Preprints
There are 2755 Preprints listed.
Eye lens isotope tag reveal migration as a driver of Japanese sardine synchrony
Published: 2025-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Understanding population fluctuations of broadly distributed marine fishes remains difficult, partly because they often consist of cryptic mixtures of individuals originating from geographically distinct nurseries that experience different environment pressures. However, resolving these spatiotemporally changing mixing processes had been challenging as conventional techniques are highly resource- [...]
Identifying genomic loci under selection in a widespread Bradyrhizobium, across Australian ecosystems using landscape genomics
Published: 2025-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate change is reshaping soil environments, intensifying selective pressures on microbial communities that drive essential ecosystem processes. Understanding how nitrogen-fixing rhizobia adapt to environmental variation is critical for predicting ecosystem responses to global change. Here, we used redundancy analysis (RDA) to identify genomic loci associated with environmental gradients across [...]
The sleeping giant needs coffee: overlooked areas for the integration of plant ecophysiology and evolutionary biology
Published: 2025-10-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Interpretations of evolutionary outcomes are limited without incorporation of physiological ecology; and ecophysiological interpretations would benefit from incorporating evolutionary perspectives. Although there has been a rise of studies in the last 20 years between these fields, evolutionary studies that incorporate plant physiology have largely focused on the same traits (i.e., flowering [...]
Why do birds use green nest material? A systematic review and meta-analysis of experiments
Published: 2025-10-30
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Many animals construct nests. Nests are often considered extended phenotypes that shape survival and reproduction beyond the builder’s body. Birds are key examples of nest builders, and many add fresh green plant material to their nests. Yet, the adaptive value of this behaviour remains debated. Non-mutually exclusive hypotheses propose roles in courtship signalling, parasite defence, or direct [...]
Understanding individual range use in free-range chickens - a systematic review
Published: 2025-10-30
Subjects: Other Animal Sciences, Veterinary Medicine
Every year, over 50 billion chickens are raised globally for meat and eggs. Increasing consumer demand has driven a shift towards free-range and organic systems. These systems allow chickens outdoor access aimed to improve behavioural diversity, and consequently, welfare. However, studies show that only a portion of a flock use the outdoor range. What causes these individual differences, the [...]
Kinship, Distance, and Reciprocity Underpin Economic Support in the Pantanal Wetland
Published: 2025-10-28
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
The behavioural phenomenon of cooperation has been a focus of study in a variety of disciplines. Evolutionary anthropologists often use quantitative methods to test hypotheses on cooperation, grounded in theories such as kinship and reciprocal altruism: people are more likely to help those to whom they are related and who repay the cost of the altruistic act. That said, empirical results are [...]
A coordinated biobank alliance for the zoological and conservation community
Published: 2025-10-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
With dramatic advancements in biological data generation, genetic rescue and reproductive technologies, and inter-institutional coordination of care across entire animal populations, zoos, aquariums, and their collaborators are uniquely positioned to lead population-wide research benefiting animal wellbeing and species survival. However, procedural and inter-institutional barriers make it [...]
Decomposing social interactions: a statistical method for estimating social impact and social responsiveness
Published: 2025-10-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Social interactions mediate the phenotypic expression of fitness-relevant traits. The expression of such labile social traits includes three distinct components: an individual's mean trait value (direct effect), its social responsiveness, and its social impact (indirect effects). Traditional methods, such as variance-partitioning or trait-based models, usually only partition individual variation [...]
Microplastic interference influences Pseudomonas fluorescens in denitrification efficiency of wastewater treatment
Published: 2025-10-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Microbiology, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
Wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) play an essential role in pathogen and contaminant removal in wastewater. While developed countries treat approximately 70% of industrial wastewater prior to discharge, only about 8% is treated in developing countries. WWTP solutions can reduce the solids load, including microplastics, by up to 98.4%. Still, it is estimated that about 65 million microplastics [...]
Animal dispersal costs are not universal
Published: 2025-10-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Dispersal is a keystone process shaping ecological and evolutionary dynamics, often assumed to be inherently costly. We synthesized 696 effect sizes from 206 studies across 148 animal species, spanning all continents and ecosystems, to test this assumption. Contrary to long-standing dogma, we found no overall effect of dispersal on fitness (mean effect size: -0.03, 95% CIs: -0.09 to 0.03). No [...]
Comparison of simulated and proxy-based climate reconstructions for mid-Holocene Europe reveals high uncertainty
Published: 2025-10-27
Subjects: Climate, Paleobiology
Gridded and time-continuous paleoclimate model outputs are increasingly used to inform high-resolution models in biogeography and other disciplines. However, few studies quantitatively evaluate such outputs for bias, uncertainty, and consistency with other climate reconstructions of similar scale and scope of interest. Here we evaluate downscaled and bias-corrected output from two paleoclimate [...]
First Photographic and Video Documentation of the Booted Warbler (Iduna caligata) in Egypt Since Its First Record in 1993
Published: 2025-10-27
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Evolution, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The Booted Warbler (Iduna caligata) is a small migratory passerine breeding across Central Asia and wintering mainly in the Indian subcontinent. It is regarded as a rare vagrant in the Middle East and North Africa, with very few confirmed records from Egypt. This study presents the first verified photographic and video documentation of I. caligata in Egypt, recorded on 11 October 2025 at [...]
Host specificity and activity synchronization drive frog-biting midge incidence on torrent frogs (Hylodidae) in southeastern Brazil
Published: 2025-10-27
Subjects: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Frog-bitting midges (Corethrellidae) are widespread micropredators that feed on the blood of frogs. Furthermore, frog-biting midges carry pathogens such as Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), an important cause of worldwide amphibian declines. Female midges usually target calling male frogs by using acoustic cues. However, how midges target frogs that use conspicuous visual cues, especially [...]
Mangrove Restoration and Blue Carbon Potential in Odisha: Bridging Ecosystem Services with Climate Resilience
Published: 2025-10-27
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mangrove ecosystems along Odisha’s coastline act as frontline defenses against climate volatility, shielding communities and supporting rich biodiversity. This study synthesizes 25 years of research (2000–2025) and employs the InVEST model to assess ecological restoration outcomes, including carbon capture, water quality gains, and future climate risks. Field data indicate sequestration rates of [...]
Neighbourhood canopy cover alleviates increased tree mortality after exceptionally dry summers at a climatic range limit
Published: 2025-10-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Biology, Population Biology
Populations situated at range margins are often at their environmental niche limit. The stress gradient hypothesis posits that facilitation effects should be more common in such conditions, but few studies have examined the joint effects of biotic interactions and climatic factors on vital rates at species range limits. We used eight years of annual unmanned aerial vehicle surveys to assess the [...]