Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Evolutionary origins of a latitudinal plant height gradient
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Latitudinal gradients are among the most pervasive patterns in biodiversity, yet their evolutionary origins remain poorly understood, especially in plants. Here we identify a latitudinal gradient in plant height within cacti, an iconic and rapidly evolving plant family spanning the Americas, with taller species inhabiting warmer, lower latitudes. To uncover how this gradient arose, we [...]
Leaf palatability is driven by trait variation within Quercus robur crowns
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Plant–herbivore interactions vary across spatial and temporal scales in response to environmental gradients. However, despite substantial variation in leaf traits even within individuals and under similar environmental conditions, the role of leaf traits in shaping leaf palatability remains poorly understood. Here, we disentangled the effects of leaf trait variation from those of crown strata [...]
Colony compactness predicts growth and survival in corals
Published: 2026-11-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology
Understanding differences in growth and survival rates across species is a key element of anticipating how ecosystems are likely to respond to global change. However, measuring vital rates for highly diverse assemblages with many rare species is often unfeasible. Identifying links between traits and vital rates that apply across entire groups of species can provide a way to infer assemblage-wide [...]
Thirty years after “The Naturalists Are Dying Off”: Regrounding Conservation Biology in a predictive era
Published: 2026-11-06
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Thirty years after Reed Noss warned that naturalists were dying off, conservation biology has entered an era of unprecedented analytical capacity, driven by global biodiversity databases, remote sensing, and artificial intelligence. This transformation has coincided with declining visibility and support for field-based natural history and taxonomy. The resulting losses extend beyond primary [...]
Acquire and rewire: mobile genetic elements co-opt the bacterial core genome
Published: 2026-11-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Microbiology
It is assumed that bacterial genomes are streamlined, with genes encoding core functions integrated with one another and with aligned fitness interests. Such genes can gain little from horizontal transfer, as any recipient would already carry its own copy better adapted to resident networks. These restrictions motivated the ‘complexity hypothesis’, which predicts that core genes are rarely [...]
Marine Group II Archaea: A Review with a Focus on the Arctic Ocean
Published: 2026-11-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Microbiology
Marine Group II (MGII) archaea are among the most abundant planktonic archaea in the global ocean, yet no cultured representative exists, and most of what is known about them comes from 16S rRNA gene surveys and metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs). Here we review the taxonomy, biogeography, physiology, and metabolism of MGII archaea, now proposed as the order Candidatus Poseidoniales, with its [...]
The Illusion of Structural Gain: Identifiability and estimator calibration in a bounded energy-structure model
Published: 2026-11-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Systems Biology
In evolutionary biology and ecological modeling, inferring adaptive shifts or structural gain from time-series data is critical for understanding system resilience under resource constraints. However, the mathematical estimators used to diagnose these shifts can produce fundamentally misleading scalar metrics. This paper demonstrates the "illusion of structural gain" in bounded energy-structure [...]
Cave spider trophic dynamics, network structure and competition: cave zone, taxonomy and bat presence drive hypogean interactions
Published: 2026-11-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Zoology
Cave ecosystems are shaped by unique environmental constraints, influencing species distributions and trophic interactions. Spiders are often the dominant predators in caves, but their diet is restricted by local parameters that likely intensify competition and other intraguild interactions, including the confinement of energy flows to detrital and chemoautotrophic pathways. The hypogean [...]
Bio-CPC: Collective Predictive Computation in Biological Organization
Published: 2026-11-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Biological organization is characterized by hierarchically nested levels in which relatively autonomous units become integrated into higher-order systems. Major evolutionary transitions such as multicellularity and eusociality therefore raise a common problem: how can locally informed, goal-directed units coordinate heterogeneous responses so that they collectively support a larger whole? Here, [...]
The Apparent Urban Advance in Juvenile Vulpes vulpes Observations Diminishes after Accounting for Switzerland's Elevational Structure
Published: 2026-11-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Urbanization can alter wildlife life cycles, but comparisons between more and less urbanized environments may be confounded by other environmental gradients. This study analyzed 4295 human-reported observations of \textit{Vulpes vulpes} from 496 generalized \(5 \times 5\ \mathrm{km}\) cells across Switzerland between 2018 and 2024 to estimate when the probability that a spring record contained [...]
Pedigree metrics: What are they good for?
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Estimating additive genetic variance (V_A) is key to understanding evolutionary potential in wild populations. V_A is commonly estimated using relatedness data from pedigrees in so-called `animal models'. The accuracy of these estimates depends strongly on information in the pedigree. Typically metrics describing pedigree structure (such as the number of individuals, maternities, pedigree depth [...]
Researchers as predators: are field biologists altering traits of the populations that they study?
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Field biologists rarely directly measure the long-term impact of their work on the populations they study. However, heavy or repeated sampling (with or without release) could potentially alter population traits and even bias study conclusions. Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata) are a frequently-studied species in evolutionary biology, particularly in the context of variation in predation. [...]
The spatial dynamics of nutrient limitation in communities of generalist predators of crop pests
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Nutrition, Zoology
Generalist arthropod predators vitally control crop pests, but their ability to perform this role relies on them obtaining sufficient nutrients within simplified crop environments. Field margins are thought to provide habitat and resources for predators, such as ground beetles, but how far into fields this provision extends is poorly understood. Since arthropod nutrient contents can vary [...]
GPS telemetry reveals changes in the movement patterns of a cinereous vulture (Aegypius monachus) flying over an active war zone
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Life Sciences
Armed conflicts have devastating effects over wildlife populations and ecosystems, yet their impacts on wildlife behavior remains understudied. In this study we summarized behavioral changes that occurred in a Cinereous Vulture (Aegypius monachus) which made three flights over active war zones in Northern and Eastern Ukraine during spring 2022. As the individual approached the frontline its [...]
Spontaneous native–non-native tree mixtures worldwide: a systematic map of research patterns, with knowledge gaps and management implications
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences
Purpose of Review: Spontaneous mixtures of native and non-native tree species occur in forest landscapes affected by land-use change, species introductions and disturbances. However, research on these communities remains fragmented. Recent Findings: We identified 238 cases. Research was concentrated in high-income countries and studies included diverse combinations of native and non-native tree [...]