Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Avian Population Genomics: Latest Findings and Future Prospects
Published: 2026-06-25
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
Birds are one of the most recognizable and diverse groups of organisms on Earth. This group has played an important role in many fields, including the development of methods in behavioral ecology and evolutionary theory. The use of population genomics took off following the increased accessibility of high-throughput sequencing across taxa. Several features of bird genomes make them particularly [...]
Natural history models of bird–building collisions
Published: 2026-06-25
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Building collisions kill an estimated 1.28–5.19 billion birds annually in North America, making them the second leading cause of human-related avian mortality. Yet the behavioral and ecological drivers of collisions remain difficult to disentangle, as most knowledge derives from carcass surveys rather than direct observations. Here, we propose a conceptual framework that synthesizes four natural [...]
Choosing the Response Matrix: Generalised Linear Latent Variable Models for Multivariate Ecology and Evolution
Published: 2026-06-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Multivariate responses are central to ecology and evolutionary biology, but their covariance is often difficult to model and interpret. Generalised linear latent variable models (GLLVMs) provide a parsimonious way to represent covariance among many responses using a smaller number of latent variables. They are widely used for Site X Species data in joint species distribution modelling and [...]
A new computational framework for speeding up the fitting of multistate capture–mark–recapture models
Published: 2026-06-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
1. Multistate capture–mark–recapture (CMR) models are widely used to estimate the parameters governing demographic processes such as survival, dispersal, and recruitment in animal populations. In Bayesian analyses, the multinomial likelihood of multistate CMR models summarizes individual encounter histories into groups defined by states and capture occasions, and is regarded as a computationally [...]
Beyond mistakes: same-sex partner acceptance and broad mating filters coexist in termite pairing
Published: 2026-06-24
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution
Same-sex sexual behavior is often interpreted either as a mistake arising from indiscriminate attempts or as an adaptive behavior directed towards same-sex partners. These explanations are typically considered mutually exclusive. Here we challenge this assumption using an adaptive same-sex pairing system in Reticulitermes termites. Long-term male-male pairings originate from tandem running, in [...]
Tree species richness and forest structure influence vertebrate scavenging
Published: 2026-06-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management
Tree species richness can alter forest structure and resource availability, often enhancing ecosystem functioning. However, biodiversity–ecosystem functioning research has largely focused on plant-mediated processes, leaving it unclear whether vertebrate-mediated functions such as carrion scavenging respond similarly to tree species richness. We investigated how tree species richness, canopy [...]
Visual-chemotactic saltatory search in Octopus hummelincki (Mollusca, Cephalopoda): a case study in the South Atlantic
Published: 2026-06-23
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
We report for the first time evidence of foraging by Octopus hummelincki and analyze it using saltatory search theory, which posits alternating phases of locomotion and stationary search. Our data showed that substrate complexity dictates behavioral transitions: locomotion predominated in sand, whereas solid substrates elicited tactile exploration. The move-to-search scaling ratio (0.63) aligns [...]
A mathematical foundation of modelling thermal injury and repair dynamics in ectotherms
Published: 2026-06-18
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Evolution, Life Sciences, Physiology, Plant Sciences, Population Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Survival Analysis
As global temperatures rise and extreme heat events impair ectotherm performance and survival, it is becoming increasingly important to predict how organisms accumulate and repair thermal injury under realistic benign and stressful temperatures. The thermal death time (TDT) model quantifies how heat events translate into thermal injury, but under natural temperature fluctuations the TDT model is [...]
EarthChirp: a global reference library for insect acoustic recognition and discovery across the audible and ultrasonic spectrum
Published: 2026-06-18
Subjects: Computational Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Genetics and Genomics
1. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is scaling rapidly, but automated recognition for insects lags far behind birds. The dominant recogniser (BirdNET) classifies only ~35 insect species and building bespoke insect classifiers requires labelled training data that does not exist for most taxa. 2. We present EarthChirp, a training-free recogniser for singing insects (Orthoptera and Cicadidae) [...]
The first systematic map of evidence syntheses on the use of artificial intelligence in ecology
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used in ecology to automate data-intensive tasks, from species identification and environmental monitoring to ecological prediction. As primary studies have proliferated, evidence syntheses reviewing AI applications have also increased, but their thematic coverage, methodological emphasis, and reporting transparency remain unclear. We conducted a [...]
prepR4pcm: An R Package for Preparing Data and Trees for Phylo- genetic Comparative Methods
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Phylogenetic comparative methods require species names in a trait dataset to match tip labels in a phylogenetic tree. Yet this apparently simple prerequisite is often one of the most fragile steps in a comparative workflow. Names may differ because of, for example, formatting, taxonomic revisions, synonyms, or spelling errors. If these differences are resolved informally, species can be lost [...]
Historical and modern data sources reveal long-term declines in Caribbean coral reef water quality
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology
Although it is suspected that the widespread death of Caribbean corals is associated with declining reef water quality from land-based pollution, this link has been difficult to quantify due to a dearth of reef water quality data. To assess the role of land-based pollution in recent coral declines, we synthesized paleoecological, historical, and modern data on reef water quality across the [...]
Projecting the vertical disassembly of the bumble bee pollination network of the Southern Rocky Mountains
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Climate warming and land-use change are reshuffling the distribution of life on Earth. This change is altering the structure of species interaction networks, which ultimately enable the persistence of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Forecasting change in species interactions is a central challenge for biodiversity conservation, but there are numerous methodological challenges associated with [...]
Blitz the Gap: a nation-wide effort to guide citizen science toward the needs of biodiversity science
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
To resolve persistent biases in conservation assessments and forecasting, we urgently need more systematic collection of biodiversity data. Citizen (or, community) science, despite its reputation for unstructured data, offers a particularly promising path forward, mobilizing participation at scales and speeds unmatched by traditional monitoring. Here, we introduce Blitz the Gap, a pan-Canadian [...]
Are We Mapping Ecosystems or Models? Framework Choices Dominate Food Web Topology and Extinction Inferences
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aim Ecological networks are widely used to assess community structure, stability, and responses to disturbance. Such networks often require model-based reconstructions (e.g., based on traits or theoretical constraints); however, the extent to which these frameworks influence ecological inference remains unexplored. Here, we assess whether macroecological inference derived from ecological [...]