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Preprints

There are 2448 Preprints listed.

A handbook for standardised measurements of regenerative plant functional traits

Peter Poschlod, Tereza Mašková, Si-Chong Chen, et al.

Published: 2025-07-09
Subjects: Life Sciences

A lack of standardised sampling protocols prevents functional traits from expressing their full potential to revolutionise plant ecology, biogeography, and evolutionary biology. Handbooks providing protocols for standardised measurements of plant functional traits allow researchers to tackle large-scale ecological questions but have traditionally focused on vegetative traits such as leaves, stems [...]

okaapi: an R package for generating social networks based on trait preferences

Josefine Bohr Brask, Lauren J. N. Brent, Delphine De Moor

Published: 2025-07-09
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Modelling of simulated networks with generative network models plays a central role for our understanding of the emergence and consequences of network structures. Accessible software that generates simulated networks based on relevant processes can facilitate the use of this important approach in behavioural ecology, and can help drive forward our understanding of animal social structures. Here [...]

The Role of the Nervous and Endocrine Systems in Animal Homeostasis: An Integrative Review of Contemporary Mechanisms and Emerging Paradigms

Richard Murdoch Montgomery

Published: 2025-07-08
Subjects: Life Sciences

The maintenance of homeostasis in animals requires intricate coordination between the nervous and endocrine systems, forming a unified neuroendocrine network that regulates physiological stability across multiple timescales. This comprehensive review synthesises contemporary understanding of neural-hormonal integration, examining molecular mechanisms, evolutionary adaptations, and technological [...]

Evaluating the role of Zoo Campuses in Wild Snake Body Condition and Ophidiomycosis Risk

Alan Joseph Lizarraga, Madison Van Der Kroon

Published: 2025-07-08
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences

Abstract.—Snake Fungal Disease (SFD), caused by Ophidiomyces ophidiicola, poses a growing threat to snake populations. This study compared infection prevalence, body condition, and species composition between snakes found at Caldwell Zoo located in Tyler, Texas and those found in surrounding wild areas. While infection rates were similar (14.3% zoo, 12.1% wild), zoo-caught snakes had [...]

Mathematical Perspectives on Rewilding

Michael A Singer, Daniel Bearup, Katie Bickerton, et al.

Published: 2025-07-07
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Achieving sustainable human-wildlife coexistence in well-functioning ecosystems is a vitally important and major challenge under global change. In response, rewilding is an emerging paradigm in ecosystem service provision through the re-establishment of natural ecological processes in self-sustaining ecosystems. Effective prediction of ecological changes in rewilding projects requires tools [...]

Using accelerometer-based behavioral classification to enhance scavenger conservation

Gideon Vaadia, Marta Acácio, Tal Agassi, et al.

Published: 2025-07-07
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences

Human activities are endangering animal species globally and implementing effective conservation strategies requires understanding animal behavior and ecology. Technological advancements in GPS tracking technology, accelerometry, and machine learning algorithms are now making it possible to study animal movement and behavior remotely. However, due to the challenge of building supervised machine [...]

Topological equivalence of stomata distribution patterns across vascular plants

Paulette Ivonne Naulin, Sergio Andrés Estay

Published: 2025-07-07
Subjects: Biology, Botany, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences

Stomata are ancient anatomical structures on leaves that regulate the exchange of water vapor, oxygen, and carbon dioxide between plants and the atmosphere. Acting as valve-like gateways between internal tissues and the external environment, stomata may function as locally interacting networks. Theoretical and experimental evidence suggests that local interactions among neighboring stomata [...]

Nature restoration legislation means redefining targets and forecasting progress

David Y. Shen, Signe Normand

Published: 2025-07-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Nature restoration is at a pivotal moment, driven by global initiatives like the EU Nature Restoration Law and the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework. These frameworks pose key challenges to how restoration targets are defined to ensure they are not only achievable and measurable but also resilient to future environmental changes. This requires addressing two key challenges: setting [...]

Social information about others’ affective states in a human-altered world

Luca G. Hahn, Jordan McDowall, Margaux Vanhussel, et al.

Published: 2025-07-06
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

As a result of human-induced environmental change, animals increasingly face challenges that differ from those encountered throughout their evolutionary history. Whilst this has caused dramatic declines for many species, some can persist by gathering information to reduce uncertainty, thereby minimising risks and exploiting new opportunities. The strategic use of social information can be [...]

Still, the environment selects: disentangling the Effect of Distance Decay on Soil Bacterial Communities

Niklas Neisse, Maria Kostakou, Sophia Nicole Meyer, et al.

Published: 2025-07-06
Subjects: Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences

Soil bacterial communities are central to ecosystem functioning, yet the relative importance of dispersal limitation, environmental selection, and biotic interactions in shaping their spatial turnover remains unresolved. Distance–decay relationships (DDRs)—the decline in community similarity with geographic distance—are commonly observed for microbial communities, but their underlying drivers [...]

movetrack: An R package to model flight paths from radio-telemetry networks

Georg Rüppel, Thiemo Karwinkel, Vera Brust, et al.

Published: 2025-07-04
Subjects: Research Methods in Life Sciences

Tracking small- to large-scale movements of animals is important for studying their interactions with the environment, including how they adjust and adapt their migration in response to environmental and human-induced changes. Despite the technical progress in tracking devices, a major challenge remains for small animals-such as songbirds, bats, and insects-because GPS transmitters are still too [...]

In What Way Does Climate Change Matter!?

Yang I. Cao

Published: 2025-07-04
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Inequality and Stratification, International and Intercultural Communication, Political Economy, Race and Ethnicity, Technology and Innovation

I introduce the methodology of my nonproliferation research with quantum electrodynamics with the negative image equivalence with Charge-Coupled Devices. With the minimalist evidence gathering approach, I argue for a cosmologically relevant perspective in climate change that keeps an eye on the thermonuclear environment of outer space. I give a pilot narrative on the transcultural communication [...]

Social media data reveal novel habitats for invasive species

Shawan Chowdhury, Rochita Debnath, Niloy Hawladar, et al.

Published: 2025-07-03
Subjects: Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Invasive alien species pose significant threats to biodiversity, yet their distributions remain poorly documented across much of the tropics. Using Bangladesh, a megapopulated tropical country, we combine species distribution data from Facebook and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) to evaluate how data integration improves invasive alien species distribution. Our compiled [...]

Ungeneralizable generalizations? A meta-meta-analysis of the influence of taxonomic bias on the study of behavior.

Ned A Dochtermann, MA Sekhar, Shinichi Nakagawa

Published: 2025-07-03
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Meta-analysis is a powerful tool for synthesizing behavioral research and identifying general patterns. However, are the conclusions we draw from these analyses truly representative across animal groups? Alternatively, are our conclusions shaped by taxonomic biases in the underlying research? For example, in animal behavior, vertebrates are often overrepresented in the research we conduct. This [...]

ON THE CONCEPT AND IMPLICATIONS OF GENETIC PURGING IN SMALL POPULATIONS

AURORA GARCIA-DORADO

Published: 2025-07-01
Subjects: Life Sciences

Genetic purging is increasingly considered a relevant factor in conservation genetics, as well as in evolutionary genetics. However, for a long time, it was de facto ignored when computing the expected evolution of population fitness under inbreeding (the inbreeding depression). More than a decade ago, I proposed a simple genetic analytical approximation to account for the consequences of genetic [...]

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