Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Comparative prey transport behaviour, demographics, and diet of two sympatric driver ant species in a central African rainforest
Published: 2026-10-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Driver ants (Dorylus) are considered to be the predominant invertebrate predators in Afrotropical ecosystems, conducting vast predatory raids across the forest floor. Although these raids are fundamental to driver ant ecology, quantitative data on the diet and prey transport behaviour across the worker demographic spectrum remain limited. We describe prey transport biomechanics and diet [...]
Roasting in nest boxes: physiological, behavioural and fitness consequences of extreme heat in cavity-nesting birds and mitigation strategies
Published: 2026-10-07
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Artificial nest boxes are widely used to mitigate the loss of natural cavities caused by deforestation and habitat degradation, and they have become an important tool in both avian conservation and ecological research. However, the capacity of nest boxes to provide suitable microclimatic conditions for breeding birds is increasingly challenged by climate change. In particular, more frequent and [...]
Does female personality drive mate preference and reproduction in wild house mice?
Published: 2026-10-07
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Comparative Psychology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Social Psychology
Personality, consistent individual behavioural variation, shapes how individuals move and engage with their socioecological environment, potentially influencing how they assess and choose mates. This makes personality a potential target of sexual selection. Indeed, personality is linked to partner choice, pair formation and mating outcomes in both human and non-human animals. However, it remains [...]
Amphibians and reptiles in bird nests and bird-excavated cavities: a mini review
Published: 2026-10-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Bird nests and bird-excavated cavities provide suitable environments for egg incubation and nestling development. However, bird-created structures are also exploited by a wide range of organisms, including taxa that are phylogenetically distant from the avian constructors. While birds, mammals, and invertebrates are well documented as secondary users of nests and cavities, the occurrence of [...]
Human disturbance and the magnitude and predictability of phenotypic divergence
Published: 2026-10-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Environmental change can drive phenotypic change within species, but it remains unclear whether such responses produce a general and predictable degree of phenotypic divergence across populations. We conducted a preregistered reanalysis of PROCEED v6.2, comprising 7,186 contrasts from 254 references and 253 species, to test whether the magnitude and predictability of phenotypic divergence differ [...]
Pine wilt disease as a holobiont disorder: microbiome assembly as a potential management target
Published: 2026-10-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Plant Pathology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Pine wilt disease (PWD), caused by the pinewood nematode (PWN) Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, continues to expand globally despite decades of pathogen-focused management. Here, we propose that disruption of microbiome assembly within the pine holobiont may contribute to disease progression and help explain variation in disease outcomes and responses to microbial interventions. Drawing on recent [...]
A scalable workflow for ecosystem condition assessment from Earth observation data
Published: 2026-10-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Quantifying ecosystem condition consistently across space and time is a central challenge in biodiversity monitoring, ecosystem accounting, and ecological restoration. Earth observation (EO) data provide extensive coverage, but translating remotely sensed ecosystem characteristics into ecologically meaningful measures of condition requires approaches that account for ecological context, and [...]
An Analysis of Outdoor Recreation on Land Slated for Development; Implications for a Social-Ecological System in Boulder, Colorado
Published: 2026-10-06
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Robust evidence shows that outdoor recreation in natural areas, i.e. places that retain native, ecological character with minimal human intervention, produces public health benefits including physical benefits from exercise, reduced mental stress, increased community connections, heightened place identity, and even increased ecological awareness. But land use planners don’t always formally [...]
Expanded Polystyrene Exposure and Nitrite-Related Absorbance in Eisenia fetida
Published: 2026-10-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Microplastic contamination can affect soil properties, microbial communities, and nutrient cycling. This study evaluated whether expanded polystyrene (EPS) microplastic exposure during vermicomposting affected nitrite-related absorbance in vermicast produced by Eisenia fetida. Fifty independent experimental units were divided into a control treatment without EPS (n = 25) and an EPS treatment (n = [...]
A finite-population bound on the selection limit
Published: 2026-10-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
Fisher’s fundamental theorem is an identity. Given current gene frequencies, the partial change in mean fitness, holding genotypic fitnesses at their additive predictions, equals the additive genetic variance in fitness divided by mean fitness. Price gave that reading and Ewens proved the discrete-generation form. Lessard and Grafen have argued over what the partial change represents. Akin and [...]
Plasticity Decay and Attenuated Recovery (PDAR): A Hybrid Dynamical Model for the Historical Accessibility of Evolutionary Space
Published: 2026-10-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The evolutionary history of life is marked by a pronounced temporal asymmetry: an early, disproportionate generation of major morphological novelty, followed by extensive taxonomic diversification that does not appear to be accompanied by comparable expansion of morphological disparity. This paper develops a minimal hybrid dynamical model, termed Plasticity Decay and Attenuated Recovery (PDAR), [...]
Land-cover-specific network reconfiguration and spatial trajectories govern abrupt vegetation regime shifts across global drylands
Published: 2026-10-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
In drylands, abrupt vegetation changes may signal declining resilience and regime shifts, yet global assessments have largely focused on greenness trends while overlooking the role of spatial organization. Here we analyzed 15,898 1-km² landscape units across global drylands (aridity index < 0.65) using 30-m land cover and NDVI time series. We quantified multidimensional spatial structure via [...]
Climate vulnerability assessment framework choice influences species prioritization and prediction of population decline
Published: 2026-10-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Climate change vulnerability assessments (CCVAs) are regarded as an essential strategy to conservation strategies but are rarely used to inform conservation planning and prioritize species for management and adaptation. The main factor inhibiting its use is the challenge of combining exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive-capacity variables and, especially, of evaluating the ability of frameworks to [...]
What, if anything, can studies of adaptation to altitude reveal about responses to climate change?
Published: 2026-09-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Understanding the impacts of global climate change on biodiversity is critical to its conservation. Existing frameworks within evolutionary biology can help us predict whether, and under what conditions, adaptation may be a sufficient means for population persistance in a changing environment. Here, we consider the relevance of mountain ranges as natural systems for studying this process. [...]
Diurnal temperature fluctuations outweigh population origin in shaping thermal performance and range predictions in European Aedes albopictus
Published: 2026-09-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Predicting invasive ectotherm responses to climate change requires understanding how population-level variation and diurnal temperature fluctuations shape thermal performance, and whether constant-temperature measurements accurately capture performance under fluctuating conditions. Yet many models, including those used to predict mosquito distribution and disease transmission, still rely on [...]