Preprints
There are 2755 Preprints listed.
Multimodal data integration to model, predict, and understand changes in plant biodiversity: a systematic review
Published: 2025-05-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
The integration of multimodal data to analyze, model, and predict changes in plant biodiversity is critical for addressing global conservation challenges. This systematic review examines the current landscape of plant biodiversity data, focusing on the identification, classification, and evaluation of key open-access data sources and integration methodologies. We highlight the strengths and [...]
Nestbox use is linked to increased paternity loss in infected blue tits, but not great tits
Published: 2025-05-16
Subjects: Life Sciences
Host-parasite interactions and reproductive strategies are critical aspects of avian life history, yet knowledge of their interplay in the context of nesting site microhabitat, in particular between natural and artificial nesting sites, is lacking. The choice of nesting site is critical for successful breeding, by ensuring protection from predators and a suitable environment for incubation and [...]
Disordered systems in community ecology: a tutorial
Published: 2025-05-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A basic fact of community ecology is that most ecosystems are comprised of many species and processes. Mathematical models trying to capture these ingredients and explain empirical phenomena usually face the problem of having vast numbers of unknown parameters and uncertain assumptions. It is not obvious when such mathematical models can truly be quantitatively predictive, or even conceptually [...]
Oxygen supersaturation has negligible effects on warming tolerance in aquatic ectotherms
Published: 2025-05-15
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology
Under the midday sun when photosynthesizers are producing oxygen, shallow aquatic ecosystems can become supersaturated with oxygen (>100% air saturation) while they simultaneously peak in water temperature. It has been suggested that oxygen supersaturation could protect water-breathing animals from mortality during heatwaves because of the potential role of oxygen in governing thermal [...]
Reply to: Maximising time-series inclusion reduces geographic and taxonomic biases in the Living Planet Index
Published: 2025-05-15
Subjects: Biodiversity
In their recent communication, "Maximising time-series inclusion reduces geographic and taxonomic biases in the Living Planet Index" (https://doi.org/10.32942/X2M33C), McRae et al. have raised objections to our study, "Mathematical biases in the calculation of the Living Planet Index lead to overestimation of vertebrate population decline" (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-49070-x). In this [...]
State-space models and inference approaches for aquatic animal tracking with passive acoustic telemetry and biologging sensors
Published: 2025-05-15
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Passive acoustic telemetry systems are widely deployed to track animals in aquatic environments. However, investments in integrative methods of data analysis have remained comparatively limited, with current workflows typically considering individual movements separately from space use, home ranges and residency. 2. This review presents a unifying perspective that bridges this divide. We [...]
Disordered and Partially Structured Models in Community Ecology: What are they? And how do we use them?
Published: 2025-05-15
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Community ecology describes how species interact with each other and with their environment. In nature, processes can be very complex because they involve hundreds to thousands of species interacting with each other in complex environmental landscapes. Classical approaches that have provided key insights have largely focused on the study of tractable subsets of species and patches, but these do [...]
Global population delineations and conservation status for marine turtles: tools, methods, and guidance
Published: 2025-05-14
Subjects: Marine Biology, Other Life Sciences, Population Biology
The burden of a failed error culture in biologging
Published: 2025-05-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Driven by technological advancements and reduced costs, biologging has seen a rapid growth transforming the study of animal behaviour and ecology providing unprecedented insights into wildlife, aiding conservation efforts and ecological research. However, in the wake of the rapid growth loom pressing ethical and methodological challenges, including a lack of error reporting, inconsistent [...]
Transgenerational plasticity to warming decreases nutrient release by a keystone grazer
Published: 2025-05-14
Subjects: Life Sciences
Increasing temperatures as a result of global climate change can alter the physiology of organisms via selection for tolerant genotypes and individual-level plasticity. Organisms experiencing thermal stress can not only modify their own physiological expression, but also those of future generations; i.e. transgenerational plasticity (TGP). While warming triggered TGP is well documented, its [...]
A geographical database of Iberian peatland and swob records
Published: 2025-05-14
Subjects: Physical and Environmental Geography
Recent efforts have compiled distribution data on Iberian Peninsula peatlands, however, the criteria used to characterise these ecosystems have often been derived from regions where peatlands are more extensive and typically occur under wetter climatic conditions. As a result, many peat-accumulating wetlands in this region were overlooked. Identifying and improving the distribution mapping of [...]
Invisible but Identifiable: p-Chips as a Reliable Marking Method for Amazonian Bats
Published: 2025-05-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Marking techniques are essential for studying bat ecology and informing conservation efforts, yet many existing methods present challenges related to size, tag detectability, and long-term retention. P-Chips, ultra-miniaturized transponders detectable via red laser light, offer a promising alternative to traditional banding or passive integrated transponer (PIT) tags. While their use has been [...]
Insights from the initial stage of a nation-wide environmental relicensing of hydropower facilities: a biologists’ perspective on court verdicts
Published: 2025-05-13
Subjects: Other Life Sciences
Hydropower, utilized for centuries, is promoted globally as renewable energy. The perceived socio-economic benefits have often outweighed environmental concerns, as reflected in operational permits. In 2022, Sweden began re-licensing approximately 2000 hydroelectric facilities under the National Plan for Modern Environmental Conditions. We extracted data from 33 completed court cases, all [...]
Interrogating metabolic plasticity in marine organisms: A framework for best practices using metabolomic and lipidomic approaches
Published: 2025-05-13
Subjects: Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Molecular Biology
Understanding the mechanisms that underlie resilience in marine invertebrates is critical as climate change and human impacts transform coastal ecosystems. Metabolic plasticity, or an organism’s capacity to modulate energy production, allocation, and use, plays a central role in mediating resilience under environmental stress. While research on marine invertebrate stress responses has grown, [...]
Pervasive Negative Effects of Leucaena leucocephala (White-Popinac) Invasion on Regenerating Areas of the Atlantic Forest
Published: 2025-05-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The use of invasive species in ecological restoration is controversial and has raised recent concerns. In Brazil, some ecosystem restoration and agroforestry projects have proposed that white-popinac (Leucaena leucocephala (Lam.) de Wit), a broadly distributed invasive species, is a promisor species to be used when the soil is severely altered, based on the premise that it might not necessarily [...]