Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Unravelling the Enigma of Soil Animal Diversity: An Integrated Perspective from Functional Traits to Evolutionary History
Published: 2025-11-26
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Why does a single square meter of forest soil harbour thousands of animal species? Fifty years after J.M. Anderson raised this question, soil ecology still struggles with a fragmented view of coexistence. Researchers often study taxonomy, functional traits, and phylogeny in isolation. Each approach adds insight but leaves gaps in the picture of soil biodiversity. In this paper, I therefore [...]
A novel semantic theory of the assembly rules of interaction networks
Published: 2025-11-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
In the web of life, every interaction between species tells a story of cooperation, conflict, or chance. For centuries, ecologists have charted these stories to better understand phenomena such as pollination and disease. We have been using the lens of network science to distill them into topological patterns such as nestedness or modularity. Yet, like in the old buddhist parable of the blind [...]
Humanity’s redistribution of global biomass flows
Published: 2025-11-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The biosphere is connected by flows of organic material (biomass), through biogenic (e.g., animal migration) or anthropogenic pathways (e.g., trade). We argue that humans have drastically altered Earth’s biomass flows by disrupting animal movement, directly transporting biomass and creating novel biotic pathways. In 2023, transnational anthropogenic transport of biomass through trade far exceeded [...]
Response to “Radiolarian evolution: Analytical challenges in estimating the diversity and origin of Nature’s stars”
Published: 2025-11-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Genetics and Genomics, Marine Biology
We appreciate Daniel Lahr’s concern (Lahr, 2025) on the interpretation and conclusions of our study “Extant diversity, biogeography, and evolutionary history of Radiolaria” (Sandin et al., 2025). Given that some of these comments were already addressed in our original study following reviewers comments and that such issues are well known in the molecular diversity and evolution fields we [...]
Dispersion tests in generalised linear mixed-effects models - a methods comparison and practical guide
Published: 2025-11-14
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistical Models
1. Underdispersion and overdispersion are common issues when analysing ecological data with generalised linear (mixed) models (GLMs/GLMMs). Overdispersion, the phenomenon where observations spread wider than expected by the fitted model, leads to anti-conservative p-values and, thus, to inflated type I error. In contrast, underdispersion, a narrower spread of the data than expected, causes overly [...]
Ecological, demographic and social factors shape helping decisions at different spatial scales in a facultative cooperative breeder
Published: 2025-11-14
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The fitness consequences of cooperative breeding are increasingly well understood, but the ecological and demographic factors driving helping remain contentious. Comparative and single-species studies have identified factors that promote the evolution of helping, but analyses typically test single hypotheses so the relative importance of different factors, and the spatial scale of their [...]
Barking up the wrong tree? Indian street dog woes are emblematic of ecological governance failures for multispecies coexistence
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
On August 11, 2025, India’s Supreme Court mandated relocating 2.5 million dogs to address bites and zoonotic disease/death concerns—but reversed course twice since then—revealing that solutions require sequential waste management, education, and sterilization that prioritize addressing root demographic and behavioral drivers over reactive management.
Beta-Diversity Beyond Bias: A Scalable Framework for Reliable Diversity Analysis from Citizen Science Data
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Citizen science data offer unprecedented spatial and temporal coverage for biodiversity research, yet sampling biases compromise their reliability for β-diversity analyses. We introduce a comprehensive framework to address these challenges, integrating space–time scaling, quality thresholds, and multiple partitioning approaches to enhance detection of ecological signals. Applying our framework to [...]
Interacting disturbances reshape bird assemblages via divergent community trajectories across southeastern Australia
Published: 2025-11-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Species counts can remain stable even as ecological communities collapse. This paradox exposes a critical blind spot in biodiversity monitoring: richness metrics miss the compositional upheaval that defines modern ecological change. As human pressures intensify, specialists decline and generalists proliferate, creating numerically similar but functionally different communities. Using three [...]
The Queer & Trans Field Safety Assessment: a tool for protecting minoritized field scientists
Published: 2025-11-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Ecological fieldwork poses heightened risks for LGBTQIA+ scientists due to inadequate safety protocols and identity-based vulnerabilities. Best practices to improve safety for queer field researchers exist, yet over 50% of LGBTQIA+ field scientists report feeling unsupported, with structural and cultural barriers unaddressed. Our team of 15 researchers from the University of California developed [...]
Taxonomic revisions, strategic decisions research and management priorities for the threatened greater glider complex
Published: 2025-11-11
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Collating and synthesising ecological information is critical for guiding effective conservation policy and management plans. This is especially pertinent for species of conservation concern. This task may be further complicated when taxonomic revisions of species and species complexes occur. Species previously managed as a single taxon may be reclassified into multiple species, and hence [...]
Another brick in the wall of European subterranean spider knowledge: adding Macaronesian species and their traits to the picture
Published: 2025-11-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Caves and other subterranean ecosystems impose highly selective environmental filters, driving the evolution of convergent and specialized traits in subterranean organisms. Here, we present the first comprehensive checklist and trait database for subterranean spiders of Macaronesia, thereby filling a significant knowledge gap relative to continental Europe. We compiled data through direct [...]
The ecology of resting behaviour in terrestrial vertebrates, and potential effects of anthropization
Published: 2025-11-10
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Inactive behaviours are a major component of animals’ lives, generally representing important proportions of time budgets. The conditions in which they occur are thus likely to have key effects on individual fitness. Yet, relatively little research has focused on the determinants and ecological consequences of inactive behaviours, likely in part because of the inherent difficulties associated [...]
Climate change increases the distribution of reservoirs of the Raccoon Rabies Virus in Quebec
Published: 2025-11-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Zoonoses often emerge in environments where human-animal interactions intensify. In Québec, climate change and land use alterations are suspected drivers in the shifts of the potential distribution of urban-adapted hosts such as raccoons (Procyon lotor) and striped skunks (Mephitis mephitis), which serve as reservoirs for Raccoon Rabies Virus (RRV; a variant of Lyssavirus rabies). We used species [...]
How much monitoring is needed to reliably track progress towards genetic diversity targets?
Published: 2025-11-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Population Biology
Achieving global biodiversity targets hinges on indicators of biodiversity change that convert raw data into reliable numbers that can shape policy, conservation, management, and, ultimately, the future of biodiversity worldwide. Indicators can only be used confidently if they detect and summarise biodiversity trends as intended, given the available data worldwide. Knowing whether indicators can [...]