Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Noise as a global change driver: a meta-analysis of its fitness consequences for birds
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
Anthropogenic noise is a widespread yet underappreciated global pollutant. Despite mounting evidence that noise may affect the physiology and behaviour of birds, its consequences for fitness, and thus its capacity to impact population and evolutionary processes, remain unclear. Here, we conduct a pre-registered systematic review and meta-analysis of the causal effects of anthropogenic noise on [...]
Reef fish biodiversity guarantees productivity
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Biodiversity loss on coral reefs may threaten their functioning and services to humanity. However, the impacts of biodiversity change on reef fish productivity, a key function that sustains millions of humans, are not well understood. Here, we compiled a global dataset of coral reef fish surveys to examine whether assemblage biodiversity promotes productivity, in both space and time. Diversity [...]
Rethinking success and quality in ecological forecasting
Published: 2026-10-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Ecological forecasts are increasingly required to inform science, policy and action in the face of rapid environmental and societal change. However, differences in how developers and end-users judge the value of ecological forecasts may limit their utility and uptake in real-world decision-making. Here, we use a participatory approach to propose a novel, holistic framework for the evaluation of [...]
Considering more complex covariate responses improves predictive performance in dynamic occupancy models
Published: 2026-10-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Finding the right level of model complexity is a key challenge in most contexts, including ecology where data are often messy and underlying patterns complex. Dynamic occupancy models (DOMs) are increasingly used for modelling species distributions. DOMs have advantages over traditional species distribution models because their hierarchical structure allows them to explicitly model changes in [...]
Comparing covariate selection strategies for predictive dynamic occupancy models
Published: 2026-10-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Predicting how species will redistribute under global environmental change is a prerequisite for effective conservation. Dynamic occupancy models (DOMs) are increasingly popular tools for modelling range dynamics. DOMs estimate local colonisation and extinction probabilities while accounting for imperfect detection to capture the processes behind changing patterns of species occurrence. Covariate [...]
Nocturnal vocalizations in diurnal birds: a systematic review of current knowledge, research gaps and future directions
Published: 2026-10-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Ornithology
Nocturnal vocalisations by diurnal birds have been increasingly documented in recent decades, yet the functions and mechanisms underlying this behaviour remain poorly understood. Here, we conducted a systematic review to synthesize the current knowledge regarding nocturnal vocalisations in diurnal birds. The study is structured around 12 non-exclusive hypotheses proposed to explain why diurnal [...]
Rapid health assessment of coral reefs: a standardised, quick, and reliable tool developed and tested during the 2024/25 global bleaching event
Published: 2026-10-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Coral reefs worldwide are experiencing increasingly frequent and severe degradation events driven by rising sea surface temperatures, yet reliable and scientifically comparable data remain sparse for many coral reefs. Park managers, rangers, and community-led groups in areas lacking scientific studies could contribute to data records by collecting relevant data on coral reefs. However, these [...]
ArHa: A globally standardised, relational database of arenavirus and hantavirus sampling in wild small mammal populations
Published: 2026-10-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Immunology and Infectious Disease, Virus Diseases
Arenaviruses and hantaviruses are globally distributed zoonotic pathogens primarily hosted by small mammals. Efforts to map their ecological drivers and predict spillover risk are hindered by the fragmentation of historical surveillance data across the primary literature, compounded by shifting host nomenclature and variable geographic precision. We present ArHa, a database of 123,101 host [...]
Oak gall wasps lack conserved microbial symbionts
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Herbivorous insects frequently rely on microbial partners to exploit their host plants, yet for gall-inducing insect taxa, there were few attempts to comprehensively resolve their microbial associations. To address this gap, we characterised microbial abundance, composition and specificity in three Polish populations of cherry oak gall wasps (Cynips quercusfolii), a highly specialized [...]
From Temperate to Boreal -- Untangling the Importance of Environment, Space, and Species Co-distributions in Forest Plant Distributions
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Aim Quantify how environmental conditions, spatial autocorrelation, and species co-distributions shape forest plant community at regional scale. Location Southern Québec, Canada, between the 45th and 53rd parallels. Period From 1986 to 2000. Major taxa studied Vascular plants, mosses, and lichens. Methods We analyzed the presence-absence of 224 plant species across 28,210 ecological observation [...]
SORTEE five years on: taking stock of the Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary biology
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
In five years, the Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (SORTEE) has grown from a small network of like-minded researchers into a grassroots, international community. Founded in late 2020, SORTEE works to make ecology and evolutionary biology more open, reliable, and transparent at a time when prevailing incentives in academia often reward novelty and [...]
Human-mediated community assembly reshapes urban phytochemical diversity
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Plant Sciences
Human activities increasingly determine which plant species coexist, particularly in cities, yet whether this reshapes the chemical dimension of biodiversity remains largely unknown. Here, we investigated how human-mediated plant community assembly influences phytochemical diversity by integrating community composition, functional traits, phylogenetic relationships, leaf metabolomes, and floral [...]
Size-dependent beak shape divergence between Parrot and Common Crossbills likely involves major developmental changes
Published: 2026-10-22
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Forest Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Zoology
We studied allometry, here defined as shape-size covariation, to explore the unresolved case of divergence between the Parrot and Common Crossbill. Using geometric morphometrics, we compared beak shape and allometry among the Parrot Crossbill, the Common Crossbill and the more distantly related Two-Barred Crossbill. The Parrot Crossbill differed from the two other species in shape changes that [...]
Functional gene content of fungi in a pine needle disease system largely reflects their phylogeny
Published: 2026-10-21
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Evolution, Forest Sciences, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Pathogenic Microbiology, Plant Pathology, Plant Sciences
Background: Fungi recovered from diseased host tissue can differ substantially in functional gene content, but interpreting that variation requires knowing how it relates to evolutionary history. Results: We assembled and annotated genomes for 67 fungi cultured from pine needles with symptoms of brown spot needle blight and compared them with 13 reference genomes, including established pine [...]
A common benchmark for Aedes albopictus phenological models reveals surveillance data, not model complexity, as the limiting factor
Published: 2026-10-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Forecasting the seasonal dynamics of Aedes albopictus, a highly invasive arbovirus vector now established across much of Europe, is a growing public health priority. Numerous mechanistic and correlative models have been developed over the last two decades, but largely in isolation, each calibrated and validated against its own data, which has prevented any assessment of where predictive capacity [...]