Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Beneath the Pavement: Understanding mycorrhizal fungi in urban ecosystems and the path forward
Published: 2025-11-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Studies, Human Ecology, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Urban Studies and Planning
Urban expansion is reshaping ecosystems worldwide, yet the responses of mycorrhizal fungi—key mediators of plant–soil interactions—remain poorly understood. In this review, we synthesize current knowledge on the environmental and ecological factors shaping mycorrhizal fungal diversity, distribution, and function in cities. We highlight how greenspace and landscape features—including plant [...]
Environmental drivers of structural colour in bees (Hymenoptera: Anthophila)
Published: 2025-11-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aim: Environmental drivers frequently predict global patterns of colour diversity, but whether such patterns depend on the underlying colour mechanisms – pigments or microscopic structures – has scarcely been considered. Structural colour may have different functional properties that result in different associations with environmental variables. Here we test whether the presence of structural [...]
European beech reproduction is resilient to drought, including the 2003, 2018, and 2022 extremes
Published: 2025-10-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Climate change is intensifying drought stress in temperate forests, but its effects on tree reproduction, central to forest regeneration and migration capability, remain poorly understood. In mast-seeding species such as European beech (\textit{Fagus sylvatica}), reproduction is regulated by temperature cues rather than current-year resource availability, raising questions about drought [...]
Why do birds use green nest material? A systematic review and meta-analysis of experiments
Published: 2025-10-31
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Many animals construct nests. Nests are often considered extended phenotypes that shape survival and reproduction beyond the builder’s body. Birds are key examples of nest builders, and many add fresh green plant material to their nests. Yet, the adaptive value of this behaviour remains debated. Non-mutually exclusive hypotheses propose roles in courtship signalling, parasite defence, or direct [...]
Microplastic interference influences Pseudomonas fluorescens in denitrification efficiency of wastewater treatment
Published: 2025-10-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Microbiology, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
Wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) play an essential role in pathogen and contaminant removal in wastewater. While developed countries treat approximately 70% of industrial wastewater prior to discharge, only about 8% is treated in developing countries. WWTP solutions can reduce the solids load, including microplastics, by up to 98.4%. Still, it is estimated that about 65 million microplastics [...]
Animal dispersal costs are not universal
Published: 2025-10-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Dispersal is a keystone process shaping ecological and evolutionary dynamics, often assumed to be inherently costly. We synthesized 696 effect sizes from 206 studies across 148 animal species, spanning all continents and ecosystems, to test this assumption. Contrary to long-standing dogma, we found no overall effect of dispersal on fitness (mean effect size: -0.03, 95% CIs: -0.09 to 0.03). No [...]
Neighbourhood canopy cover alleviates increased tree mortality after exceptionally dry summers at a climatic range limit
Published: 2025-10-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Biology, Population Biology
Populations situated at range margins are often at their environmental niche limit. The stress gradient hypothesis posits that facilitation effects should be more common in such conditions, but few studies have examined the joint effects of biotic interactions and climatic factors on vital rates at species range limits. We used eight years of annual unmanned aerial vehicle surveys to assess the [...]
The age of change: social aging in dolphins
Published: 2025-10-28
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Recent work has unearthed strong relationships between aging and average sociability. Clear patterns of decreases in average sociability are observed across taxa, many of these are sex-specific. Individuals, however, generally deviate from population averages, and discounting individual variance in behaviour could disguise mechanisms of adaptation, selection, and developmental stability. Here, we [...]
The role of socially transferred materials in translating and mediating the effects of global change
Published: 2025-10-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Almost all animal species transfer endogenously produced substances to conspecifics, either horizontally or vertically, through eggs, seminal fluid, milk, or other specialized materials. These socially transferred materials (STMs) can have substantial evolutionary consequences, are exceptionally plastic, and may enable organisms to adapt to environmental change. The world is facing rapid [...]
Automated insect monitoring with camera traps is transforming ecological understanding
Published: 2025-10-22
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Addressing global declines in insect biodiversity requires both ecological restoration and high-quality monitoring data. While long-term participatory schemes have been foundational, recent advances in automated recording and AI-based identification offer transformative but undocumented potential. Here, we show how leveraging insect camera traps, deep learning models and statistics drives a [...]
SEICAT+: a comprehensive assessment framework for positive socio-economic impacts of alien species
Published: 2025-10-20
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Biodiversity, Community-based Research, Demography, Population, and Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Nature and Society Relations
Despite their recognized harms to humans and biodiversity, alien species outside of domestication/cultivation can also provide socio-economic benefits, which are essential to consider when identifying stakeholder conflicts and informing managers and policymakers. These benefits often result from the enhancement of ecosystem services, such as the provision of food, timber, and other natural [...]
Biogeography of crop progenitors and wild plant resources in the terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene of West Asia, 14.7–8.3 ka
Published: 2025-10-17
Subjects: Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology
This paper presents the first continuous, spatially-explicit reconstructions of the palaeodistributions of 65 plant species found regularly in association with early agricultural archaeological sites in West Asia, including the progenitors of the first crops. We used machine learning to train an ecological niche model of each species based on its present-day distribution in relation to climate [...]
Invasive mosquitofish become more aggressive in the presence of native pike young-of-year: implications for native predator recruitment
Published: 2025-10-15
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Invasive species often exhibit aggressive behaviour, boldness, and high foraging activity, which contribute to their establishment success and impact on native ecosystems. The mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki), one of the world’s most invasive fish species, is known for its aggressive nature, which threatens the survival of native species. Lake littoral zones, critical for juvenile fish [...]
Beyond distribution: environmental justice challenges of Indigenous communities across the Circumpolar North
Published: 2025-10-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The Circumpolar North is warming at an unprecedented pace, accelerating entrenched environmental injustices against Indigenous peoples. Although the disproportionate distribution of these harms is paramount, in this review, we contend that an exclusive emphasis on distribution is analytically inadequate. An inclusive multidimensional framework of environmental justice has been introduced that [...]
Legumes of the Koffler Scientific Reserve and Their Rhizobia
Published: 2025-10-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
In this document, we have consolidated information on the legumes of the Koffler Scientific Reserve (KSR, the University of Toronto’s biological research station, 44° 01' N, 79° 31' W; King Township, ON, Canada) and their associated rhizobia. The list of associated rhizobia was originally compiled in 2020 by J. Wang under the supervision of J.R. Stinchcombe, J.A. Boyle, and T.L. Harrison, and [...]