Preprints
There are 2748 Preprints listed.
High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza in Pinniped Conservation
Published: 2025-11-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Since 2020, H5Nx highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses (HPAIVs) have caused widespread disruptions not only to global agriculture and trade but also to the health of free-ranging wildlife. Pinnipeds have experienced greater mortality from H5Nx HPAIV than any other mammalian taxa. Emergent virus strains, persisting over long time periods and vast geographic distances, have repeatedly triggered [...]
Emerging Applications of Large Language Models in Ecology and Conservation Science
Published: 2025-11-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The emergence of large language models (LLMs) marks a major development in artificial intelligence, with potentially transformative implications for ecology and conservation science. Built on advanced deep-learning architectures, these models can support a wide range of tasks, from analysing unstructured texts to enhancing biodiversity monitoring and generating policy-relevant insights. This [...]
A century of invertebrate range extensions in the eastern North Pacific
Published: 2025-11-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Aim Understanding the fundamental drivers of species’ range edges has been a core question in ecology and biogeography for centuries and has taken on new urgency in the Anthropocene. Yet range edges can rapidly shift over large distances, complicating long-term study of their dynamics. This is especially true in marine systems, where ranges may move hundreds of kilometers from one year to the [...]
The statistical fragility of animal cognition findings: a meta-meta-analytic reappraisal
Published: 2025-11-06
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Comparative Psychology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Psychology
How reliable is the evidence in animal cognition research? Concerns are mounting over the statistical robustness of this and other fields. Many primary studies rely on small samples and rarely report null results, while meta-analyses sometimes overlook publication bias, all of which may contribute to unreliable conclusions. We conducted a second-order meta-analysis across 28 published [...]
Relativistic Ecological Dynamics: An Empirical Investigation of its Geometric Properties
Published: 2025-11-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
The foundational models of population dynamics, such as those by Lotka and Volterra, presuppose a static, Euclidean phase space where interactions are governed by fixed forces. The theory of Biorelativity challenges this, positing that dynamics are better described as geodesics on a manifold whose geometry is actively shaped by the system’s state and external forcings. This study gives [...]
Multilevel Selection Shaping Adaptive Social Networks
Published: 2025-11-05
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Human Ecology, Zoology
Understanding how human and non-human animal social networks evolve through emergent properties and feedback mechanisms is essential for explaining their adaptability and persistence. Collective social niche construction refers to the process where individuals, through their interactions, actively shape the social environment, resulting in network structures that influence individual behaviours [...]
Carrion decomposition in a subtropical forest biodiversity experiment
Published: 2025-11-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
Tree species richness promotes the diversity of higher trophic levels and ecosystem functioning. Tree species richness may thus also affect communities of insect decomposers, and through this, accelerate the decomposition of animal carrion. However, these effects might be masked by other factors driving decomposition, such as forest structure, topography, and competition between different [...]
Relativity for the Realm of the Living: a geometric framework for eco-evolutionary dynamics
Published: 2025-11-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
Abstract: Biological systems are here reinterpreted through a geometric lens that extends the insight of general relativity: organisms and their interactions are modelled as deformations of a multidimensional biological hyperspace. In this view, each entity acts as a source that locally bends a relational field defined by molecular, morphofunctional and ecological axes, thereby altering the [...]
Penguin diet from space: Links between sea ice, Antarctic food webs, and population change
Published: 2025-11-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Rapid environmental change poses a threat to Antarctic ecosystems. However, the spatial scale of Antarctica and its extreme environment have precluded a synoptic understanding of the links between environmental change and ecological responses. Combining tools from imaging spectroscopy, stable isotope analysis, and hierarchical statistical modeling, we developed a novel method to quantify Adélie [...]
An increase in animal diversity was facilitated by ecologically-driven brain complexity throughout the Cambrian
Published: 2025-11-04
Subjects: Developmental Biology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Other Genetics and Genomics, Zoology
The Cambrian Explosion is often seen as a singular event requiring an explanation. In fact, it is better represented as a cascade of linked events, each with numerous causes. The iconic middle Cambrian fauna, represented by sites such as the Burgess Shale, is a culmination of several phases of increases in taxonomic diversity and morphological complexity. I focus on an often-overlooked increase [...]
RevSyntax enables an efficient workflow for RevBayes analysis in VS Code
Published: 2025-11-04
Subjects: Life Sciences
RevBayes—a phylogenetic probabilistic graphical modeling software—presents prospective users with a steep learning curve. RevBayes lacks a custom integrated development environment (IDE) to facilitate writing and executing code, and as a result many users end up copying and pasting individual lines of code from a text editor into a terminal window. This inefficient and error-prone process limits [...]
Natural Heritage: A Teaching Game For Biodiversity Conservation
Published: 2025-11-04
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Biodiversity, Environmental Studies, Higher Education
The potential for computer games to serve as effective learning and teaching tools is now widely acknowledged. Here, we present ‘Natural Heritage’, an educational turn-based strategy game about biodiversity conservation. In it, the player takes on the role of an elected policy maker who has to balance ecological and economic targets while managing regional land use. The game aims to teach key [...]
The Thermodynamic Imperative: Evolution as Entropic Resistance through Mergers and Persistence
Published: 2025-11-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
This paper presents a unified theory of persistence, presenting the argument that evolution should be reframed as an explanation of entropic resistance rather than reproductive fitness. Through theoretical exposition and case studies across the biological spectrum, I demonstrate that persistence emerges from the capacity to merge through complementarity, integrate functionally, and form [...]
Asynchrony of ageing among traits in a wild bird population
Published: 2025-11-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
Ageing i.e. age-related changes in a trait, is a highly variable process. Studies have investigated variation in ageing among species and individuals, but little is yet understood about variation between traits. Evolutionary hypotheses argued that traits should age synchronously as selection should improve the trait that first senesces, therefore leading to trait synchrony. However, some past [...]
Going with, or going to the dogs: City Serenade of Multispecies Survival
Published: 2025-11-03
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Community-based Research, Human Ecology, Ornithology, Other Animal Sciences, Population Biology, Urban Studies and Planning, Zoology
1. As tropical cities rapidly urbanise, multispecies coexistence faces unprecedented challenges. Ground-dwelling (dogs), arboreal (macaques), and aerial (black kites) urban commensals navigate complex social-ecological systems shaped by anthropogenic resource provisioning, cultural practices, and architectural constraints. Despite escalating human-animal conflicts—20 million annual dog bites in [...]