and measurement conditions remains limited. • We collated 1,696 CO2 response curves of net CO2 assimilation rate (A/Ci curves) from C4 species grown and measured at various environmental conditions and used these data to estimate the apparent maximum carboxylation activity of phosphoenolpyruvate [...]
Spatial scaling of functional and taxonomic diversity across ecosystems on an island
Published: 2025-04-11
Subjects: Life Sciences
Spatial scale influences how we perceive, quantify, and conserve multiple biodiversity facets. Like other facets of biodiversity, functional diversity is scale-dependent and varies non-linearly with taxonomic diversity. Yet, studies commonly rely on single-scale analyses, limiting our understanding of the role of spatial scale in biodiversity patterns. Here, we assessed how spatial grain and [...]
Spatially varying population indices
Published: 2025-04-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Population Biology
Large scale monitoring is fundamental for reliably tracking the fate of animal populations under changing environments and land-use practices. A common application of large scale population monitoring data is to produce indices of temporal change in species abundances, which are used in environmental policy assessments of species and biodiversity statuses. For index estimation, spatio-temporal [...]
Transition from incubation to brood-rearing activities influences dyadic associations differently between the sexes in a central-place foraging seabird.
Published: 2025-04-11
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Life Sciences
1. Changes in activities following seasonal cycles can affect social interactions, which in turn influence social network structures. Because such activities are often sex-related, their effect on the social environment can affect males and females differently, particularly during periods of high activity such as the breeding season. While the effects of sex-related activities on the social [...]
MODIFICATION OF THE FRESHWATER FISH COMMUNITY IN THE NATURE RESERVE "OASI DEL SIMETO" (SICILY-ITALY): PRELIMINARY DATA
Published: 2025-04-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
There are no recent data on the fish fauna of Simeto, the river with the largest catchment area in Sicily. Based on this assumption, it is particularly interesting to search whether the fish community has suffered variations over the years or remained unaltered.A recent preliminary sampling investigation was carried out in the stretch of river flowing through the Natural Reserve "Oasi del [...]
Speciation in ants: Unlocking ant diversity to study speciation (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Ants are among the most abundant terrestrial animals and play key roles in ecosystems across the globe. Their taxonomic and ecological diversity makes them a prime taxon for contributing to our understanding of the patterns and processes of speciation.However, studies often do not explicitly link their results to the broader framework of speciation and reproductive isolation. Here we combine [...]
Deep-learning technology provides insights into the morphological evolution of birds
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Computational Engineering, Evolution, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
The evolution of biological morphology is critical for understanding the diversity of the natural world, yet traditional analyses often involve subjective biases in the selection and coding of morphological traits. This study employs deep learning techniques, utilizing a pretrained ResNet34 model capable of recognizing over 10,000 bird species, to explore avian morphological evolution. We [...]
Plant genomic variation and its implications for proposed EU NGT legislation
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Biotechnology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics, Plant Breeding and Genetics Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
The European Commission proposal for New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) of July 2023 specifies that NGT1 plants, which are considered equivalent to conventional plants, may differ from the recipient or parental plant by no more than 20 insertions, which cannot be longer than 20 bp; deletions can be of any size and number. Here, we examine the proposed 20/20 NGT1 limit against the background of the [...]
The Missing Environmental Impacts in Invasive Species Cost Assessments –Insights from an InvaCost-based regional review
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Accounting for the costs incurred due to biological invasions is important for informing invasive species management policies, and understanding and mitigating future losses. InvaCost, a living review and massive database of cost estimates, is a valuable open science resource that can support informed policy and management of invasive species and has since been the basis of many regional and [...]
The molecular evolutionary basis of species formation revisited
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
How do new species arise? This is among the most fundamental questions in evolutionary biology. The first genetic model for how reproductive barriers leads to the origin of new species was proposed nearly 90 years ago. However, empirical evidence for the genetic mechanisms that cause reproductive barriers took many decades to accumulate. In 2010, Presgraves presented a comprehensive review of the [...]
Scaling animal impacts on dispersal and structure through space and time.
Published: 2025-04-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Scaling theory allows us to predict animal impacts on seed distribution, zoogeochemistry, pathogen movement, and vegetation structure over space and time. Here we have both reviewed this literature and suggested future directions to scale such work over space and time and apply it to such disparate fields as ecosystem ecology, paleontology and remote sensing. This chapter is accepted in the [...]