Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Dynamic pollinator networks maintain pollination efficiency during mast flowering in an insect-pollinated tree
Published: 2025-04-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mast seeding, the synchronous and highly variable reproduction across years, is common among perennial plants, enhancing reproductive success through predator satiation and improved pollination. Animal-pollinated species generally show lower interannual variability in seed production then wind-pollinated plants, often explained by pollinator satiation reducing selection for masting. However, [...]
Modelling approaches for meta-analyses with dependent effect sizes in ecology and evolution: A simulation study
Published: 2025-04-08
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistical Methodology
In ecology and evolution, meta-analysis is an important tool to synthesise findings across separate studies and identify sources of heterogeneity. However, ecological and evolutionary data often exhibit complex dependence structures, such as shared sources of variation within studies, phylogenetic relationships, and hierarchical sampling designs. Recent statistical advancements offer approaches [...]
Drought-induced tree mortality affects the space-use and individual plasticity of an endangered forest carnivore
Published: 2025-04-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Rapid changes in landscape structure can disrupt the ecology and life history of species of conservation concern. Shifting climate, land-use, and disturbance regimes are generating novel landscape patterns, and it is unclear how these novel conditions may affect imperiled species. In the Sierra Nevada of California, USA, extensive drought-induced tree mortality has rapidly altered forest [...]
Characterising local climates and biologically-relevant climate changes on the Southern Ocean Islands
Published: 2025-04-08
Subjects: Climate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The Southern Ocean climate has undergone significant changes over the last several decades, which has had consequences for conditions on the few small islands scattered across the region. Previous investigations of climate changes on the Southern Ocean Islands (SOIs) have examined single climate variables, such as temperature, and single islands or island groups. Furthermore, these studies have [...]
Reflections from the 2025 EcoHack: AI & LLM Hackathon for Applications in Evidence-based Ecological Research & Practice
Published: 2025-04-06
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences
This paper presents outcomes from the inaugural "EcoHack: AI & LLM Hackathon for Applications in Evidence-based Ecological Research & Practice," which convened participants from across Europe and beyond, culminating in 11 team submissions. These submissions highlighted six broad application areas of AI for ecology: (1) AI-enhanced decision support and automation, (2) scientific search and [...]
Understanding different types of repeatability and intra-class correlation for an analysis of biological variation
Published: 2025-04-06
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Repeatability (more generally known as intraclass correlation) represents an important quantity of interest in many scientific fields. It represents a metric for summarizing variance decomposition to identify sources of variation in an outcome of interest (e.g. organismal traits). The estimation of variance components is often achieved through linear mixed-effect models or their extension, [...]
Ecological harshness mediates reproductive trade-offs in a great tit population
Published: 2025-04-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Population Biology
Lack’s seminal work on bird clutch sizes has spurred expansive research on reproductive trade-offs, especially focusing on offspring quantity–quality trade-offs and the potential fitness consequences for the parents. The environment is a critical driver of the expression of individual reproductive traits, influencing them through plastic responses. However, the plasticity of reproductive [...]
The effect of group size on ectoparasite load and physiological markers of health in a communally-roosting bird
Published: 2025-04-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Group living in animals can provide individuals with many fitness benefits, but also increases their exposure to parasites. However, the relationship between group size and parasite load both across and within species is highly variable, potentially due to selection acting on adaptations to reduce infection risks and costs, as well as species-specific variation in the type and frequency of social [...]
Variability, drivers, and utility of genetic diversity-area relationships in terrestrial vertebrates
Published: 2025-04-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
Maintaining genetic diversity within and among populations is critical for conservation and a prominent goal of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. However, direct estimates of genetic diversity are unavailable for most species, and time and resources are insufficient to fill these substantial data gaps and meet conservation target timelines. Robust, proxy-based predictions of [...]
A systems perspective: How social-ecological networks can improve our understanding and management of biological invasions
Published: 2025-04-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability
Reversing biodiversity loss and the sustainability crisis requires approaches that explicitly consider human-nature interdependencies. Social-ecological networks (SENs), which incorporate social and ecological actors and entities as well as their interactions, are such an approach. SENs have been applied to a range of complex issues, such as sustainable resource use, management of ecosystem [...]
Pharmacophagy in Insects: Ecological and Evolutionary Perspectives on the Non-Nutritional Use of Plant Specialized Metabolites
Published: 2025-04-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Herbivorous insects can interact with plants in ways that go beyond nutrition, with plant specialized (secondary) metabolites (PSMs) mediating complex non-nutritional relationships. While PSMs often function as anti-herbivore defenses, many insects have evolved strategies to counteract and even exploit these compounds, using them for purposes such as their own defense against antagonists, [...]
Beyond sex differences in the mean: new approaches to meta-analyse differences in skewness, kurtosis, and correlation
Published: 2025-03-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Biological differences between males and females are pervasive. Researchers often focus on sex differences in the mean or, occasionally, in variation, albeit other measures can be useful for biomedical and biological research. For instance, differences in skewness (asymmetry of a distribution), kurtosis (heaviness of a distribution’s tails), and correlation (relationship between two variables) [...]
Dynamic range models improve the near-term forecast for a marine species on the move
Published: 2025-03-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Population dynamic models are widely used to predict demography. However, they have rarely been extended to biogeographical applications despite widespread calls to do so. We developed a process-based dynamic range model (DRM) that estimated demographic rates and the effects of the environment on demographic rates to forecast species range shifts in response to temperature change. As a proof of [...]
Mapping the potential risk of coronavirus spillovers in a global hotspot
Published: 2025-03-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Life Sciences, Public Health
Bats harbor approximately a third of known mammal viruses, including the recent coronaviruses SARS-CoV1 and SARS-CoV2 that likely spilled over in Asia. As spillover risk increases due to habitat loss and fragmentation, we identified potential zoonotic spillover and pandemic risk hotspots by combining landscape characteristics with the diversity of competent hosts, with horseshoe bats (genus [...]
Studying Individuality in Behavioural Ecology: Overcoming Epistemic Challenges
Published: 2025-03-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Philosophy
Behavioural ecologists have recently begun to study individuality, that is, individual differences and uniqueness in phenotypic traits and in ecological relations. However, individuality is an unusual object of research. Using an ethnographic case study of individuality research in behavioural ecology, we analyse concerns that behavioural ecologists express about their ability to study [...]