Preprints
There are 3436 Preprints listed.
EarthChirp: a global reference library for insect acoustic recognition and discovery across the audible and ultrasonic spectrum
Published: 2026-06-18
Subjects: Computational Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Genetics and Genomics
1. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is scaling rapidly, but automated recognition for insects lags far behind birds. The dominant recogniser (BirdNET) classifies only ~35 insect species and building bespoke insect classifiers requires labelled training data that does not exist for most taxa. 2. We present EarthChirp, a training-free recogniser for singing insects (Orthoptera and Cicadidae) [...]
Mind the Gap: A critical 40-fold workforce shortfall for protecting 30% of the ocean
Published: 2026-06-18
Subjects: Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences, Public Economics
Despite being tasked with protecting ocean biodiversity, the marine protected area (MPA) workforce remains poorly described. Using a global site-level questionnaire, we assessed staffing, workforce adequacy, technology use, and personnel requirements for effectively and equitably conserving 30% of the ocean by 2030 (30 x 30). Responses represented 52.8% of global MPA area across 63 countries and [...]
Parasitic zoosporic eufungi: taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity, ecology, and impacts
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Parasitology, Plant Pathology
Zoosporic eufungi (i.e., chytrids, sensu lato) comprise a phylogenetically and ecologically diverse guild of early diverging fungal phyla (Chytridiomycota, Monoblepharomycota, Neocallimastigomycota, Blastocladiomycota, Sanchytriomycota, Aphelidiomycota, Cryptomycota/Rozellomycota, and Olpidiomycota). While most circumscribed zoosporic eufungi function as decomposers of recalcitrant materials, [...]
Overview of evidence on agroforestry's role in biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation and adaptation in low- and middle-income countries
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability
Agroforestry has been promoted as one solution to make agriculture more ecologically sustainable. While research has examined its effects on biodiversity and on climate change mitigation and adaptation separately, comprehensive reviews linking these outcomes remain lacking. This review fills that gap. We searched six academic databases in June 2025, retrieving 12,175 unique records. Screening [...]
The first systematic map of evidence syntheses on the use of artificial intelligence in ecology
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used in ecology to automate data-intensive tasks, from species identification and environmental monitoring to ecological prediction. As primary studies have proliferated, evidence syntheses reviewing AI applications have also increased, but their thematic coverage, methodological emphasis, and reporting transparency remain unclear. We conducted a [...]
Saved by the Symbiont: Environmental Stress Intensity and Endosymbiont-Mediated Stress Response Determine Evolved Host Complexity
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Evolution, Life Sciences
Understanding how stress responses affect the trajectory of host–symbiont coevolution is central to predicting and managing species outcomes in the face of disturbances to ecosystems. Critically, it remains an open question how exactly we expect stressors to influence the coevolutionary dynamics of symbioses (on either end of the parasitism–mutualism continuum). In this work, we use in silico [...]
prepR4pcm: An R Package for Preparing Data and Trees for Phylo- genetic Comparative Methods
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Phylogenetic comparative methods require species names in a trait dataset to match tip labels in a phylogenetic tree. Yet this apparently simple prerequisite is often one of the most fragile steps in a comparative workflow. Names may differ because of, for example, formatting, taxonomic revisions, synonyms, or spelling errors. If these differences are resolved informally, species can be lost [...]
The human wildlife conflict: towards a theoretical foundation
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Multiple angles of human wildlife conflict have been increasingly haunting conservation biology over the last few decades despite many mitigation attempts. We argue here that the field suffers from the lack of a theoretical foundation. As a result, researchers have failed to collect data on some of the most critical variables, and are unable to determine the predominant causes of the conflict. In [...]
Sexual size dimorphism, reproductive ecology and antipredator coloration in poison frogs: Rensch's rule revisited
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Body size differences are the most commonly studied form of sexual dimorphism. The extent of sexual size dimorphism (SSD) varies between species and in function of e.g. ecological factors and phylogenetic constraints. Rensch’s rule (RR) states that SSD is larger in species with male-biased SSD and smaller in species with female-biased SSD. RR assessments in amphibians, which tend to have [...]
History, challenges, and opportunities in the study of entomopathogenic fungi in tropical regions: Borneo as a model ecosystem
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Fungal pathogens tend to have a poor reputation as a disease among the general public and policy-makers. However, entomopathogenic fungi, adapted to infect and kill arthropod hosts, play a wide range of roles in ecosystems, provide key ecosystem services, and offer interesting models to understand pathogen interaction networks. Tropical regions provide especially favorable conditions for [...]
Towards integrating interaction networks into global parasite conservation: insights from bats, bat flies and their fungal associates
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Parasites are a key conservation blind spot. Even though parasitism is a widespread ecological lifestyle, most parasite diversity remains unknown, as do the interactions in which they are involved. Some parasite species are involved in multitrophic interactions, meaning they span multiple trophic levels. These complex interactions are generally understudied, and conservation frameworks fail to [...]
Historical and modern data sources reveal long-term declines in Caribbean coral reef water quality
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology
Although it is suspected that the widespread death of Caribbean corals is associated with declining reef water quality from land-based pollution, this link has been difficult to quantify due to a dearth of reef water quality data. To assess the role of land-based pollution in recent coral declines, we synthesized paleoecological, historical, and modern data on reef water quality across the [...]
Gastronomy meets nature positive through the conservation of invisible microbial terroir
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Food Science, Life Sciences
Anthropogenic climate change and the expansion of mass-consumption societies pose existential threats to "microbial terroir", the cryptic microbiological assemblages that underpin the organoleptic identity and quality of traditional fermented foods. Here, we propose a framework that bridges microbial diversity, regional gastronomy, and "Microbial PES", an extension of Payments for Ecosystem [...]
Four decades of inland invasion by Formosan subterranean termite in Alabama: expansion associated with transportation infrastructure
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Entomology
Invasive termites pose ecological and economic concerns as both cellulose-destroying pests and ecosystem engineers. The Formosan subterranean termite, Coptotermes formosanus Shiraki, is listed among the world's worst invasive species and has established invasive populations across continents. Most studies have emphasized their transoceanic international dispersal and establishment in the coastal [...]
Co-existence of large carnivores and Dhangar community in Maharashtra’s Western Ghats: is it close to the tipping point?
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Gavli Dhangar are semi-nomadic pastorals scattered in small hamlets along the western ghats and Konkan area who mainly keep cattle and buffalo. The Sahyadri Tiger Reserve was established in 2010 relocating some of the hamlets while others continued to occupy their traditional habitats overlapping with three species of large mammalian carnivores. While leopard presence continued over a long time, [...]