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Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Bridging the scales: what can microbial ecologists learn from classic ecology?

Luca Beldi, Alyssa Henderson, Megan N. Y. Lee, et al.

Published: 2025-06-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Microbiology

The fields of ecology and microbiology have historically developed independently of one another, resulting in each having unique methods, terminology, and concepts. Microbial ecology aims to synthesise these perspectives, merging the molecular and reductionist strengths of the microbiologist with the systems-level viewpoint of the ecologist. However, unifying disciplines with independent [...]

Body condition as a shared response to environment in a commercially important demersal fish assemblage

Philina English, Sean C. Anderson, Robyn E. Forrest

Published: 2025-06-28
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology

Measures of an organism's weight at a given length are often considered reliable indicators of energy reserves or `condition', which can be related to fecundity and risk of mortality. Understanding the impact of environmental change on fish condition may therefore be critical for sustainable management of human activities in marine ecosystems. We investigated how changes in Canadian Pacific [...]

Demographic causes of the pesticide crash in the peregrine falcon

Marc Kéry, René-Jean Monneret, Jaume-Adria Badia-Boher, et al.

Published: 2025-06-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology

Population crashes in many avian predators during the 1950–70s, caused by organochlorine pesticides, belong to the most spectacular cases in the history of conservation and ecotoxicology. Negative effects of DDT on eggshell thickness, leading to egg breakage and declining productivity, are well-documented. In addition, cyclodiene pesticides such as Dieldrin were strongly suspected to contribute [...]

Prompting large language models for quality ecological statistics

Christopher J Brown, Scott Spillias

Published: 2025-06-24
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Large language models (LLMs) are rapidly transforming scientific workflows, including statistical analyses in ecological sciences. While these AI tools offer impressive capabilities for code generation and analytical guidance, evaluations reveal significant limitations in their reasoning for standard statistical tests. Ecological statistics typically require special consideration due to spatial [...]

Allometry and shared ancestry, rather than ecology, shapes the evolution of 3D eye size in temperate butterflies

Sridhar Halali, Stephen A Hall, Lars B Pettersson, et al.

Published: 2025-06-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Sensory traits shape animal lifestyles due to the central role they play in retrieving and processing environmental information. However, being some of the most energetically expensive tissues to build and maintain, ecological demands often modulate investment in these organs. Evidence that ecology shapes the evolution of sensory traits is plenty but is heavily biased towards vertebrates and has [...]

Female driven reduction of sexual dimorphism in hominins

Thomas A Püschel, Jorge Avaria-Llautureo, Chris Venditti

Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences

Sexual dimorphism is a key indicator of social structure and selective pressures in primate evolution, yet its evolutionary drivers in hominins remain contentious. Here, we combine cutting edge dimorphism estimation methods, with Bayesian phylogenetic comparative analyses to disentangle the sex-specific contributions and evolutionary dynamics underlying changes in body mass and canine size across [...]

Biochemical oxygen demand as a proxy for dissolved organic carbon in Japanese rivers: Conservative estimates for ecological risk assessment

Yuichi Iwasaki, Wataru Naito

Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Engineering, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health

Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is a critical parameter for assessing metal bioavailability and toxicity in aquatic systems, but data from routine measurements in Japan are limited to specific sites. The goal of this study was to develop a statistical model to estimate DOC concentrations in Japanese rivers using biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) as a proxy. Because the relationship between BOD and [...]

Ground-nesting ants as architects of microbial landscapes

Jacob Longmeyer, Nikesh Dahal, Nicholas Medina, et al.

Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences

As soil ecosystem engineers, ground-nesting ants alter various physicochemical properties of soils globally. However, less is known about how ant behaviors including bioturbation and hygiene affect microbial communities, such as by altering habitat complexity, resource availability, and competitive dynamics. Interactions such as this are increasingly recognized as important components in shaping [...]

Two Metschnikowia nectar yeast species have similar volatile profiles, but elicit differential foraging in bee pollinators

M. Elizabeth Moore, Lindsey Wilson, Nathan Brandt, et al.

Published: 2025-06-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Organismal Biological Physiology, Other Microbiology

1. Nectar yeasts are a highly specialized group of fungi that may play key roles in pollination ecology. Nectar yeasts lack an independent dispersal mechanism to access new habitats with fresh resources. Yeasts, bumble bee pollinators, and flowering plants likely take part in a series of diffuse mutualisms, wherein yeast attract bees that provide phoretic travel between flowers. This [...]

Faecal microbiome varies with social group, age and bovine tuberculosis infection in the European Badger (Meles meles)

Natasha Meadows, Richard Delahay, Robbie McDonald, et al.

Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology

Host-associated microbes are key components of animal health and physiology, with particular importance for determining responses to pathogen infection. The gut microbiota is highly variable at the individual level, being shaped by a multitude of factors including diet, social behaviour, and age. Yet the relative influence of these traits on microbiota composition, and the consequences of this [...]

Macroalgae morphological complexity affects the functional diversity of epifaunal annelid assemblages

Samuel Delgado Mendes, Nykon Craveiro, Paulo Cesar de Paiva, et al.

Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology

Host structural complexity influences the diversity of associated epifaunal species, but its role in shaping functional trait diversity remains underexplored. We developed a trait-based framework to assess whether macroalgal structural complexity significantly influences the functional assembly of marine annelid epifauna in a sandstone reef system at Enseada dos Corais Beach (NE Brazil). Sampling [...]

Nutritional needs and social bonds: how early-life dependencies shape meerkat sociality

Zoe Jayne Turner, Christof Neumann, Tommaso Saccà, et al.

Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Across species, social systems vary in their extent of interactions, competition, cooperation, and cohesion. Though there has been considerable research on overall social structures, the dynamics of how an individual's social niche develops during early life and how biological needs of offspring shape sociality has received less attention. In this study, we took a longitudinal approach targeting [...]

High-frequency eDNA metabarcoding survey data of coastal fish across the Japanese Archipelago

Hideyuki Doi

Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

The Japanese archipelago, spanning over 3,000 km from subarctic to subtropical zones (approximately 24°N to 45°N), hosts a diverse array of coastal fish communities shaped by pronounced latitudinal gradients. Here, we present a high-frequency environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding dataset of coastal fishes collected across the archipelago. Using the MiFish primer set targeting a hypervariable [...]

Multiple global-change drivers and cascading effects in Mediterranean ecosystems: Lessons from an iconic national park

Maria Paniw, Duarte S Viana, Cristina Coccia, et al.

Published: 2025-06-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Historically, Mediterranean systems, particularly the Mediterranean Basin, have been substantially impacted by multiple regional-scale disturbances resulting from complex interactive effects of global-change drivers. However, such effects are typically studied on isolated groups of organisms, often disregarding how ecological processes such as biotic interactions affect ecosystem responses to [...]

Light color and nutrient availability alter trophic transfer from algae to zooplankton

Jake Swanson, Jeff Dudycha

Published: 2025-06-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Freshwater plankton communities experience both natural variation of light color and nutrient availability and shifts due to eutrophication and brownification. These changes can alter algal community structure, but whether variation of light color impacts trophic transfer from algae to zooplankton is unknown because most research ignores color and focuses on light intensity. We used microcosms [...]

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