Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Linguistic Group Marking as an Emergent Phenomenon
Published: 2026-10-20
Subjects: Demography, Population, and Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
This paper examines how linguistic group marking can emerge from the interaction between social ecology, inferential cognition, and cultural transmission. An agent-based model (ABM) simulates interactions within a structured population where agents use domain-general inference and social learning to interpret and adopt linguistic variants. The model implements a mechanism in which uncertainty [...]
The unequal burden of biodiversity reporting
Published: 2026-10-15
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Discussions around the first review of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework reveal how the pursuit of more comprehensive measurement can obscure a challenge that will define the post-2030 agenda: ensuring that all countries and stakeholders are able to participate in and be represented by the systems used to evaluate global progress.
Feedbacks between human behavior, disease transmission, and vector ecology generate culture-linked dynamics in vector-borne diseases
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Epidemiology, Population Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Vector-borne diseases cause millions of deaths worldwide and are expanding into new regions and populations as climate change intensifies. Human behavior, shaped by social and cultural factors, is central to disease control, yet feedbacks among behavior, disease transmission, and vector ecology remain poorly understood. To address this gap, we develop a parsimonious malaria model coupling [...]
What is Social Behavior? Clarifying and Integrating the Concept for Cross-species Research
Published: 2026-10-13
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Projecting kinship networks through time in variable environments
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Kinship networks shape key biological and social processes, yet their dynamics under changing environments remain poorly understood. Like population abundances, kinship structures are determined by past vital rates. Matrix population models provide a powerful framework for projecting population abundances through time and analysing the effects of environmental change on population dynamics, but [...]
Social decision-making in a freshwater gastropod
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Animals are hypothesized to plastically adjust their social behaviour expression dependent on their environment and their phenotype to ensure that its benefits outweigh its costs. There is a strong research bias towards socially complex vertebrates and eusocial insects. Thus, here we study mollusks, a taxon whose social behaviour is less well studied. As predation is one of the strongest drivers [...]
An Analysis of Outdoor Recreation on Land Slated for Development; Implications for a Social-Ecological System in Boulder, Colorado
Published: 2026-10-06
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Robust evidence shows that outdoor recreation in natural areas, i.e. places that retain native, ecological character with minimal human intervention, produces public health benefits including physical benefits from exercise, reduced mental stress, increased community connections, heightened place identity, and even increased ecological awareness. But land use planners don’t always formally [...]
Mining online behavioural data to measure zoonotic spillover risk
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Efforts to predict zoonotic disease dynamics rarely directly quantify the fine-scale animal-human interactions that drive spillover. Public digital data (i.e., iEcology) could capture these behaviours at large scales, across time and space. Further, recent statistical advances allow us to semi-automate these processes, providing a framework for continuous exposure monitoring and risk prediction. [...]
Positive outcomes and insights for scaling from a randomized pilot of a gear exchange program to reduce bycatch in small-scale fisheries
Published: 2026-09-21
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Behavioral Economics, Environmental Studies, Marine Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Incentive-based conservation programs offer a promising approach for reducing fishing pressure on threatened species while supporting coastal livelihoods, yet causal evidence remains scarce. Modest budgets and small samples are a persistent challenge to evaluating pilots of novel conservation programs. We conducted a 12-month pre-registered randomized pilot of a gear exchange program in Aceh [...]
Alternative proteins are likely essential for biodiversity conservation
Published: 2026-09-14
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Animal-sourced foods play a major role in four of the five greatest drivers of biodiversity loss, and the conservation community must do more to address the threats that animal-sourced foods pose. While a variety of tools can help address the problems posed by animal-sourced foods, conservation must prioritize strategies that enable sustainability gains at scale to achieve global consensus goals [...]
The coefficient of variation of body mass (and other traits)
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Variation is a fundamental property of populations and provides the raw material upon which evolutionary processes can act. The coefficient of variation, defined as the standard deviation divided by the arithmetic mean, is widely used in evolutionary biology to quantify relative variation, for example to draw conclusions about the strength of selection. However, comparing coefficients of [...]
Earth observation and causal inference in assessing protected area effectiveness
Published: 2026-09-05
Subjects: Life Sciences, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Area-based conservation is a fundamental component of global conservation strategies, yet robust causal evidence on the long-term effectiveness of protected areas is still emerging. Alongside traditional field data collection methods, Earth observation offers cost-effective means of generating high-resolution, spatially extensive information, and its broader integration into conservation science [...]
Why we need ecology and evolution for a better understanding of misdirected behaviour
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Animal behaviour emerges from the complex interaction between internal states, as well as biotic and abiotic environmental conditions. When observed behavioural responses differ from researchers’ expectations, they are often described as “misdirected behaviour” and potentially maladaptive. However, several factors including genetic background and developmental conditions, sensory perception and [...]
Voluntary wheel use across animal taxa: motivation, enrichment, stereotypy and ethological interpretation
Published: 2026-08-14
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Exercise wheels are simple devices for recording animal movement, but they elicit surprisingly complex behaviours. In laboratory rodents, running wheels are key for studying voluntary exercise, circadian rhythms, motivation, energy balance, stress physiology and brain plasticity. Outside rodents, wheel-like devices have also been provided to rabbits, cats, squirrels, reptiles and invertebrates. [...]
Ecological Patterns in Mammalian Vocal Frequencies: Evidence Across Body Sizes and Habitats
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Vocalisations in mammals are an important sensory modality that is used for various purposes in communication, courtship, territorial display, navigation, prey detection, predator avoidance, reproduction, and social coordination. These various call functions are differentiated from each other through certain properties. Call spectral properties are influenced by anatomical constraints, especially [...]