Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Dynamic range models improve the near-term forecast for a marine species on the move
Published: 2025-03-28
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: 2025-03-28
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: 2025-03-28
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 [...]
Habitat filtering, not dispersal limitation, drives ant and termite community assembly along a tropical forest regeneration gradient
Published: 2025-03-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Regenerating forests comprise a significant proportion of forest ecosystems in the tropics. However, species assembly mechanisms after anthropogenic disturbances are still poorly understood. It has been shown that locally established ant communities clearly assemble along gradients of forest regeneration. However, it is unclear if this is determined by dispersal limitation or habitat filtering [...]
Variation in successional niche turnover of multiple taxa in a recovering tropical rainforest
Published: 2025-03-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Understanding the niche turnover of ecological communities is fundamental for advancing successional theory and effective restoration. However, since niche preferences are known for a few taxa, ecosystem succession is only partially understood. To fill this gap, using a null model approach, we determined the niche optimal within eighteen ecological communities (bacteria, animals, and plants) [...]
Recovery of phylogenetic diversity and phylogenetic structure in trees and animals along a chronosequence of tropical forest regeneration
Published: 2025-03-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Tropical forests are highly threatened habitats with the capacity to recover after disturbance. Integrating phylogenies in the study of forest recovery provides key information on the evolutionary relationships of communities through succession, and also serves as a proxy of their functional trait diversity and resilience capacity. We used phylogenetic and community data for trees and animal [...]
Quantifying macro-evolutionary patterns of trait mean and variance with phylogenetic location-scale models
Published: 2025-03-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Understanding how both the mean (location) and variance (scale) of traits differ among species and lineages is fundamental to unveiling macroevolutionary patterns. Yet, traditional phylogenetic comparative methods primarily focus on modelling mean trait values, often overlooking variability and heteroscedasticity that can provide critical insights into evolutionary dynamics. Here, we introduce [...]
Responses to climate change – insights and limitations from herbaceous plant model systems
Published: 2025-03-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Plant Sciences
Herbaceous plant species have been the focus of extensive, long-term research into climate change responses, but there has been little effort to synthesize results and predicted outlooks from different model species. We summarize research on climate change responses for eight intensively-studied herbaceous plant species. We establish generalities across species, examine limitations, interrogate [...]
Inbreeding and high developmental temperatures affect cognition and boldness in guppies (Poecilia reticulata)
Published: 2025-03-21
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Inbreeding impairs the cognitive abilities of humans, but its impact on cognition in other animals is poorly studied. For example, environmental stress (e.g. food limitation and extreme temperatures) often amplifies inbreeding depression in morphological traits, but whether cognition is similarly affected is unclear. We, therefore, tested if a higher temperature (30°C versus 26°C) during [...]
Paternity analysis reveals sexual selection on cognitive performance in mosquitofish
Published: 2025-03-21
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
In many animal species, cognitive abilities are under strong natural selection because decisions about foraging, habitat choice and predator avoidance affect fecundity and survival. But how has sexual selection, which is usually stronger on males than females, shaped the evolution of cognitive abilities that influence success when competing for mates or fertilizations? We aimed to investigate [...]
Alike but still different: coexistence of four raptor species explained by breeding niche overlap
Published: 2025-03-20
Subjects: Animal Studies, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Late Pleistocene faunal community patterns disrupted by Holocene human impacts
Published: 2025-03-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Paleobiology
We analysed fossil mammal assemblages from over 350 Late Pleistocene and Holocene sites worldwide to test whether human activities, such as agriculture, domestication and intensified land use, restructured global patterns of mammal co-occurrence. Using presence-absence data, we contrasted a novel iterative ‘chase clustering’ method, which is compositionally driven, against a traditional spatially [...]
No evidence for assortative mating in the Atlantic puffin
Published: 2025-03-20
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Assortative mating occurs when individuals with similar phenotypes mate together more often than by chance and can contribute to increases in homozygosity, linkage disequilibrium between loci, and premating isolation in a phenotypically divergent population. While this phenomenon has been well documented in many avian species, evidence is relatively scarce in seabirds. Most seabirds are [...]
Increased Arctic fire occurrence related to human activity calls for improved management
Published: 2025-03-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Arctic fires have become more frequent in recent decades. They release carbon to the atmosphere through burning organic material and degrading permafrost and thus accelerate global warming. Previous research highlighted climate variables as the driving factor of fire occurrence in the Arctic, largely ignoring the contribution of human activity. Here, we analyzed the relationship between fire [...]
Social Learning and Culture in Birds: Emerging Patterns and Relevance to Conservation
Published: 2025-03-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
There is now abundant evidence for a role of social learning and culture in shaping behaviour in a range of avian species across multiple contexts, from migration routes in geese and foraging behaviour in crows, to passerine song. Recent emerging evidence has further linked culture to fitness outcomes in some birds, highlighting its potential importance for conservation. Here, we first summarise [...]