Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Stridulation rate as a thermometer in Tettigonia viridissima: a season-long automated record and a test against archive recordings
Published: 2026-10-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology
That an insect's song rate follows its temperature has been known since Dolbear proposed reading a cricket as a thermometer in 1897. The relation is not in doubt; its functional form is. Walker (1975a) found stridulation rate approximately linear in ten species of Orchelimum and, reanalysing fifteen published datasets, found linear fits better than exponential in thirteen — but his data were [...]
Elevation gradients shape morphology and acoustic phenotype across isolated songbird populations
Published: 2026-10-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Ornithology
Elevational gradients provide natural experiments for examining how environmental variation shapes animal phenotypes. In birds, geographic variation in body size may also influence song frequency because vocal production is constrained by morphology. We tested whether elevation and temperature are associated with coordinated variation in morphology and song frequency in Berthelot’s pipit (Anthus [...]
Beyond the Vertebrate Model: Insights from Insect Stress Responses
Published: 2026-10-15
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Animal Studies, Behavioral Neurobiology, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Genetics, Molecular Genetics, Systems Biology, Zoology
Stress responses are essential for survival, coordinating behavioural, physiological and molecular adjustments that enable organisms to cope with challenges. Most research has focused on vertebrates, leaving invertebrate stress physiology comparatively underexplored, particularly in insects. In this review, we compare insect and vertebrate stress responses to examine what insects reveal about the [...]
Parasitism of an intertidal foundation species: Allometric scaling and environmental constraints on trematode distribution in barnacles across biological scales
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Parasites of foundation species, such as fucoids, mussels, and barnacles, can shape the intertidal communities that depend on them, yet their effects remain poorly understood. On rocky shores of the Northeast Pacific, the acorn barnacle Balanus glandula forms dense aggregations that provide habitat for other species. We investigated infection by the microphallid trematode Maritrema gratiosum in [...]
Interactive effects of land use change and climate drive the decline of a threatened boreal forest orchid in Finland
Published: 2026-10-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Land use and climate change are two of the greatest threats to biodiversity globally. However, their interactive effects remain poorly understood. In the boreal forest biome, where species are experiencing increasing pressures from forest management and climate change, improved understanding of these effects is urgently needed. Here, we assess the impacts of forest loss and both baseline and [...]
Selection Effects Associated with Leaf Area and Stomatal Density Drive Productivity of Young Temperate Tree Communities Under Different Water Exclusion Treatments
Published: 2026-10-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
1. A positive relationship between species richness and productivity has been observed in forests around the world. The two classes of mechanisms thought to underlie this relationship, complementarity effects and selection effects, both rely on species’ traits, whereby the diversity of traits (under complementarity effects) or the presence of specific trait values (under selection effects) can [...]
Occurrence records recover moth flight timing but compress interannual phenological variation
Published: 2026-10-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Phenological shifts are important indicators of climate-change responses, but large-scale inference requires coverage that structured monitoring rarely provides. Occurrence databases such as GBIF offer an alternative, although the reliability of different phenological metrics remains uncertain. I compared five metrics (Q10, Q50 and Q90 timing quantiles, weighted mean flight date and season width) [...]
The role of environmental gradients in the ontogenetic shift of wood traits from seedlings to adults in two temperate tree species
Published: 2026-10-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Tree development, or ontogeny, involves concurrent changes in plant size and environmental conditions, both of which can influence wood structure and function. Disentangling the factors underlying ontogenetic variation in wood traits remains a major challenge. This is important because wood underpins hydraulic efficiency, hydraulic safety, and mechanical support - functions critical for tree [...]
Where are the hake going? How age, environmental signals, and shelf habitat shape Pacific Hake (Merluccius productus) summer distribution
Published: 2026-10-13
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology
Sustainably managing a multinational fishery on a transboundary, relatively long-lived and migratory fish stock is challenging, especially in a changing ocean environment. In a warming world, Pacific hake (Merluccius productus, Merluccidae), jointly managed by the U.S. and Canada, have been hypothesized to move north. However, in recent years the proportion of Pacific hake in the northern part of [...]
Potential impacts of Ground-mounted photovoltaic panels on land cover and carbon storage in Norway – a scenario analysis
Published: 2026-10-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Energy Policy, Environmental Policy, Life Sciences, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
In cool-temperate and boreal regions, ground-mounted photovoltaic (PV) is rapidly emerging as a new land use, but planning-relevant evidence on land requirements, siting options, and land-system impacts remains limited. Based on an analysis of built and planned ground-mounted PV projects in Norway (n = 77), we quantify size, capacity density, land-cover composition and net greenhouse gas effects, [...]
Anthropogenic food subsidies shape parental foraging and offspring development in an opportunistic bird
Published: 2026-10-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Humans are transforming ecosystems by providing predictable anthropogenic food subsidies (PAFS), such as at landfills, now used by multiple animal taxa. In breeding animals, parental landfill use can influence offspring development, yet few studies have quantified parental landfill use and linked it to parental care and offspring development, behaviour or survival, limiting our understanding of [...]
Disease-Dependent Social Responses to Local Disease Composition in a Wild Reptile
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Emerging infectious diseases can generate persistent and locally heterogeneous patterns of risk across animal populations, yet how animal social behaviour varies under these conditions remains poorly understood. When pathogens persist in the environment, individuals may need to respond to disease conditions at fine spatial and temporal scales rather than rely on fixed social strategies. Here, we [...]
Spatially explicit sampling of AM fungal biomass reveals links to community characteristics and landscape context
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Agriculture, Biochemistry, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are important contributors to soil functioning, yet their biomass and diversity may respond differently to environmental characteristics and historical legacies. Understanding these relationships is necessary for evaluating AM fungi as indicators of soil health. We investigated relationships among AM fungal biomass, community properties and natural habitat [...]
Projecting kinship networks through time in variable environments
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Kinship networks shape key biological and social processes, yet their dynamics under changing environments remain poorly understood. Like population abundances, kinship structures are determined by past vital rates. Matrix population models provide a powerful framework for projecting population abundances through time and analysing the effects of environmental change on population dynamics, but [...]
Social decision-making in a freshwater gastropod
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Animals are hypothesized to plastically adjust their social behaviour expression dependent on their environment and their phenotype to ensure that its benefits outweigh its costs. There is a strong research bias towards socially complex vertebrates and eusocial insects. Thus, here we study mollusks, a taxon whose social behaviour is less well studied. As predation is one of the strongest drivers [...]