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Preprints

There are 2391 Preprints listed.

Evolution of Nassauvia Comm. ex Juss. (Asteraceae; Nassauvieae): new insights from old data

Mark Alan Hershkovitz

Published: 2025-06-05
Subjects: Biodiversity

The present work collated and reanalyzed DNA sequences for species of Nassauvia Comm. ex Juss. (including erstwhile Triptilion Ruiz & Pav.) (Asteraceae, Nassauvieae) reported in several previously published phylogenetic analyses. These sequences included: (i) the nuclear ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacer region (ITS) and (ii) 5’ external transcribed spacer (ETS), and (iii) the [...]

Withdrawn: Which phenotypic traits are under selection under warm, dry climates in black spruce?

Julie Messier, Sabina Henry, Christina M. Caruso, et al.

Published: 2025-06-05
Subjects: Life Sciences

• Trees are increasingly at risk of maladaptation to their environment as climates change rapidly world-wide. Although adaptive evolution by natural selection is a key mechanism by which populations and species can avoid extinction in changing environments, we have limited information regarding the phenotypic traits under selection under warm and dry environments. We answer the following research [...]

Systematic mapping and bibliometric analysis of meta-analyses on animal cognition

Ayumi Mizuno, Malgorzata Lagisz, Pietro Pollo, et al.

Published: 2025-06-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Psychiatry and Psychology

Meta-analyses play an important role in empirically synthesising research and guiding future directions. The field of animal cognition is rapidly expanding, with both empirical and review papers increasing at a faster rate than those in the life sciences overall. However, the use of meta-analyses, their methodological rigour, and the geographic distribution of research activity remain unclear. We [...]

Vaccination and immigration rates influence raccoon rabies elimination and recolonization in simulated urban-suburban landscapes

Emily M. Beasley, Timothée Poisot

Published: 2025-06-03
Subjects: Life Sciences

The raccoon variant of the rabies virus (RRV) is managed in the eastern United States and Canada via distribution of oral rabies vaccine (ORV) baits. The goal of ORV distribution is to reach seroprevalence rates (an index of population immunity) of at least 60%, the threshold thought to eliminate RRV. Seroprevalence rates in urban areas rarely reach target levels, predictably leading to rabies [...]

Relative High Fitness and Genome-wide Diversity May Facilitate Plastic and Active Foragers' Diversification

Dylan J Padilla Perez, Martha M. Muñoz, David K Skelly

Published: 2025-06-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Explaining the variation in diversification rates across the Tree of Life is an important challenge for evolutionary biologists. Growing evidence suggests that key innovations or historical contingency give rise to high diversification rates, but the genetic mechanisms through which this process may occur remain poorly investigated. Based on fitness landscapes, a high diversification is [...]

Seabird range contraction and dispersal under climate change

Jorge Avaria-Llautureo, Marcelo M Rivadeneira, Chris Venditti, et al.

Published: 2025-06-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences

Many marine ectotherms have historically adapted to local climate change by evolving smaller body sizes, reducing their energy demands in warmer waters but limiting their dispersal and speciation rate. Whether endothermic marine species respond similarly remains unclear, as temperature minimally affects their size diversity, and the drivers of their dispersal and speciation are poorly understood. [...]

Orphan and de novo Genes in Fungi and Animals: Identification, Origins and Functions

Ercan Seçkin, Dominique Colinet, Edoardo Sarti, et al.

Published: 2025-06-03
Subjects: Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences

Genes that don't have identifiable homologs in other species have been an intriguing and interesting topic of research for many years. These so-called orphan genes were first studied in yeast and since then, they have been found in many other species. This has fostered a whole field of research aiming at tracing back their evolutionary origin and functional significance. Orphan genes represent an [...]

Towards causal predictions of site-level treatment effects for applied ecology

Eleanor E. Jackson, Tord Snäll, Emma Gardner, et al.

Published: 2025-06-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

With limited land and resources available to implement conservation actions, efforts must be effectively targeted to individual places. This demands predictions of how individual sites respond to alternative interventions. Meta-learner algorithms for predicting individual level treatment effects (ITEs) have been pioneered in marketing and medicine, but they have not been tested in ecology. We [...]

Spatial and environmental influences on the assembly of silk microbiomes in a social spider

Kara J.M. Taylor, Steven T. Cassidy, Peter R. Marting, et al.

Published: 2025-06-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences

In nesting animals, the built environment can play an important role in host-associated microbiome assembly. However, the sources and processes structuring the resulting microbiome remain underexplored. In the social spider Stegodyphus dumicola, philopatric sisters collectively build and maintain a silken nest, capture prey, and exhibit alloparental care. We used S. dumicola as a test system to [...]

Suspended particulates decline along a dense, small-stream mussel bed

Jillian Fedarick, Daniel J. Hornbach, Bernard E. Sietman

Published: 2025-06-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Water filtration by freshwater mussels is a valued ecosystem service; however, it has not been well studied in natural settings. To examine the potential influence of mussel filtration on suspended particulates, we measured the concentration of Escherichia coli, chlorophyll-a, and total suspended solids along a stream reach with a dense mussel assemblage (Mussel Site) and a stream reach with no [...]

Phenotypic flexibility in the city: A meta-analysis on variation

Jules Petit, Melanie Dammhahn

Published: 2025-06-02
Subjects: Animal Sciences

Among global changes urbanisation is distinctive because it entangles a variety of human-induced rapid environmental changes, such as habitat loss and fragmentation, temperature change, introduction of human food sources, and pollution. Urban environments are assumed to be heterogeneous and variable in space and time. A key feature of animals coping with high environmental variability ought to be [...]

A framework for modelling thermal load sensitivity across life

Pieter Arnold, Daniel W.A. Noble, Adrienne Nicotra, et al.

Published: 2025-06-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Physiology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences

Forecasts of vulnerability to climate warming require an integrative understanding of how species are exposed to, are damaged by, and recover from thermal stress in natural environments. The sensitivity of species to temperature depends on the frequency, duration, and magnitude of thermal stress. Thus, there is a generally recognised need to move beyond physiological metrics based solely on [...]

Barriers and opportunities to preventing residential bird-window collisions

Anastasia Lysyk, Aalia I Khan, Deborah Conners, et al.

Published: 2025-05-31
Subjects: Biodiversity, Community-based Research, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Sociology

Collisions with windows are a leading source of avian mortality in North America. Window treatment options are commercially available; however, these solutions are rarely used. To investigate knowledge and perceptions of bird-window collisions, willingness to treat windows, and barriers and solutions to treating windows we conducted a survey of residents in Ottawa, Canada. Of 422 survey [...]

Pleistocene origins of cultural and linguistic diversification: how Homo sapiens and Neanderthals differed

Paola Cerrito, Carel van Schaik, Cedric Boeckx, et al.

Published: 2025-05-31
Subjects: Life Sciences

It is now widely assumed that Neanderthals possessed a human language-like communication system. What is yet unclear is how different this was from ours. Here we ask whether the communication system of Neanderthals shared a key feature of human languages: ergodicity. Ergodicity allows linguistic evolution to continue for purposes of social differentiation without changing the species-wide [...]

Mapping the next forest generation reveals multiple regeneration gaps across German forests

Leonie Gass, Lisa Hülsmann

Published: 2025-05-31
Subjects: Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Plant Sciences

In face of global change and increasing forest disturbances, forest regeneration is crucial for ensuring future generations of trees and resilient forest ecosystems. However, spatially explicit information on the current availability and climate suitability of seedlings and saplings remains scarce. We assessed the potential to predict species-specific forest regeneration densities at high [...]

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