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.
Based on an analysis of over 12 million tree-ring measurements from 4,110 Northern Hemisphere chronologies, this study projects that climate change will drive a steady, irreversible decline in forest growth because warming-induced losses are far more persistent than temporary gains.
This study demonstrates that the modern wheat cultivar Norin 61 maintains yield in monoculture by exhibiting genotype-dependent adjustments in shoot-to-root allocation that reduce competition with genetically identical neighbors, a mechanism less pronounced in traditional landraces.
This study of northern Great Plains streams reveals that while agricultural activity and warm temperatures drive significant fish community turnover, cool water temperatures serve as critical refugia that buffer native species from decline, highlighting the urgent need to protect these cool-water habitats to ensure fish persistence in agricultural regions.
This study demonstrates that air temperature significantly limits the aerobic capacity and scope of active zebra finches by causing overheating and reduced metabolic performance at temperatures well below their resting thermal tolerance, highlighting a critical sub-lethal fitness cost of climate change for active birds.
Using near-daily Imaging FlowCytobot data from March 2024 to July 2025, this study reveals distinct seasonal succession patterns in the Gulf of Aqaba's oligotrophic protist community, characterized by winter-driven increases in small cell density, spring biovolume peaks, and dynamic summer shifts despite low overall abundance.
This study reveals that in Japanese vector mosquito communities, contemporary environmental conditions and species-specific responses to climate and land cover drive community assembly, effectively decoupling ecological similarity from evolutionary relatedness.
This study demonstrates that successful regeneration of Mediterranean oak seedlings under climate change requires a balanced thinning strategy that provides sufficient light for growth while maintaining enough canopy cover to mitigate water stress and suppress competitive grass species like *Festuca ovina*.
This study demonstrates that permafrost degradation in sub-Arctic palsa mires drives significant shifts in plant community composition and biodiversity, with complete thawing acting as a critical tipping point that causes dramatic species loss, particularly among lichens, while highlighting the essential role of permafrost in maintaining the ecological resilience of these peatlands.
This study reveals that native chickens across Java and Wallacea exhibit a diffuse phenotypic structure driven by decentralized smallholder management and human-mediated connectivity rather than distinct geographic or production-system barriers, resulting in extensive variation within local populations.
This study demonstrates that in *Drosophila melanogaster*, nutritional history during development and adulthood differentially shapes stress resistance traits across age and sex, revealing that while some resistances form a correlated core, nutrition alters rather than uniformly improves stress tolerance and does not follow simple covariance predictions.