Preprints
There are 2702 Preprints listed.
Complex effects of sex reversal on reproductive success in wild frogs
Published: 2025-10-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Sex reversal, when the environment overrides genotypic sex determination, is theorized to exert wide-ranging effects on population dynamics and evolution in ectothermic animals. The expected outcomes critically depend on the reproductive ability of sex-reversed individuals and the viability of their offspring, but empirically next to nothing is known about these traits in natural populations. [...]
Extensive climate-induced range shifts in butterflies across the globe
Published: 2025-09-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ongoing global change is leading to widespread species redistribution1,2. Range shift attribution, however, remains poorly resolved, partly due to the strong variation in range shift detection signals in space, over time and across the tree of life2. We compiled range shift data in 15 languages and with expert assessments, encompassing 1,758 butterfly species from 109 countries (~10% of the known [...]
Native bee genus diversity within bee-friendly urban gardens varies little along an urbanization gradient
Published: 2025-09-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology
Urban bee populations are threatened by ongoing habitat loss and fragmentation. Bee-friendly gardens with abundant forage and nesting resources may help offset these pressures, but attributes of the broader urban landscape could also play an important role. We explored bee diversity within 32 bee-friendly gardens distributed throughout the city of Kelowna, British Columbia. Our objectives were to [...]
CartograPlant: Bridging genomic, phenotypic, and environmental data to advance plant resilience and eco-evolutionary insight
Published: 2025-09-30
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Breeding and Genetics Life Sciences, Plant Pathology, Systems Biology
Climate change is threatening plant health and productivity at all spatial scales, and these impacts are further compounded by the rising incidence of invasive pests and pathogens. Effectively addressing these challenges requires a comprehensive understanding of plant demography as well as the mechanisms and drivers of adaptation. Achieving this understanding requires the integration of [...]
Alternative Promoters Expand Transcriptional Complexity of Temperature Stress Responses in Cassava
Published: 2025-09-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Bioinformatics, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences
Plant abiotic stress responses involve two major gene expression regulatory mechanisms: alternative promoter usage and differential expression. Although differentially expressed genes (DEGs) have been extensively studied, alternative promoter genes (APGs) remain poorly characterized despite their potential importance. We systematically compared APGs and DEGs in cassava (Manihot esculenta), a [...]
Born this way: individuality is seeded before birth and robust to environmental stress
Published: 2025-09-29
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Consistent individual differences in behavior, known as behavioral individuality, are pervasive across the animal world and have major ecological and evolutionary consequences. Nevertheless, we still have a limited understanding of what drives individuality and how it emerges during ontogeny. Here, we subjected clonal individuals to a ubiquitous yet critical environmental challenge—the threat of [...]
Translational biodiversity beyond genomics: toward systemic action
Published: 2025-09-29
Subjects: Life Sciences
Biodiversity science faces the urgent challenge of being effectively connected to real-world action in the context of climate change and accelerating biodiversity loss. The concept of “translational biodiversity,” which we define as the process of translating biodiversity knowledge into practical applications across science, policy, society, and economy, has largely remained confined to genomics, [...]
Women's Role in Elasmobrnach Fishery in Indonesia
Published: 2025-09-29
Subjects: Animal Studies, Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sociology
Women play a significant role in the fisheries chain, particularly in trade and processing, yet they are still not adequately acknowledged. Indonesia is the world's largest shark fishing country, with an average annual production exceeding 100,000 tons. The shark fishery, on its right, is a controversial and often misunderstood topic, not to mention the involvement of vulnerable groups in the [...]
Neotropical puzzles: Assessing the role of spatial arrangement and human-induced disturbances on the avian diversity of local patches.
Published: 2025-09-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Urbanization expansion poses significant challenges to biodiversity. Studies of urban ecology in the Global North abound, but there is an urgent to understand the drivers of biodiversity decline in highly diverse, yet vulnerable and understudied ecosystems such as Neotropical cities. Specifically, while the influence of environmental, anthropogenic, and ecological factors on biodiversity is well [...]
Building bridges between ecological and economic agent-based models of agriculture
Published: 2025-09-26
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Environmental Studies
Agriculture is a complex social-ecological system with numerous interactions and feedbacks between policies, markets, farm management, landscapes, and ecosystems. Because of these interconnections, policy changes, societal trends, and environmental crises can have widespread knock-on effects that threaten the stability of the entire system. Agent-based models have become a valuable tool used for [...]
Jaguars Attacks on Humans in the Brazilian Amazon
Published: 2025-09-25
Subjects: Life Sciences
Attacks on humans by large carnivores are well documented globally, yet jaguar (Panthera onca) attacks are widely considered rare. We reassessed this assumption by compiling all known records of jaguar attacks on humans in the Brazilian Amazon between 1950 and 2025. A total of 84 cases were identified through a combination of field documentation, local news sources and scientific literature. The [...]
ECOLOGICAL INTERACTIONS AND PREDATION DYNAMICS BETWEEN JAGUARS AND ARAGUAIA RIVER DOLPHINS
Published: 2025-09-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
The Araguaia River dolphin (Inia araguaiaensis), classified as Vulnerable, faces threats from conflict with fisheries, habitat loss and fragmentation, pollution, and declining fish stocks. Although jaguars (Panthera onca) are known to hunt aquatic prey, predation on freshwater dolphins has been rarely documented. This study reports two confirmed cases of jaguars preying on I. araguaiaensis in the [...]
Bridging Knowledge Systems to Guide Natural Resource Decision-Making
Published: 2025-09-24
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
International agreements call for inclusion of Indigenous and local knowledge in resource management, yet practical approaches remain underdeveloped. We argue that knowledge co-assessment offers a feasible pathway. Drawing on examples from practice in the Arctic, we provide guidance for equitable engagement, communication, and scaling, ensuring legitimacy, inclusivity, and actionable governance.
Feasibility of heart rate variability analysis for welfare assessment in dolphins: a preliminary report
Published: 2025-09-24
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Monitoring stress and emotional states in dolphins is an important step toward improving animal welfare in managed care. Established physiological approaches, such as measuring cortisol from blood or fecal samples, have provided valuable information for stress assessment. Suction-based devices have also enabled cardiac monitoring, contributing to our understanding of diving physiology and [...]
The past, present and future of online biodiversity knowledge systems
Published: 2025-09-24
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
In recent decades, there has been an exponential increase in the availability and accessibility of biodiversity data and a profusion of portals, tools, and platforms through which to utilise it. This reflects the extensive variety of challenges biodiversity data is being used to address and the need to enhance decision-making by different stakeholder groups. Whilst this has provided unprecedented [...]