Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Diversity comes at a cost: multifaceted diversity reduces plant community stability in peatlands
Published: 2026-02-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Understanding how ecological stability relates to diversity is of crucial importance under global change. Greater biodiversity is expected to stabilize aggregate community properties through compensatory dynamics, as species fluctuate asynchronously and offset one another. Yet, diversity-stability relationships are not straightforward and can vary across and within ecosystems, particularly in [...]
One dataset, four meta-analyses: synthesising mean effects, within-population variability, and between-population heterogeneity in ecology
Published: 2026-01-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Ecological syntheses (meta-analysis) usually ask "what is the average effect?", but many ecological questions also depend on whether outcomes become more or less variable and whether effects are predictable across contexts. We show how the same dataset can support a coherent workflow that separates: (i) within-population variability (dispersion among individuals or sampling units inside studies) [...]
The true scope of global wildlife trade is obscured by data gaps
Published: 2026-01-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Overexploitation of wildlife is a major driver of biodiversity loss. International wildlife trade is regulated and monitored at local, national, regional and global scales through a variety of mechanisms, including Multilateral Environment Agreements (MEAs), with CITES playing a key role. Whilst databases and systems are available to measure, monitor, and manage legal trade, the data for species [...]
Birds on Fire: Heavy disturbance by fireworks affecting wintering gulls, waterbirds and passerines
Published: 2026-01-28
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Ornithology
Fireworks are a global anthropogenic disturbance, yet their impacts on wildlife remain poorly understood. Despite frequent media coverage and growing public concern of mass bird disturbances around New Year, scientifically robust assessments of nocturnal behavioural responses on the ground are lacking. Here, I quantified immediate and mid-term responses of urban birds with a focus on Black-headed [...]
Mapping the limits of trap construction: LiDAR quantification of substrate moisture effects on pit construction and quality morphometrics in Myrmeleon larvae
Published: 2026-01-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
We examined the effect of substrate moisture on pit construction in Myrmeleon larvae across four treatments (0.0–1.5%). Construction success, pit diameter, and slope angle were quantified using LiDAR-derived morphometrics and analysed via χ² and ANCOVA. Increasing moisture significantly inhibited construction and reduced pit dimensions, with failures restricted to ≥1.0% moisture. These results [...]
The overlooked small terrestrial mammal taxa (Rodentia, Eulipotyphla, and Lagomorpha) in the evolution of coronaviruses
Published: 2026-01-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Coronaviruses have been extensively detected in bats over the past few decades. However, increasing evidence suggests that other taxa, such as Rodentia, Eulipotyphla, and Lagomorpha, may have played a significant role in the ecology and evolution of some coronaviruses. Here, we compile recent contributions illuminating these mammals' enigmatic role in coronavirus evolution. We highlight how [...]
Psilocybin and the Evolutionary Significance of Altered Neural States: Interaction-Based Perspectives Beyond Deterrence Models
Published: 2026-01-28
Subjects: Behavioral Neurobiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Psilocybin is a psychoactive tryptamine produced by a phylogenetically discontinuous yet ecologically diverse subset of fungi. Despite decades of chemical, pharmacological, and ethnobiological research, the evolutionary forces driving the emergence and persistence of this compound remain insufficiently explained. Recent hypotheses proposing that psilocybin evolved primarily as a deterrent against [...]
Reversing the gaze on nature in an era of technological innovation
Published: 2026-01-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences
How nature is understood and ‘seen’ by governing institutions influences how it is managed. The rise of new digital and remote sensing technologies has reinforced a global gaze ‘from above’ that separates the seer from the people and places seen. This gaze has generated critical data on global climate and biodiversity trends and informed ambitious environmental targets. Yet it also obscures a [...]
Diversity in viral resistance emerges from host genotype and infection order effects
Published: 2026-01-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Pathology, Virology
• While viruses are predicted to be the most diverse group of parasites wild plant hosts encounter, the extent and mechanisms maintaining viral resistance diversity remains poorly understood. Here, we test the hypothesis that allocation trade-offs maintain genetic variation in viral resistance and assess whether phenotypic resistance variation may may arise from altered expression under multiple [...]
Is within-host viral community assembly shaped by local adaptation?
Published: 2026-01-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Virology
Host-parasite coevolution describes the continuous reciprocal selection driving host defense and parasite infectivity, with direct consequences for disease dynamics. While abundant evidence exists for coevolution shaping host-parasite dynamics within the ‘one host-one parasite’ framework, hosts are typically infected by multiple parasites and the extent to which coevolutionary processes shape [...]
Shared acoustic manifolds for exploratory comparison of passerine vocalizations
Published: 2026-01-23
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
This study presents a fixed-parameter pipeline designed to support reproducible embedding of frame-level representations of multiple passerine vocalizations within shared low-dimensional spaces. Three passerine species are considered: Eurasian Wren, Tree Pipit and Common Chaffinch, with a selection of four individuals for each species group. Vocalization frames from each species group are mapped [...]
Emergent functions in the chemodiversity landscape
Published: 2026-01-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Nature produces countless metabolites that regulate organismal performance and the functioning of ecosystems. Specialised metabolites are particularly diverse and mediate ecological interactions across all geographic scales and levels of biological organisation. While chemodiversity, i.e., the richness, relative abundance and disparity of specialised metabolites within a blend of metabolites, has [...]
Inspiring systematic inclusion of individual animal states to enhance the quality of research
Published: 2026-01-23
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Animal Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Studies on animals continue to attract criticism over data quality, reproducibility and generality of findings, yet one source of variation remains rarely addressed: differences in individuals’ affective states. In this paper, we suggest that evaluating affect should be considered standard good practice in ecological and behavioural research with wild animals, alongside familiar variables such as [...]
Seasonal camouflage as a model to understand the scope for rapid adaptation in a changing world
Published: 2026-01-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Molecular Biology
Human-driven environmental change is reshaping ecosystems and challenging species’ ability to adapt. Understanding how genetic variation enables adaptation is crucial for conservation and requires exemplary systems to test hypotheses and make predictions. One particularly suitable model for studying climate-driven adaptation is seasonal color change (SCC), a phenological trait in which [...]
Volcanic deposits select for woodiness on islands
Published: 2026-01-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Oceanic islands’ unique biodiversity often arises from woody plant radiations derived from non-woody continental ancestors. Since Darwin, various theories have tried to explain the evolution of woodiness on islands (insular woodiness). Recently, frequent volcanic activity and burial of vegetation by volcanic ash (tephra) depositions were linked to the abundance of woody species on islands. In a [...]