Preprints
There are 2878 Preprints listed.
Mystery of the disappearing dogfish: transboundary analyses reveal steep population declines across the Northeast Pacific with little evidence for regional redistribution
Published: 2025-03-11
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Population Biology
Quantifying broad-scale population trends and distribution change is critical for effective management and conservation of marine species, particularly under climate change. However, fragmented regional survey data often hinder such efforts for transboundary populations. A prime example is Pacific Spiny Dogfish (Squalus suckleyi, Squalidae), a small shark with a remarkably slow life history and [...]
Historical legacies of spatial and temporal climate exposure on thermal physiology shape butterfly vulnerability to recent climate change
Published: 2025-03-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Few observations are more indelible in ecology than widespread variation in the spatial and temporal occurrence of species. Although the mechanistic underpinnings of such variation are likely multifarious, temperature is argued to be a key driver. Understanding how temperature shapes species ranges and seasonal activity not only provides insights into historical biogeographic patterns, but also [...]
Which web to invade? Argyrodine kleptoparasites differentiate among architecturally different host webs
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Kleptoparasitism, the theft of resources from another organism, is a survival strategy found across the animal kingdom. Many argyrodinae cobweb spiders (Theridiidae) are obligatory kleptoparasites that have largely abandoned web building, relying instead on webs of larger hosts. Theory predicts, and limited prior research indicates, that kleptoparasites are not randomly distributed among host [...]
The emerging need to manage scavenged wildlife resources
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Biodiversity
Scavenged wildlife resources are a unique type of common pool wildlife resource that are collected without killing or capturing the animal, and their collection is understudied and potentially underregulated relative to their conservation significance. The separability of these resources from the living population of animals that produce them can complicate efforts to link collection to future [...]
Minimal viable sound systems for language evolution
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Physiology, Systems Biology
Human vocal gamut covers 3000 unique speech sounds comprising the world’s languages, with each new speaker having to learn the sounds of its new language. Since large, expandable repertoires are facilitated by vocal learning, this capacity has long been considered a prerequisite for speech and language evolution. The postulation of a vocal learning and repertoire size ceiling has, however, never [...]
Grazer-induced bioluminescence and toxicity in marine dinoflagellates
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Plant Biology
Marine copepods are the most abundant type of multicellular zooplankton in the global oceans. They imprint their surrounding waters with a unique bouquet of polar lipids; copepodamides. Copepodamides are recognized by prey organisms, who respond by inducing defensive traits including bioluminescence, toxin production, colony size plasticity and structural modifications. Copepodamides are [...]
Advancing Amazonian botanical knowledge: a detailed ecological characterization of an open ombrophile forest, southwest Amazonian Brazil
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
Biodiversity inventories present excellent opportunities for ecological investigations and the classification of different threats to the community, nonetheless these applications are not frequently employed. Our main objective was to determine the tree and palm community within a one-hectare areas, also exploring the association between functional attributes and the projected threat of category [...]
A method to estimate actual infrastructure-induced mortality by integrating sampling biases
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Human infrastructures are among the most impactful wildlife threats. Although estimates of animal mortality by these structures exist over a given period, they typically do not account for several detection biases (i.e., difference between recorded and true mortality). Consequently, true mortality rates may be severely underestimated, as well as their impact on populations and species.2. We [...]
Pattern-informed energetics: Energy allocation modeling for predicting trait variation and population persistence
Published: 2025-03-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physiology
Energetics drive emergent ecosystem processes, shaping behavior and population dynamics in response to environmental conditions. While energy budget models can be used to effectively link resource dynamics to fitness outcomes, they often lack empirical grounding for energy allocation under resource constraints. Here, we introduce the Pattern-Informed Energetics (PIE) framework, which [...]
Modelling the distribution of the tick Ixodes ricinus in England and Wales using passive surveillance data from citizen science reports
Published: 2025-03-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Environmental Public Health, Public Health
Background: The tick Ixodes ricinus is the most common tick species in the UK and a significant vector of Borrelia burgdorferi s.l. (causative agent of Lyme borreliosis) and Tick-Borne Encephalitis virus (TBEv) to humans and Anaplasma phagocutphilum, Babesia divergens and louping ill virus to animals.Methods: The Tick Surveillance Scheme (TSS) administered by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) [...]
AmphiTherm: a comprehensive database of amphibian thermal tolerance and preference
Published: 2025-03-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Thermal traits are crucial to our understanding of the ecology and physiology of ectothermic animals. While rising global temperatures have increasingly pushed research towards the study of upper thermal limits, lower thermal limits and thermal preferences are essential for defining the thermal niche of ectotherms. Through a systematic review of the literature in seven languages, we expanded an [...]
The Physical and Chemical Basis for Temperature Effects on Metabolic Rate and Biological Processes – A Brief History
Published: 2025-03-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Java Transitional
Published: 2025-03-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mangroves of the Java Transitional is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Southern Java and Cocos-Keeling/Christmas Island. The Java Transitional mangrove province mapped extent in 2020 was 159.9 km2, representing 0.1% of the global mangrove area. The biota is characterized by 34 species of true mangroves. Java [...]
IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the North Brazil Shelf
Published: 2025-03-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mangroves of the North Brazil Shelf (NBS) are a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Amazonia, Guianan, Northeastern Brazil, and the Southern Caribbean. The NBS mangrove province had a mapped extent in 2020 of 13204.0 km2, representing 9.0% of the global mangrove area. The biota is characterized by Rhizophora [...]
Winds of change: Charting a pathway to ecosystem monitoring using airborne environmental DNA
Published: 2025-03-06
Subjects: Genetics
Airborne environmental DNA (airborne eDNA) analysis leverages the globally ubiquitous medium of air to deliver broad species distribution data and support ecosystem monitoring across diverse environments. As this emerging technology matures, addressing critical challenges and seizing key opportunities will be essential to fully realise its potentially transformative impact. In June 2024, the [...]