Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Tree species richness effects on pre-dispersal seed predation are mediated by tree fruit type
Published: 2026-06-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Forest BEF experiments are only now reaching a stage at which natural tree regeneration can be studied, offering new opportunities to understand how biodiversity shapes trophic interactions during early demographic filtering. Here, we quantified seed productivity and insect-mediated pre-dispersal seed predation on 12 tree species across a tree species richness gradient from 1 to 16 in the [...]
An integrated framework for unifying our understanding of nonconsumptive predation risk effects
Published: 2026-06-12
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Predation risk can induce risk-induced trait responses (RITRs) – changes in prey defensive traits including behavior, morphology, life history, and physiology – thought to have profound effects on prey fitness and population dynamics (termed ‘nonconsumptive effects’). Yet, predicting the magnitude of RITRs and their fitness consequences remains difficult because outcomes depend heavily on [...]
Evolutionary and operational trade-offs in assisted gene flow for climate-adaptive forestry
Published: 2026-06-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Assisted gene flow (AGF) is an adaptive forest management strategy to increase forests' resilience to climate change, yet little is known about how management decisions interact with the strength of natural selection and introgression dynamics that co-determine relative stand productivity. We used individual-based, spatially explicit simulations to investigate how spatial configuration (ranging [...]
Nest architecture as overlooked material culture: the case for systematic study of construction behaviour across nest-building primates
Published: 2026-06-10
Subjects: Animal Studies, Anthropology, Biological Psychology, Biology, Comparative Psychology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Frans de Waal's work highlighted an uncomfortable question: not whether animals have complex cognitive lives, but why we are so reluctant to recognise them. Nest building in great apes is perhaps the most striking example of this problem. Every great ape builds a nest, every day, for the entirety of its adult life. The behaviour has been documented ecologically for decades. Yet the internal [...]
From Detections to Demography: Methodological Challenges and Opportunities in Survival Estimation from Automated Telemetry Networks
Published: 2026-06-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Survival is a fundamental demographic process influencing individual fitness and population dynamics. Automated telemetry systems offer unprecedented opportunities to estimate survival of highly mobile organisms across broad spatial and temporal scales. However, the structure of these tracking networks creates systematic biases that render standard survival models inadequate. Receiver stations [...]
Emergent competition resolves the paradox of stable microbial mutualisms
Published: 2026-06-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
What is the role of cooperation in determining ecosystem structure? This question is central to ecology, yet remains controversial; cooperative mechanisms such as plant-insect pollination and microbe-microbe cross-feeding are widespread, but ecological theory suggests that cooperative communities should be unstable. Here, we resolve this apparent contradiction by deriving a precise and general [...]
Predator Experience Shapes Behaviour: Comparing Stone Wētā (Hemideina maori) Populations With and Without Weka (Gallirallus australis hectori)
Published: 2026-06-10
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Antipredator behaviour reflects both evolutionary history and individual experience, yet how populations respond to changes in predator exposure remains poorly understood, particularly for large invertebrates. We examined antipredator behaviour in two populations of stone wētā (Hemideina maori Pictet & Saussure, 1891) inhabiting weka-free Mou Tapu and nearby Mou Waho, where weka (Gallirallus [...]
Mapping microclimate temperatures in open ecosystems using UAVs: a comparison between thermal, correlative, and mechanistic approaches
Published: 2026-06-09
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Climate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring
Open terrestrial ecosystems exhibit pronounced fine scale thermal heterogeneity, yet spatially continuous microclimate data at biologically relevant heights and scales remain scarce. Here, we evaluate three unoccupied aerial vehicle (UAV) informed approaches for mapping microclimate temperatures, including land surface temperature (LST) and near surface air temperature (T13cm), in an open [...]
Intertidal Exposure Modulates Time-Integrated Heat Tolerance of the Eastern Oyster Crassostrea virginica
Published: 2026-06-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The rise of unprecedented heatwaves globally has caused an increase in mass mortality events, motivating the need for accurate predictions of population declines. Predicting organismal function under fluctuating thermal regimes is a central challenge in thermal biology, particularly in intertidal systems where organisms experience rapid shifts between submerged and aerial exposure. Here, we [...]
Modelling habitat selection using tracking data from central place foraging species: A practical guide for ecologists
Published: 2026-06-04
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Behavior and Ethology, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
The study of habitat selection has long been at the heart of ecological research and is critical to deciphering the mechanisms that govern species’ responses to global change. This is particularly important for central place foraging species, whose ability to adapt to shifting environmental conditions and anthropogenic disturbance is limited by persistent attachment to a fixed site. Recent [...]
Problems of geometry, sampling, and scale in gridded biodiversity data, and proposed solutions
Published: 2026-06-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Grids, and gridded biodiversity data such as regional or country-level atlases, play a prominent role in ecology, particularly in the study of spatial patterns of species occupancy, geographic ranges, biodiversity, and their drivers and temporal dynamics. However, managing, exploring, and analyzing data in grids comes with problems. Here, we review the problems with gridded data, and the existing [...]
Computable Nature Dependency in a Watershed Knowledge Graph
Published: 2026-06-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Systems Biology
Resolving nature-related financial risk and watershed resilience requires a representational shift from opaque, aggregate indices to auditable, mechanistic pathways. Current natural-capital workflows often succumb to an "epistemic collapse", where granular ecological interactions are erased in favor of sector-level proxies or spatial heatmaps that lack a downstream asset trace. Here, we present a [...]
Predicting substrate size at a watershed scale to inform conservation planning for a declining salmonid species
Published: 2026-06-02
Subjects: Biology, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Good quality spawning habitat is critical for fish embryo development, survival, and overall population productivity. Appropriate riverbed substrate size is particularly important for riverine-spawning salmonids but the availability of suitable substrate may vary across a watershed. Predicting substrate size at watershed extents may therefore be critical to inform management and conservation of [...]
Between categories and continua: growth-form organization in global leaf economics spectrum space
Published: 2026-06-02
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The leaf economics spectrum (LES) describes a globally coordinated trade-off between acquisitive and conservative plant resource-use strategies, yet how major plant growth forms are organized within multidimensional LES space and the extent to which these patterns reflect evolutionary history remain incompletely resolved. Using species-level trait data from the TRY Plant Trait Database, we [...]
Motivations and organizational models for private sector biodiversity engagement
Published: 2026-06-02
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Private sector engagement is increasingly recognized as critical for addressing global biodiversity loss, yet the recent IPBES global assessment of business and biodiversity confirms that current economic conditions remain largely incompatible with the transformative change required. We conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with business leaders and sustainability practitioners across multiple [...]