429 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.
A field experiment on western fence lizards demonstrates that while handling alone does not affect feeding, retro-orbital blood sampling causes significant but short-term reductions in feeding efficiency that resolve within 24 hours.
HiBASIL is a novel hierarchical Bayesian framework that accurately infers the coordinates and dispersal mechanisms of multiple, overlapping biological sources from sparse, zero-inflated spatial data, demonstrating high precision and broad applicability across agricultural and human disease epidemiology through rigorous simulations and real-world case studies.
In Utila, Honduras, benthic composition rather than recreational diving intensity acts as the primary driver of fish assemblage functional composition, filtering for specific life-history strategies despite the maintenance of overall functional richness.
This study demonstrates that in feral Sable Island horses, fitness-associated gut microbiome variation is significantly heritable and shaped more strongly by social transmission than by additive genetics, suggesting that both genetic and non-genetic inheritance mechanisms jointly drive microbiome-mediated adaptive evolution.
By integrating optical and radar satellite data to produce a high-resolution rubber distribution map for Southeast Asia, this study quantifies historical deforestation linked to rubber expansion while highlighting critical limitations in monitoring smallholder systems and insular regions that must be addressed for effective due diligence.
This study demonstrates that climate and urbanization drive seasonal shifts between *Culex pipiens* and *Culex restuans* mosquito communities, enabling the development of species-resolved, climate-based tools for proactive West Nile virus surveillance and targeted intervention in changing environments.
This study demonstrates that land-use intensity in Kenyan Afrotropical headwater streams significantly alters benthic algal assemblage structure and biomass, with natural forests supporting diverse diatom-rich communities while agricultural and tea-dominated catchments exhibit reduced diversity and distinct algal dominance, thereby validating periphyton-based metrics for bioassessment in these ecosystems.
This study demonstrates that top predators in soil food webs enhance carbon cycling efficiency by triggering trophic cascades that shift microbial communities toward a bacterial energy channel, thereby reducing heterotrophic respiration while maintaining litter decomposition rates.
This study investigates the effects of direct and water-mediated contact with the macroalga *Lobophora* sp. on the microbiome and Symbiodiniaceae communities of two Singaporean coral species, revealing that while overall community diversity remained stable, significant inter-colony variations in *Merulina ampliata* suggest individual colonies possess distinct mechanisms for mitigating macroalgal-induced stress.
This study demonstrates that the cestode *Mesocestoides vogae* triggers asexual reproduction by recognizing host-derived high-density lipoprotein (HDL) through a specific receptor homolog, thereby revealing a molecular mechanism by which parasitic helminths detect environmental cues to initiate developmental programs.