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Preprints

There are 2301 Preprints listed.

Leveraging large language models for ecological interpretation using an eBird chatbot case study

Elise Gallois, Arianna Salili-James, Sanson T. S. Poon, et al.

Published: 2025-04-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

1. The anthropocene presents significant challenges for global biodiversity, public health, and long-term ecosystem stability. The wealth of publicly available near-real-time ecology and climate data can be used to monitor these challenges and allow practitioners to develop mitigation strategies. 2. There is untapped potential to apply Large Language Models (LLMs) to quantitative ecological and [...]

Short reproductive periods dominate mast seeding across diverse tree species

Katarzyna Kondrat, Jakub Szymkowiak, Andrew Hacket-Pain, et al.

Published: 2025-04-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Biology

Mast seeding, synchronous and highly variable reproduction among perennial plants, profoundly impacts ecosystem dynamics and species interactions. However, the extent of periodicity in mast seeding, defined as cyclical but not strictly regular intervals between reproduction, remains poorly understood, including how it varies across and within species. Here, we used autoregressive analyses on seed [...]

Balancing Accessibility and Security: Safeguarding Citizen-Sourced Biodiversity Data in the Age of AI and Open-Sourced Software

Nathan Fox, Enrico Di Minin, Neil Carter, et al.

Published: 2025-04-22
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and open-source software are revolutionizing biodiversity monitoring by democratizing access to citizen-science datasets. While these advancements facilitate conservation efforts and scientific research, they pose significant risks for data misuse. Researchers who reduce barriers to accessing such biodiversity datasets are responsible for safeguarding sensitive data.

Longer heatwaves disrupt bacterial communities by decoupling resistance from recovery

Ana-Hermina Ghenu, Anjaney J Pandey, Zachary M Bailey, et al.

Published: 2025-04-22
Subjects: Life Sciences

Periodic heatwaves are increasing in duration, yet their ecological impacts on communities remain poorly understood. We experimentally tested how synthetic communities of soil Pseudomonas species respond to heatwaves of increasing duration. We used a resistance-recovery framework and growth rate-heat tolerance trade-offs to predict whether prolonged stress erodes community stability. Communities [...]

A method of predicting ecological community structure

John Alroy

Published: 2025-04-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

1. Species inventories are the most basic form of ecological data. They provide information both about species richness and about community assembly rules. Fitting species abundance distribution models yields such information. Previous distributions either fit the data badly, assume that all species are equivalent, or ignore sampling processes. A distribution called the compound [...]

Computer Vision Models Offer Scalable Species Detection From Social Media Photographs

Nathan Fox, Summer Mengarelli, Sabina Tomkins, et al.

Published: 2025-04-22
Subjects: Life Sciences

Social media platforms have emerged as a promising source of data for biodiversity monitoring, due to the vast amounts of user-generated visual content. However, the unstructured and noisy nature of social media data poses challenges for accurate species identification. Foundation vision models present an innovative methodology for identifying a large diversity of species from photographs, [...]

Linking Pattern to Process in Metacommunities: Challenges and Opportunities

Mathew Leibold, Matthieu Barbier, Leonora Bittleston, et al.

Published: 2025-04-21
Subjects: Life Sciences

Ecological communities, and especially metacommunities, are complex and dynamic entities. Resolving the processes and mechanisms that shape these systems remains a central challenge in ecology. This challenge is compounded by the increasing entanglement of mechanisms, processes, and emergent patterns of biodiversity as scales of space, time, and biological organization expand. Here, we define and [...]

The impact of the rhizocephalan parasitic barnacle on its host crab through non-consumptive effects

Asami Kajimoto, Kenji Toyota, Yoichi Yusa

Published: 2025-04-21
Subjects: Marine Biology

Parasites can significantly influence ecological communities by altering host traits. Rhizocephalans, a group closely related to thoracican barnacles within Cirripedia, are common in marine ecosystems and profoundly impact their hosts, most notably by inducing reproductive castration. However, their influence on other host traits, particularly those related to predator defense, remains [...]

BOLDistilled: Comprehensive but compact DNA barcode reference libraries

Sean William John Prosser, Robin M Floyd, Ken A Thompson, et al.

Published: 2025-04-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Advances in DNA sequencing technology have stimulated the rapid uptake of protocols—such as eDNA analysis and metabarcoding—that infer the species composition of environmental samples from DNA sequences. DNA barcode reference libraries play a critical role in the interpretation of sequences gathered through such protocols, but many lack adequate taxonomic curation, include redundant records, do [...]

A users guide for understanding reptile and amphibian hydroregulation and climate change impacts

Nicholas C Wu, Rodolfo O Anderson, Amael Borzee, et al.

Published: 2025-04-18
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Human impacts on ecosystems have intensified water variability for terrestrial life, thus challenging the maintenance of water balance, or hydroregulation. The accelerated development and accessibility of technologies and computational models over the past decade have enabled researchers to predict changes in animal hydroregulation and environmental water with greater spatial and temporal [...]

Long-term monitoring strategies for ecological reclamation programmes using spatially balanced rotating panel designs

Michael Finn Curran, Blair L Robertson, Jasmine Allison, et al.

Published: 2025-04-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

1. Environmental monitoring programmes associated with ecological reclamation are critical to various stakeholder groups and important for regulatory compliance, to assess site performance, and to inform decision management. As logistical constraints are common, strategies for sampling multiple locations or large areas over time are likely to improve monitoring programmes. Rotating panel designs [...]

Low levels of extrapair paternity in the long-lived colonial Alpine swift (Tachymarptis melba)

Christoph Meier, Giulia Masoero, Maria Burger, et al.

Published: 2025-04-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

It has been suggested that a high aerial lifestyle makes it difficult for males to limit mating opportunities for their partners. This would explain the particularly high levels of extra-pair paternity (EPP) observed in swallows and swifts (Hirundinidae, Passeriformes). Here, we investigated EPP in the Alpine swift (Tachymarptis melba), whose aerial lifestyle is similar to that of the [...]

Re-revisiting the Niche Concept

Mathew Leibold, Veronica F Frans

Published: 2025-04-15
Subjects: Life Sciences

The adaptive maintenance of phenotypic polymorphism

Jay Jinsing Falk, Michael Webster, Dustin R Rubenstein

Published: 2025-04-15
Subjects: Life Sciences

Phenotypic polymorphisms have fascinated evolutionary biologists since the field’s inception, providing easily observable and quantifiable variation amenable to both empirical and theoretical study. However, a clear method for developing alternative hypotheses for the adaptive processes by which multiple morphs are maintained remains elusive. Here we review hypotheses for the maintenance of [...]

The Subtlety of Lake Superior Ciscoe Recruitment Dynamics

Mark R Vinson

Published: 2025-04-14
Subjects: Life Sciences

Objective: Lake Superior whitefish [Salmonidae: Coregoninae] have undergone high annual variability in survival to age-1 over the last 50-years, particularly within the dominant ciscoe flock of Bloater Coregonus hoyi, Cisco C. artedi, and Kiyi C. Kiyi. This work sought to determine if this variance was associated with hydrometeorological attributes that have also varied considerably over the same [...]

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