Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Among-trait covariance and cross-year repeatability for direct and indirect individual effects in producer-scrounger behaviour in wild house sparrows
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution
Variation in social traits can be attributed to direct individual effects (DIEs) of the focal individual and indirect individual effects (IIEs) due to its social partners eliciting behavioural change, analogous to indirect genetic effects. Indirect effects affect the expressed phenotypic variation upon which selection can act, especially when they covary with direct effects, providing a potential [...]
Contribution and applications of demographic concepts to conservation
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Studying the demographic processes that shape how populations respond to environmental changes has long provided insights for conservation biology. Recent theoretical advances have deepened our understanding of these processes, yet their application in conservation remains unclear. We conducted a literature search to examine how six key demographic concepts — life-history trade-offs, the [...]
Composite virulence: useful metric or conceptual trap?
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Animal Experimentation and Research, Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, Immunopathology, Life Sciences, Medical Microbiology, Microbiology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Immunology and Infectious Disease, Parasitic Diseases, Parasitology, Pathogenic Microbiology, Plant Pathology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Zoology
Virulence, defined as the harm an infection causes to its host, is central to evolutionary ecology, yet it remains difficult to quantify because infection impact is multidimensional, dynamic, and context-dependent. Composite measures have therefore emerged to summarise multiple traits into a single estimate of infection-induced harm. However, every composite embeds biological assumptions about [...]
A Framework for Questionable Research Practices in Ecological Modelling
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Water Resource Management
1. Questionable research practices (QRPs) bias the published literature towards apparently strong and conclusive results, resulting in low rates of replicability. Recent metaresearch reveals that ecology is not immune to the ‘reproducibility crisis’ seen in other disciplines, due to similar rates of QRPs and a lack of transparency in published research. However, metaresearch to date focuses on [...]
Roe Deer show an affinity for woodland and reluctance to cross roads
Published: 2026-02-19
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Animals use landscapes unequally and have differential responses to anthropogenic changes such as land cover modification. Predicting such responses can be challenging, requiring knowledge of animal movements. This knowledge is particularly valuable where human-animal interactions have implications for either's well-being. Large herbivores, with relatively high mobility, often come in contact [...]
Dwarka Forest: A respite through the cracks of the city's concrete
Published: 2026-02-19
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Urban expansion has increasingly produced landscapes that fall outside conventional ecological and legal classifications, yet perform critical ecological and social functions. Dwarka Forest, located in southwest Delhi, represents one such landscape. Emerging through decades of spontaneous vegetation growth on land originally acquired for infrastructure development, the site has developed into a [...]
Chemical Ecology of Arachnids - Morphology, Behaviour, and Semiochemicals
Published: 2026-02-17
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Arachnids represent a diverse and ecologically influential paraphyletic assemblage of chelicerate arthropods that has colonized virtually every terrestrial habitat. Arachnids contribute to ecosystems as predators, parasites and decomposers. Yet, the chemical mechanisms that allow arachnids to interact with the environment remain strikingly understudied relative to their taxonomic breadth. Much of [...]
Climate warming flattens masting-driven resource pulses
Published: 2026-02-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Pulsed resources arise when environmental forcing synchronizes biological responses, creating years of low or high resource availability that structure food webs. Mast seeding is a major example, yet climate warming is disrupting the synchrony that underpins these fluctuations. Ecological consequences depend on whether populations fail together or produce large seed crops together across [...]
Social organisation predicts lifespan in mammals
Published: 2026-02-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
1. Recent comparative analyses have identified positive associations between social organisation and longevity in mammals, but independent replication with larger datasets is needed to establish the robustness of this pattern. 2. Here, we analysed maximum recorded lifespan, body mass, and social organisation data for 1,436 mammal species using Bayesian phylogenetic comparative methods, confirming [...]
Making movement ecology into a predictive science
Published: 2026-02-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
1. Movement allows animals to change their environmental surroundings and remain in suitable conditions. As environments shift, e.g. through predictable seasonal progression, individuals can adapt their movement strategies accordingly. However, novel climate change introduces unpredictable, atypical conditions (e.g. droughts, floods), which may drive distinct movement responses. Predicting how [...]
Insect monitoring without pitfalls: seven steps for robust insect sensing systems
Published: 2026-02-13
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Computer Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Data shortages fuel controversy about an ongoing insect biodiversity crisis. Insects are immensely diverse and functionally critical for ecosystems, yet data on insect trends remain patchy and biased. Sensors, ranging from camera-equipped light traps to weather radar stations, are set to transform entomological data collection. Meanwhile, AI models that extract biological information from sensors [...]
A systematic map and comprehensive database of animal organ sizes
Published: 2026-02-12
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
The relationship between individual organ size and overall body size in animals is a fundamental biological phenomenon that spans multiple disciplines. However, a comprehensive synthesis of the sources of variation in organ-specific scaling remains lacking, even among mammals, the most extensively studied vertebrate group. We developed a systematic map and compiled a large database of paired [...]
Interplay of diet, heat stress, and the microbiome shapes health and escape behavior in amphibian larvae
Published: 2026-02-11
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Microbiology, Organismal Biological Physiology
Diet influences animal health and their microbiomes, potentially affecting how they cope with environmental stressors such as rising temperatures and altered food quality associated with climate change. Using a multifactorial experiment, larvae of the frog Rana temporaria were reared on three diets differing in protein, fat, and animal-derived components (low-, intermediate-, and high-quality), [...]
Have human impacts exceeded climate in shaping mammalian distributions?
Published: 2026-02-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Human impacts are increasingly recognized as drivers of biogeographic patterns, yet it remains unclear whether they surpass climate in shaping species distributions. Here we aim to investigate the relative importance of anthropogenic vs. climatic factors in determining mammalian distributions. We modeled the relationship between the geographic distributions of 219 mammal species and 12 [...]
Modeling evolutionary rescue
Published: 2026-02-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
A population that avoids extinction by adapting to environmental change is said to be rescued by evolution. Evolutionary rescue is of fundamental interest in ecology and evolution and of great relevance in conservation, where rescue of endangered species is wanted, and in medicine and agriculture, where rescue (resistance evolution) of pathogens, cancers, and pests is unwanted. Theory plays a key [...]