Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The evolutionary link between food, condiments and medicine
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Anthropology, Biodiversity, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Food Science, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The deep relationship between humans and plants is of great interest to ethnobotanists, human ecologists, and evolutionary biologists. Humans have incorporated thousands of plant species into both traditional medicine and our diets, as foods and condiments. Many of these provide not only calories but also micronutrients and other bioactive compounds that contribute to health [1]. The boundaries [...]
Making survival spatial: an integrated model for territory occupancy and capture-recapture data
Published: 2026-05-05
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Knowledge about spatial variation in survival is central to understanding population dynamics and guiding conservation, yet assessing it is very hard. This limitation arises because capture-mark-recapture (CMR) data required for such inference must be collected over large spatial extents, which is logistically demanding and seldom possible. By contrast, territory occupancy (TO) data are typically [...]
Does the substrate on which cryptogams grow matter for limno-terrestrial meiofauna?
Published: 2026-05-04
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Cryptogam habitats support a wide range of limno-terrestrial meiofauna, but the factors that shape their communities are still not well understood. The physical substrate that cryptogams grow on (e.g., soil, the base of a tree, or its trunk) can influence local moisture, temperature, and nutrient conditions, yet its role in structuring meiofaunal assemblages has rarely been tested systematically. [...]
A Functionally Integrated Symbiotic System as a Mechanism for Angiosperm Diversification
Published: 2026-05-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Plant Sciences, Systems Biology
Flowering plants have maintained exceptionally high diversity for over 100 million years, yet the mechanisms enabling sustained macroevolutionary diversification remain unresolved. Classical theory predicts a trade-off between speciation and extinction, but angiosperms have repeatedly diversified while persisting across heterogeneous environments. Mutualistic interactions, pollination, seed [...]
Global patterns of vulnerability to wildlife exploitation in tropical birds and mammals
Published: 2026-05-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Wildlife exploitation is one of the most pervasive anthropogenic pressures in tropical ecosystems and a major driver of vertebrate population declines, yet global assessments of species vulnerability to hunting remain spatially imprecise and methodologically inconsistent. We combine exposure to hunting with species-specific sensitivity and adaptive capacity to deliver a spatially explicit [...]
Sex differential effects of developmental heat stress on life-history and reproductive traits
Published: 2026-05-01
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Global warming has led to increased mean global temperatures with projections suggesting continued warming throughout this century, posing an escalating threat to biological systems worldwide. Ectotherms are most vulnerable to this change as heat stress conditions can have severe implications on their development, mating interactions, and fitness. However, the sex-specific effects of [...]
The significance gap: statistical significance rates decrease from primary literature to effects used in ecological meta-analyses
Published: 2026-05-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Extending {spatsoc} to measure intragroup social dynamics
Published: 2026-05-01
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Software Engineering
Beyond proximity-based social networks and home range overlap, animal telemetry data can also be used to measure intragroup social dynamics including individual position within groups, individual and group level movement directions, leadership patterns and lagged follower behaviours. We used a scoping review of literature across domains, including behavioural ecology, collective movement, and [...]
Lead and slant on the geometry of coiling in gastropods
Published: 2026-05-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Molluscan shells have been studied with various geometric models. Here I show that lead angle, the defining slope of a conical helix, emerges as a more useful parameter in morphometric analyses and (adaptationist) interpretation of covariation in coiling parameters. The widely used apical semiangle becomes redundant and uninformative, a passive consequence of taxon-specific lead angles and [...]
aae.pop: Flexible population dynamics simulations in R
Published: 2026-04-30
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
1. Matrix population models (MPMs) are commonly used to address fundamental ecological questions and guide real-world management decisions. Several open-source software packages support the fundamental analysis of MPMs, but few options exist to simulate from models that include realistic ecological complexity, such as density dependence, covariate effects, and interspecific interactions. 2. The [...]
Reindeer habitat selection and movement changes with cumulative impacts from mining and wind power development
Published: 2026-04-30
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Industrial expansion often occurs in landscapes already affected by multiple disturbances, leading to cumulative impacts on biodiversity and local communities. With the societal pressure for an rapid ‘green transition’, land-use changes intensifies, yet most impact assessments remain local and project-based, disregarding cumulative impacts. We conceptualized and disentangled key dimensions of [...]
Representational limits in detecting ecological change
Published: 2026-04-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biology, Biotechnology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Food Science, Forest Sciences, Genetics and Genomics, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Laboratory and Basic Science Research Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Microbiology, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Other Life Sciences, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Physiology, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Systems Biology
Detecting ecological change remains a persistent challenge, even in systems with extensive monitoring data and increasingly sophisticated analytical tools. Uncertainty is usually attributed to stochasticity, limited observations, or imperfect models. Here, I argue that an additional and largely overlooked constraint arises from representational limits: systematic ways in which graphs, indicators, [...]
What do ecology and evolutionary biology journal websites communicate about their policies and preferences regarding replication studies?
Published: 2026-04-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The replication of prior research is a cornerstone of the scientific process and valued as such in ecology and evolutionary biology. However, it appears replication studies are nowhere near as prevalent in the published literature as might be expected if they were a routine part of building confidence in research findings. This may be due in part to the widespread perception of replication [...]
Reliable inference: benefits of open raw data may be universal in meta-analysis
Published: 2026-04-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
While the benefits of open data are often discussed, they are rarely quantified. Here, we provide the first evidence of the potential gains from using raw data for evidence synthesis and introduce a tool that helps researchers determine when this approach is most beneficial. Classical meta-analysis (CMA) relies on published results, making it vulnerable to publication bias and p-hacking. We [...]
Plastic shifts in thermal preference and thermoregulation strategy across ontogeny in an invasive fly
Published: 2026-04-21
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology
Behavioural thermoregulation allows ectotherms to escape extreme or seek optimal temperatures. Its precision can impact survival and fitness under changing conditions and its plasticity can be an adaptive strategy when the plasticity of thermal limits is insufficient to buffer against warming. We explore the developmental and intergenerational plasticity of behavioural thermoregulation strategies [...]