Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Land use gradients drive spatial variation in Lassa fever host communities in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone.
Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Epidemiology, Life Sciences, Virus Diseases
The natal multimammate mouse (Mastomys natalensis) is the primary reservoir host of Lassa mammarenavirus (LASV), a zoonotic pathogen causing Lassa fever that is endemic to West Africa. The occurrence and abundance of this species is regulated by the human environment and biotic interactions with other small-mammal species, but these ecological drivers remain poorly understood in the regions [...]
Bats in Habitats, Bats as Habitats: An integrative ecological framework for understanding synergistic interactions across levels of community organization
Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Integrative Biology, Systems Biology
Global biodiversity and ecosystem function are the result of complex networks of interactions and feedbacks between animals and their environments, which in turn are affected by the interactions and feedbacks between animals and the organisms they host. Understanding these complex networks, including the main drivers of and responses to ecological and environmental changes and their global [...]
Plant community borealization in the Arctic is driven by boreal-tundra boundary species
Published: 2025-02-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Following rapid climate change across the Arctic, tundra plant communities are experiencing extensive compositional shifts. One of the most prevalent changes is the encroachment of boreal species into the tundra (‘borealization’). Borealization has been reported at individual sites, but has not been systematically quantified across the tundra biome. Here, we use a dataset of 1,137 plots at 113 [...]
Promoting the use of phylogenetic multinomial generalised mixed-effects model to understand the evolution of discrete traits
Published: 2025-01-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution
Phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) are fundamental tools for understanding trait evolution across species. While linear models are widely used for continuous traits in ecology and evolution, their application to discrete traits - particularly ordinal and nominal traits - remains limited. Researchers sometimes recategorise such traits into binary traits (0 or 1 data) to make them more [...]
Attentional Control and Vertebrate Cognitive Evolution
Published: 2025-01-29
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Animal Studies, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Neuroscience and Neurobiology
How might brain functioning differ between endotherm and ectotherm vertebrates? Recent results suggest that ectotherms lack proper working memory, which could reflect a lack of attentional control. Ectotherms may nevertheless excel in cognitive tasks if their ecological needs and learning opportunities compensate for their lower computing power.
Powerful yet challenging: Mechanistic Niche Models for predicting invasive species potential distribution under climate change
Published: 2025-01-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Risk assessments of invasive species are among the most challenging applications of species distribution models (SDMs). This challenge arises from the disequilibrium in invasive distributions, where recorded occurrences do not fully represent the species' potential range. The spatiotemporal dynamics of invasive populations are shaped by intraspecific variability, human-mediated introductions, [...]
Challenges and solutions for ecologists adopting AI
Published: 2025-01-29
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
1. Motivation: Artificial Intelligence (AI) can rapidly process large ecological datasets, uncover patterns, and inform conservation decisions. However, its adoption by ecologists is often hindered by steep learning curves, overwhelming model options with varying transparency, and uneven access to data, code, and technical skills. We led a workshop, EcoViz+AI: Visualization and AI for Ecology, [...]
Incorporating responses of functional traits to changing climates into species distribution models: A path forward
Published: 2025-01-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Conventional species distribution models (SDMs) typically consider only abiotic factors, thus overlooking critical biotic dimensions, including functional traits that play an important role determining species’ distributions in changing environments. Process-based models explicitly incorporate functional traits and have been applied to SDMs. However, their parameterization can be complex and [...]
Bridging data silos to holistically model plant macrophenology
Published: 2025-01-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
● Phenological shifts to global climate change impact ecosystem functions. There are various data sources from which spatiotemporal, and taxonomic phenological data may be obtained: mobilized herbaria, community-science initiatives, observatory networks, and remote-sensing. However, analyses conducted to date have generally relied on single sources of data, thus treating alternative data sources [...]
Why extreme events matter for species redistribution
Published: 2025-01-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Climate change is altering species’ distributions globally. Increasing frequency of extreme weather and climate events (EWCEs), including heat waves, droughts, storms, floods, and fires, is one of the hallmarks of climate change. These events can trigger rapid shifts in species’ distributions by impacting dispersal, establishment, and survival of organisms. Despite species redistribution being [...]
Weather and landscape morphology drive thermal regime variation among Mývatn ponds, and implications for resident Arctic charr
Published: 2025-01-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Thermal stratification is common in lentic freshwater systems, and has extensive effects on ecosystem function and the interactions between aquatic organisms and their surroundings. Although thermal regimes in temperate systems are well-characterized, small arctic and subarctic lakes and ponds can have irregular thermal regimes, and the conditions leading to stratification and mixing are less [...]
Bottom-up interactions in age-structured stock assessment and state-space mass-balance modelling
Published: 2025-01-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Population Biology
Age-structured stock assessment models are used worldwide to predict the likely impact of changing harvest on future fisheries yield. However, age-structured models ignore the impacts of predator consumption on prey survival (top-down impacts) and prey availability on predator growth (bottom-up impacts), whereas multispecies statistical catch-at-age models often incorporate top-down but not [...]
From Policy to Practice: Progress towards Data- and Code-Sharing in Ecology and Evolution
Published: 2025-01-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
High quality research data and analytical code are essential for ensuring the credibility of scientific results, are key research outputs, and are crucial elements to facilitate reproducibility. However, in ecology and evolution (E&E) in particular, it is currently unknown how many journals have policies on data- and code-sharing for peer review purposes, or upon manuscript acceptance. [...]
Using seed germination as a proxy of restoration success
Published: 2025-01-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ecological restoration of post-mining landscapes is critical to mitigating the environmental impacts of extraction activities. This study compares the effectiveness of geomorphic restoration (GR) versus conventional restoration (CR) techniques in improving soil water availability and seed germination dynamics in the Fortuna quarry, a Mediterranean post-mining site in Spain. Soil water content [...]
Reproductive consequences of mate retention and divorce in a short-lived migratory passerine
Published: 2025-01-16
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
In socially monogamous birds, pair bond duration varies widely across species, from single-breeding associations to long-lasting, multi-year bonds. Studies on mate retention and divorce have predominantly focused on long-lived species, while research in short-lived and migratory species is limited. Consequently, the fitness consequences of divorce or remating in these species remain unclear. [...]