368 papers
Ecology explores the intricate relationships between living organisms and their environments, revealing how life adapts, interacts, and sustains itself across the planet. From microscopic soil communities to vast migratory patterns, this field examines the delicate balance that keeps ecosystems functioning and resilient. Understanding these connections is vital for addressing urgent challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss.
At Gist.Science, we make the latest research from bioRxiv accessible to everyone. We process every new preprint in this category as it appears, offering both clear plain-language explanations and detailed technical summaries to suit every reader. This approach ensures that groundbreaking findings in ecological science are not locked behind complex terminology but are available for immediate understanding and discussion.
Below are the latest papers in ecology, curated to help you stay informed about the evolving story of life on Earth.
This study presents the first systematic evaluation of intra-African geographic domain shift in wildlife camera trap classification by comparing supervised, retrieval-based, and zero-shot foundation models across diverse Southern African datasets to provide practical guidance for deploying conservation AI without new labelled data.
This study utilizes an agent-based model to demonstrate that red fox mange transmission in urban landscapes is accelerated by landscape heterogeneity and movement corridors, particularly when infected and susceptible foxes exhibit similar movement probabilities through fragmented habitats.
The MosAICo ecosystem is an AI-powered, standardized hardware-software pipeline that overcomes the taxonomic bottleneck in mosquito surveillance by achieving high-accuracy, real-time automated identification of priority vector species while effectively flagging unknown specimens for expert review, thereby scaling national and cross-border disease monitoring efforts.
This study reveals that the phytoplankton *Heterosigma akashiwo* sustains algal blooms under resource-limited conditions by leveraging high cell densities to trigger bioconvection, a self-generated active flow that facilitates multiscale transport, restores metabolic function, and mitigates ecological stress.
This paper proposes a mathematical model combined with a feedback control strategy and a Luenberger observer to optimize the release of sterile male New World screwworms, demonstrating that eradication of the pest in Mexico is achievable within 60–100 weeks through targeted releases within a 120 km radius.
This study of West African secondary forests reveals that while soil bacterial and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities rapidly reorganize and stabilize internally within a decade of agricultural abandonment, they fail to converge toward old-growth reference states even after 43 years, suggesting that passive regeneration alone is insufficient to restore native microbial assemblages within ecologically relevant timescales.
The paper introduces NicheDiv, an R package that adapts discriminant analysis of principal components (DAPC) to robustly quantify and characterize niche divergence across high-dimensional, collinear environmental spaces while addressing common methodological biases and identifying key drivers of ecological differentiation.
This study demonstrates that while parameters for Allee-effect population models are theoretically identifiable, accurate extinction-risk predictions critically depend on the quantity, quality, timing, and spatial resolution of observational data, as seemingly reliable estimates can still yield misleading forecasts.
This review highlights that while most studies on artificial light at night (ALAN) fail to account for lunar cycles, the available evidence suggests that moonlight often mitigates the biological impacts of ALAN, prompting the authors to propose hypotheses and best practices for integrating lunar data into future ecological research.
This study demonstrates that active retrogressive thaw slumps in the Canadian Arctic immediately release significant amounts of trapped biogenic methane and carbon dioxide upon exposure, suggesting that current permafrost carbon feedback models underestimate greenhouse gas emissions by overlooking the direct release of gases stored within frozen soil matrices.