Preprints
There are 3922 Preprints listed.
CHIRAL FLEXIBILITY IN INSECT PHEROMONES: WHY DO SOME SPECIES TOLERATE THE WRONG STEREOISOMER?
Published: 2026-10-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Many insect pheromones are chiral, and receivers respond to non-natural stereoisomers in strikingly different ways: some are completely inhibited by a few per cent of the antipode, some ignore it, some require both enantiomers, and at least one responds more strongly to stereoisomers it does not produce. These response types were catalogued two decades ago, and the most common of them, a [...]
Rethinking bias in biodiversity science: sources and solutions
Published: 2026-10-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Bias is increasingly a central concern in biodiversity science, yet the term is used inconsistently. A key source of confusion is the failure to distinguish clearly between the dimension in which bias manifests (e.g. spatial or taxonomic) and/or the stage of the observation process that gives rise to it. This distinction matters because the appropriate method for mitigating bias depends primarily [...]
Rainfall increases similarity in plant species composition between grazed and ungrazed sites in a tropical semi-arid grassland
Published: 2026-10-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. In peninsular India, semi-arid grasslands support marginal farmers and rich endemic biodiversity, yet are commonly designated as wastelands, and fragmentation has caused heavy grazing by domestic and wild mammals. The impacts of unmanaged grazing and increasingly variable monsoon rainfall on the plant community are unknown. 2. We studied an ancient tropical semi-arid grassland in a drought [...]
Movement Ethology: Body Pose Meets Relocation Data
Published: 2026-10-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Animal movement is studied by two different communities. Movement ecologists use GPS location point sequences to track where whole animals range over extended periods of time. Computational ethologists use video and machine learning to measure how body parts move over short periods of time, mostly in the laboratory. We propose Movement Ethology to link the study of body configurations and actions [...]
A field observation method to characterize site soundscape and improve detection probability estimation for eastern bat species in North America
Published: 2026-10-27
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation
Acoustic monitoring of bat activity has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. A major challenge is imperfect detection caused by bat behavior and the physical soundscape. Although environmental factors such as weather are commonly considered to account for imperfect detection, there is a lack of an easy-to-use, widely applicable protocol for characterizing soundscapes. We introduce a [...]
Rapid health assessment of coral reefs: a standardised, quick, and reliable tool developed and tested during the 2024/25 global bleaching event
Published: 2026-10-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Coral reefs worldwide are experiencing increasingly frequent and severe degradation events driven by rising sea surface temperatures, yet reliable and scientifically comparable data remain sparse for many coral reefs. Park managers, rangers, and community-led groups in areas lacking scientific studies could contribute to data records by collecting relevant data on coral reefs. However, these [...]
Orchid Diversity and Conservation through Agro-Ecotourism in Ri-Bhoi District, Meghalaya
Published: 2026-10-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Meghalaya supports rich orchid diversity because of its varied elevation, humid monsoon climate, and forest ecosystems. Ri-Bhoi district, including the College of Agriculture, Kyrdemkulai (COA-K) campus, offers opportunities to document and conserve both epiphytic and terrestrial orchids. This paper brings together published information on orchid diversity and distribution in Meghalaya with [...]
ArHa: A globally standardised, relational database of arenavirus and hantavirus sampling in wild small mammal populations
Published: 2026-10-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Immunology and Infectious Disease, Virus Diseases
Arenaviruses and hantaviruses are globally distributed zoonotic pathogens primarily hosted by small mammals. Efforts to map their ecological drivers and predict spillover risk are hindered by the fragmentation of historical surveillance data across the primary literature, compounded by shifting host nomenclature and variable geographic precision. We present ArHa, a database of 123,101 host [...]
Confirmation of the presence of Squalius squalus (Bonaparte, 1837) in Sicily.
Published: 2026-10-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
The occurrence of the Italian chub Squalius squalus (Bonaparte, 1837) in Sicily has always been reported in the literature in a contradictory manner and without certain documentation, being regarded as doubtful by the most recent reviews of the xenodiversity of Sicilian inland waters. Recently, the DNA of the species was detected in an artificial lake. Here we report the first confirmed record of [...]
Benefits and challenges of public engagement: how can systemic changes enhance researcher well-being and sustained participation?
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Life Sciences
Discussions of public engagement typically emphasize its benefits for society and research outcomes, but far less attention has been given to its effects on researchers' well-being. In this viewpoint, we explore how public engagement can contribute to positive work experiences. Drawing on examples from our own projects, we illustrate how engagement activities can foster meaning, connection, [...]
Oak gall wasps lack conserved microbial symbionts
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Herbivorous insects frequently rely on microbial partners to exploit their host plants, yet for gall-inducing insect taxa, there were few attempts to comprehensively resolve their microbial associations. To address this gap, we characterised microbial abundance, composition and specificity in three Polish populations of cherry oak gall wasps (Cynips quercusfolii), a highly specialized [...]
From Temperate to Boreal -- Untangling the Importance of Environment, Space, and Species Co-distributions in Forest Plant Distributions
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aim Quantify how environmental conditions, spatial autocorrelation, and species co-distributions shape forest plant community at regional scale. Location Southern Québec, Canada, between the 45th and 53rd parallels. Period From 1986 to 2000. Major taxa studied Vascular plants, mosses, and lichens. Methods We analyzed the presence-absence of 224 plant species across 28,210 ecological observation [...]
Beyond static species distribution models: temporally dynamic, spatially nested models reduce extrapolation for future projections
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Entomology
Species distribution models are widely used to project biodiversity responses to climate change, but geographically restricted training data can truncate species’ climatic niches, increasing reliance on extrapolation. Spatially nested models can reduce this truncation by incorporating climatic information from species’ wider distributions. However, how accounting for interannual environmental [...]
SORTEE five years on: taking stock of the Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary biology
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
In five years, the Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (SORTEE) has grown from a small network of like-minded researchers into a grassroots, international community. Founded in late 2020, SORTEE works to make ecology and evolutionary biology more open, reliable, and transparent at a time when prevailing incentives in academia often reward novelty and [...]
Teaching dynamical systems modeling, analysis and simulation using a Lotka-Volterra Predation Narrative and a Numerus WebKit App
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Education, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Lotka-Volterra prey-predator (LVPP) equations are among the few ecological models that have become a standard part of the undergraduate mathematics curriculum. Rather than looking elsewhere for fresh examples, we use this familiar story as a single narrative thread along which the toolkit of dynamical systems analysis and simulation is introduced, one modeling assumption at a time. Five [...]