Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Superorganismal Anisogamy: a Comparative Test of an Extended Theory
Published: 2026-02-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Multicellular organisms and superorganisms (e.g., ant colonies) are both products of major evolutionary transitions in individuality, and they share many analogous traits. Theory developed to explain the evolution of one such trait, anisogamy, has recently been adapted to explain its superorganismal analogue: large egg-like queens and small sperm-like males. To test this theory with comparative [...]
Age class and natal origin drive foraging patterns in a reintroduced Cinereous Vulture population
Published: 2026-02-04
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Ornithology
Widespread vulture population declines are often counteracted by conservation strategies including reintroduction programs and supplementary feeding schemes. However, the role of supplementary feeding – focusing on specific, predictable, feeding sites - on movement behaviour, has been little explored, especially within populations in which reintroduced and wild born birds of different age-classes [...]
General flowering in temperate forests arises from multi-timescale community synchrony
Published: 2026-02-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Community-wide “general flowering” has been regarded as a tropical phenomenon. Here, we show that temperate forests also exhibit community-wide flowering at the regional scale. Annual seed-production records for seven dominant tree species across 432 forest sites, analysed with timescale-explicit wavelet metrics, reveal landscape-scale synchrony structured by two periods — a 2–4-year band and a [...]
Spatial resolution and temperature matter for mapping Cerrado wetlands and dry grasslands
Published: 2026-02-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Wetlands in the Brazilian Cerrado play key roles in regional carbon and water cycles but remain poorly mapped due to their patchy distribution and seasonal variability. Therefore, knowing where and when they occur is urgently needed. To address this gap, we evaluated how spatial resolution and inclusion of thermal (on top of traditional multispectral) data affected wetland vs. dry grassland [...]
The conditional ecology of pest suppression: A general mechanistic framework for predicting landscape effects on biological control
Published: 2026-02-03
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology
Landscape heterogeneity often increases natural enemy abundance, yet its effects on crop pest suppression are strikingly inconsistent across empirical studies. We developed a trait-based simulation framework to identify the general mechanisms linking landscape structure to realized pest load. Across >150 in silico experiments, we show that landscape attributes influence biological control by [...]
Diversity comes at a cost: multifaceted diversity reduces plant community stability in peatlands
Published: 2026-02-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Understanding how ecological stability relates to diversity is of crucial importance under global change. Greater biodiversity is expected to stabilize aggregate community properties through compensatory dynamics, as species fluctuate asynchronously and offset one another. Yet, diversity-stability relationships are not straightforward and can vary across and within ecosystems, particularly in [...]
One dataset, four meta-analyses: synthesising mean effects, within-population variability, and between-population heterogeneity in ecology
Published: 2026-01-30
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Ecological syntheses (meta-analysis) usually ask "what is the average effect?", but many ecological questions also depend on whether outcomes become more or less variable and whether effects are predictable across contexts. We show how the same dataset can support a coherent workflow that separates: (i) within-population variability (dispersion among individuals or sampling units inside studies) [...]
The true scope of global wildlife trade is obscured by data gaps
Published: 2026-01-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Overexploitation of wildlife is a major driver of biodiversity loss. International wildlife trade is regulated and monitored at local, national, regional and global scales through a variety of mechanisms, including Multilateral Environment Agreements (MEAs), with CITES playing a key role. Whilst databases and systems are available to measure, monitor, and manage legal trade, the data for species [...]
Birds on Fire: Heavy disturbance by fireworks affecting wintering gulls, waterbirds and passerines
Published: 2026-01-28
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Ornithology
Fireworks are a global anthropogenic disturbance, yet their impacts on wildlife remain poorly understood. Despite frequent media coverage and growing public concern of mass bird disturbances around New Year, scientifically robust assessments of nocturnal behavioural responses on the ground are lacking. Here, I quantified immediate and mid-term responses of urban birds with a focus on Black-headed [...]
Mapping the limits of trap construction: LiDAR quantification of substrate moisture effects on pit construction and quality morphometrics in Myrmeleon larvae
Published: 2026-01-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
We examined the effect of substrate moisture on pit construction in Myrmeleon larvae across four treatments (0.0–1.5%). Construction success, pit diameter, and slope angle were quantified using LiDAR-derived morphometrics and analysed via χ² and ANCOVA. Increasing moisture significantly inhibited construction and reduced pit dimensions, with failures restricted to ≥1.0% moisture. These results [...]
The overlooked small terrestrial mammal taxa (Rodentia, Eulipotyphla, and Lagomorpha) in the evolution of coronaviruses
Published: 2026-01-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Coronaviruses have been extensively detected in bats over the past few decades. However, increasing evidence suggests that other taxa, such as Rodentia, Eulipotyphla, and Lagomorpha, may have played a significant role in the ecology and evolution of some coronaviruses. Here, we compile recent contributions illuminating these mammals' enigmatic role in coronavirus evolution. We highlight how [...]
Psilocybin and the Evolutionary Significance of Altered Neural States: Interaction-Based Perspectives Beyond Deterrence Models
Published: 2026-01-28
Subjects: Behavioral Neurobiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Psilocybin is a psychoactive tryptamine produced by a phylogenetically discontinuous yet ecologically diverse subset of fungi. Despite decades of chemical, pharmacological, and ethnobiological research, the evolutionary forces driving the emergence and persistence of this compound remain insufficiently explained. Recent hypotheses proposing that psilocybin evolved primarily as a deterrent against [...]
Reversing the gaze on nature in an era of technological innovation
Published: 2026-01-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences
How nature is understood and ‘seen’ by governing institutions influences how it is managed. The rise of new digital and remote sensing technologies has reinforced a global gaze ‘from above’ that separates the seer from the people and places seen. This gaze has generated critical data on global climate and biodiversity trends and informed ambitious environmental targets. Yet it also obscures a [...]
Diversity in viral resistance emerges from host genotype and infection order effects
Published: 2026-01-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Pathology, Virology
• While viruses are predicted to be the most diverse group of parasites wild plant hosts encounter, the extent and mechanisms maintaining viral resistance diversity remains poorly understood. Here, we test the hypothesis that allocation trade-offs maintain genetic variation in viral resistance and assess whether phenotypic resistance variation may may arise from altered expression under multiple [...]
Is within-host viral community assembly shaped by local adaptation?
Published: 2026-01-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Virology
Host-parasite coevolution describes the continuous reciprocal selection driving host defense and parasite infectivity, with direct consequences for disease dynamics. While abundant evidence exists for coevolution shaping host-parasite dynamics within the ‘one host-one parasite’ framework, hosts are typically infected by multiple parasites and the extent to which coevolutionary processes shape [...]