Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Evaluating the role of Zoo Campuses in Wild Snake Body Condition and Ophidiomycosis Risk
Published: 2025-07-08
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences
Abstract.—Snake Fungal Disease (SFD), caused by Ophidiomyces ophidiicola, poses a growing threat to snake populations. This study compared infection prevalence, body condition, and species composition between snakes found at Caldwell Zoo located in Tyler, Texas and those found in surrounding wild areas. While infection rates were similar (14.3% zoo, 12.1% wild), zoo-caught snakes had [...]
Nature restoration legislation means redefining targets and forecasting progress
Published: 2025-07-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Nature restoration is at a pivotal moment, driven by global initiatives like the EU Nature Restoration Law and the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework. These frameworks pose key challenges to how restoration targets are defined to ensure they are not only achievable and measurable but also resilient to future environmental changes. This requires addressing two key challenges: setting [...]
Ungeneralizable generalizations? A meta-meta-analysis of the influence of taxonomic bias on the study of behavior.
Published: 2025-07-03
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Meta-analysis is a powerful tool for synthesizing behavioral research and identifying general patterns. However, are the conclusions we draw from these analyses truly representative across animal groups? Alternatively, are our conclusions shaped by taxonomic biases in the underlying research? For example, in animal behavior, vertebrates are often overrepresented in the research we conduct. This [...]
Bridging the scales: what can microbial ecologists learn from classic ecology?
Published: 2025-06-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Microbiology
The fields of ecology and microbiology have historically developed independently of one another, resulting in each having unique methods, terminology, and concepts. Microbial ecology aims to synthesise these perspectives, merging the molecular and reductionist strengths of the microbiologist with the systems-level viewpoint of the ecologist. However, unifying disciplines with independent [...]
Body condition as a shared response to environment in a commercially important demersal fish assemblage
Published: 2025-06-28
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology
Measures of an organism's weight at a given length are often considered reliable indicators of energy reserves or `condition', which can be related to fecundity and risk of mortality. Understanding the impact of environmental change on fish condition may therefore be critical for sustainable management of human activities in marine ecosystems. We investigated how changes in Canadian Pacific [...]
Demographic causes of the pesticide crash in the peregrine falcon
Published: 2025-06-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Population crashes in many avian predators during the 1950–70s, caused by organochlorine pesticides, belong to the most spectacular cases in the history of conservation and ecotoxicology. Negative effects of DDT on eggshell thickness, leading to egg breakage and declining productivity, are well-documented. In addition, cyclodiene pesticides such as Dieldrin were strongly suspected to contribute [...]
Prompting large language models for quality ecological statistics
Published: 2025-06-24
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Large language models (LLMs) are rapidly transforming scientific workflows, including statistical analyses in ecological sciences. While these AI tools offer impressive capabilities for code generation and analytical guidance, evaluations reveal significant limitations in their reasoning for standard statistical tests. Ecological statistics typically require special consideration due to spatial [...]
Allometry and shared ancestry, rather than ecology, shapes the evolution of 3D eye size in temperate butterflies
Published: 2025-06-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Sensory traits shape animal lifestyles due to the central role they play in retrieving and processing environmental information. However, being some of the most energetically expensive tissues to build and maintain, ecological demands often modulate investment in these organs. Evidence that ecology shapes the evolution of sensory traits is plenty but is heavily biased towards vertebrates and has [...]
Female driven reduction of sexual dimorphism in hominins
Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Sexual dimorphism is a key indicator of social structure and selective pressures in primate evolution, yet its evolutionary drivers in hominins remain contentious. Here, we combine cutting edge dimorphism estimation methods, with Bayesian phylogenetic comparative analyses to disentangle the sex-specific contributions and evolutionary dynamics underlying changes in body mass and canine size across [...]
Biochemical oxygen demand as a proxy for dissolved organic carbon in Japanese rivers: Conservative estimates for ecological risk assessment
Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Engineering, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is a critical parameter for assessing metal bioavailability and toxicity in aquatic systems, but data from routine measurements in Japan are limited to specific sites. The goal of this study was to develop a statistical model to estimate DOC concentrations in Japanese rivers using biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) as a proxy. Because the relationship between BOD and [...]
Ground-nesting ants as architects of microbial landscapes
Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences
As soil ecosystem engineers, ground-nesting ants alter various physicochemical properties of soils globally. However, less is known about how ant behaviors including bioturbation and hygiene affect microbial communities, such as by altering habitat complexity, resource availability, and competitive dynamics. Interactions such as this are increasingly recognized as important components in shaping [...]
Two Metschnikowia nectar yeast species have similar volatile profiles, but elicit differential foraging in bee pollinators
Published: 2025-06-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Organismal Biological Physiology, Other Microbiology
1. Nectar yeasts are a highly specialized group of fungi that may play key roles in pollination ecology. Nectar yeasts lack an independent dispersal mechanism to access new habitats with fresh resources. Yeasts, bumble bee pollinators, and flowering plants likely take part in a series of diffuse mutualisms, wherein yeast attract bees that provide phoretic travel between flowers. This [...]
Faecal microbiome varies with social group, age and bovine tuberculosis infection in the European Badger (Meles meles)
Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology
Host-associated microbes are key components of animal health and physiology, with particular importance for determining responses to pathogen infection. The gut microbiota is highly variable at the individual level, being shaped by a multitude of factors including diet, social behaviour, and age. Yet the relative influence of these traits on microbiota composition, and the consequences of this [...]
Macroalgae morphological complexity affects the functional diversity of epifaunal annelid assemblages
Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology
Host structural complexity influences the diversity of associated epifaunal species, but its role in shaping functional trait diversity remains underexplored. We developed a trait-based framework to assess whether macroalgal structural complexity significantly influences the functional assembly of marine annelid epifauna in a sandstone reef system at Enseada dos Corais Beach (NE Brazil). Sampling [...]
Nutritional needs and social bonds: how early-life dependencies shape meerkat sociality
Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Across species, social systems vary in their extent of interactions, competition, cooperation, and cohesion. Though there has been considerable research on overall social structures, the dynamics of how an individual's social niche develops during early life and how biological needs of offspring shape sociality has received less attention. In this study, we took a longitudinal approach targeting [...]