Preprints
There are 3658 Preprints listed.
Prevalence of Gastrointestinal Parasites in Goats and Sheep in Mbula Kuli, Adamawa State, Nigeria
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Gastrointestinal (GI) parasitism is a major constraint to small ruminant productivity in Nigeria, causing reduced growth, weight loss, and economic losses to herders. This study assessed the prevalence of gastrointestinal parasites in goats and sheep in Mbula Kuli, Adamawa State, Nigeria, between 2025 and 2026. A total of 110 faecal samples (40 from goats and 70 from sheep) were collected and [...]
Interacting effects of canopy geometry and display activity timing shape conditions for visual signalling in Victoria’s riflebird
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Integrative Biology, Ornithology, Zoology
Lighting conditions in forests are highly variable in both space and time and depend on the interacting effects of canopy geometry, weather, and the time of day. This has strong implications for visual signalling, because different species sharing the same forest habitat may display in dramatically different microhabitats favouring disparate signal phenotypes. However, relatively little is known [...]
Modelling Invasive Insect Spread with Citizen Science Data: A Dynamic Occupancy-Detection Model
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biostatistics, Statistical Models
Human-mediated biological invasions are accelerating worldwide, but detecting early incursions and tracking their spread remains difficult. Opportunistic citizen science platforms, such as iNaturalist and eBird, generate large volumes of presence-only records, offering new opportunities to detect and monitor invasive species. However, these data come with uneven sampling effort, strong spatial [...]
Q&A: Genetic Lineages
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Evolution, Genetics, Population Biology
Genetic lineages are key to understanding evolution in complex scenarios and the evolution of genetic systems. However, they are often misunderstood; for example, confused with alleles or pedigrees. Here, we provide an accessible introduction to genetic lineages in question and answer format, from their definition as a physical object in space-time to their empirical characterization through [...]
The effect of environmental change on plastic sex-ratio strategies
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Offspring sex ratio manipulation has been widely studied, with numerous adaptive explanations proposed for biased sex ratios. While sex-ratio trends have been observed in many species, such patterns often disappear over time within populations or differ across populations. Environmental change is frequently proposed as underlying these inconsistencies, particularly for strategies relying on [...]
wildtag.ai: an open-access end-to-end offline AI-assisted desktop application for managing camera trap projects
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Bioinformatics, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Camera traps generate massive volumes of data, yet their decision-support potential is diluted by the bottleneck of manual processing. Automated classification has largely solved this, but classification alone does not remove the barriers to adoption: it must be coupled with the means to turn predictions into a verified, shareable dataset, which no existing tool does end-to-end, offline, and [...]
Sex-specific divergence in microhabitat use and activity patterns in fire salamanders: temperature matters
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology
Human-driven climate change and habitat degradation cause alterations in the spatial and temporal availability of natural resources, forcing wildlife to adjust their interactions with the environment in order to survive. To identify changes and promote effective conservation measures within the limited suitable habitats available, it is crucial to better understand habitat use. Activity patterns [...]
Multivariate social strategies buffer the fitness consequences of phenotype–environment mismatches
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
How organisms adapt to environmental change is a fundamental question in biology. Environmental shifts frequently induce mismatches between an organism's phenotype and its surroundings, including the social environments created by interacting individuals. Such mismatches can be mitigated by modifying one's own phenotype through plasticity, adjusting the environment, or selecting environments [...]
From Nesting to Emergence at a Half-Century Communal Wood Turtle (Glyptemys insculpta) Nesting Site: Species Phenology Across a Full Protected Season, Hatchling Consumption by Yellow Jackets (Vespula sp.), and Nest Protection by Overlaid Netting
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Long-term records that connect a turtle nesting season to the hatchling emergence it produces, at daily resolution and across multiple species, are rare. At a communal nesting site in Washburn County, Wisconsin, protected and monitored by our family for over five decades, we surveyed both ends of the 2026 season daily: the nesting period (25 May–13 June; 171 turtle sightings of five species, 143 [...]
Uptake of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in plants: A systematic review and meta-analysis research protocol
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) transfer from contaminated environments into plants, contributing to food chain accumulation and an exposure pathway central to human health risk assessment. Regulatory risk assessments commonly use plant bioconcentration factors (BCFs) to estimate dietary exposure and support the derivation of health-based guideline values, yet they have not been [...]
Predictive movement ecology using spatial simulations
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The active movement of animals is fundamental to the structure and function of ecosystems globally. In recent years, reductions in the size and cost of animal tracking equipment have precipitated an explosion of interest in movement ecology, accelerating our understanding of the causes and consequences of animal movement. Until recently, movement ecology was largely a descriptive science. [...]
Heat tolerance in bees: a meta-analysis of ecological, evolutionary, and methodological drivers
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate change poses a growing threat to bees, which provide essential pollination services in natural and agricultural ecosystems. Although the critical thermal maximum (CTmax) is widely used to assess the vulnerability of pollinators to climate change, we lack a comprehensive understanding of the factors shaping heat tolerance across bee species globally. We conducted a systematic review and [...]
Biodiversity isn’t measured in tons: Making sense of nature in the context of sustainable agriculture
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies
In this review, we articulate several important, but often overlooked concepts, trends, and perspectives in the biodiversity monitoring space, specifically in the context of transforming agriculture and the wider food system. We describe the common approaches to biodiversity monitoring — those focused on species, communities, functions, habitats, etc — and the methods and tools commonly used to [...]
Reopening the Strait of Hormuz: from a bioinvasion super-spreader warning to species–vessel–port prioritisation
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Prolonged vessel lay-up can create an exceptional biosecurity hazard by allowing fouling assemblages to accumulate before vessels re-enter shipping networks. A recent study highlighted this risk following closure of the Strait of Hormuz and recommended pre-departure biofouling assessment, route forecasting, early detection and rapid communication. These measures address vectors and pathways, but [...]
What goes up, must come down: air–soil microbiome connectivity and its implications for ecosystem functioning
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Microbiology
Soils harbor Earth's largest reservoir of microbial diversity, yet enormous numbers of microorganisms are continuously aerosolized, transported through the atmosphere, and redeposited across landscapes. Although soil and the atmosphere have largely been studied separately, here, we propose a conceptual framework that views soils and the atmosphere as a coupled microbiome linked by bidirectional [...]