Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
The evolutionary link between food, condiments and medicine
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Anthropology, Biodiversity, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Food Science, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The deep relationship between humans and plants is of great interest to ethnobotanists, human ecologists, and evolutionary biologists. Humans have incorporated thousands of plant species into both traditional medicine and our diets, as foods and condiments. Many of these provide not only calories but also micronutrients and other bioactive compounds that contribute to health [1]. The boundaries [...]
Learning, motivation, and social interaction in modern dolphin training
Published: 2026-04-30
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Dolphin training is widely practiced in zoological facilities for performance, husbandry, research, and daily management, yet many of its practical principles remain insufficiently formalized in the scientific literature. This Perspective aims to provide a citable academic framework for modern dolphin training by synthesizing trainer-based practical knowledge within established concepts from [...]
Opportunities, Enablers and Requirements in Advancing Earth Observation for Scaling Nature Finance
Published: 2026-04-29
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Leveraging Earth Observation for Nature Finance (LEON) project, supported by the European Space Agency (ESA), seeks to transform the use of Earth Observation (EO) data in enabling, mobilising and scaling nature-positive finance globally. This report builds upon six months of structured research, landscape analysis and multi-stakeholder engagement to map the opportunities and requirements for [...]
Earth Observation to Scale Nature Finance: Survey 2025
Published: 2026-04-29
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
This report presents the results of the LEON User Requirements Survey conducted in summer 2025 to understand how Earth Observation (EO) data can support the mobilisation and scaling of nature finance. The survey targeted financial institutions, data providers, and other stakeholders engaged in nature-related investment, risk management, and policy. A total of 27 organisations responded to the [...]
Nature-based Solutions for Climate and Disaster Risk Mitigation in SIPLAS: A Framework for Policy Integration and Innovative Financing
Published: 2026-04-16
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Urban Studies and Planning
Small island protected areas face compounding pressures from rapid urbanization, constrained land use, biodiversity loss, and intensifying climate and disaster risk, yet scholarship on how to finance and mainstream Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in governance-complex, nationally protected island systems remains limited. This study addresses that gap by examining the integration of NbS into climate [...]
Why are embodied social signals concentrated towards the rostral region? — The rostrum concentration hypothesis
Published: 2026-04-09
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biological Psychology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Although frequently embodied, the relationship of animal social communication with body layout has rarely been investigated from a unified cognitive perspective. Across animal taxa, socially relevant signals, ranging from facial expressions and gaze to colouration and morphology, are strikingly concentrated towards the anterior region of the body. Here, we propose the Rostrum Concentration [...]
Quantifying information content using population genetics concepts and equations to develop new insights into information distribution in human communities
Published: 2026-04-03
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Information evolves within human societies in ways that parallel the evolution of genes in biological populations. Applying classical population genetics equations, we developed a framework in which the rates of learning and forgetting define the net balance of informational change, and directional exchange among groups can be represented as information flow. We apply this framework to a 43-year [...]
Standardizing turn-taking metrics: A methodological toolkit for data annotation across species and taxa
Published: 2026-03-27
Subjects: Animal Studies, Communication, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Conversational turn-taking, the cooperative reciprocal exchange of short and flexible turns, is fundamental for communication and social coordination. Initially thought to be uniquely human, recent research showed some evidence of cooperative turn-taking also in other animal species. However, systematic evaluations and comparisons of turn-taking skills within and across species pose considerable [...]
Bees as Ambassadors for Plant Conservation
Published: 2026-03-25
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Because of their abundance and sessile nature, plants often blend into the landscape, which can lead many people to be unaware of, uniformed, or uninterested in them. This phenomenon, known as “Plant Awareness Disparity” (PAD), contributes to a lack of support for the conservation of plants relative to animals. Strategies for mitigating PAD across diverse demographic groups remain poorly [...]
Permissible Spite: Kin Selection, Demography, and the Inverse Hamiltonian Equation
Published: 2026-03-19
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Systems Biology
This article revisits Hamilton’s rule by proposing an inverted formulation to evaluate the evolutionary permissibility of spiteful behavior within kin-based populations. We formalize a reverse Hamiltonian equation and apply replicator dynamics to investigate the demographic and genetic conditions under which within group aggression may become evolutionarily stable. The model shows that in [...]
Comments on “Mateus-Aguilar, B., Díaz-Salazar, A. F., Andrade-Rivas, F., Batista, N. M., Cárdenas-Navarrete, A., Arenas, A. D., ... & Echeverri, A. (2025). Assessing Biocultural Diversity Across Scales Using Ecological Indicators. Ecological Indicators, 176, 113616.”
Published: 2026-02-11
Subjects: Anthropology, Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Closing the border on Australia’s domestic elephant ivory trade
Published: 2026-02-04
Subjects: Law, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Australia’s domestic market for elephant (Elephantidae ssp.) ivory remains active online, despite long-standing international controls and pledges to close domestic trade. We conducted snapshot monitoring of surface-web vendors (online auction houses and webstores with ‘buy-it-now’ payment options) and a survey of Facebook Marketplace posts made between January and June 2025, sampled every two [...]
Factors influencing the use of scientific evidence in conservation practice and policy: insights from a systematic map
Published: 2026-02-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Evidence-based conservation can lead to better outcomes for biodiversity, through the integration of scientific evidence with other forms of knowledge to make transparent and effective decisions. However, despite efforts to promote evidence-based practice, many management and policy decisions do not incorporate scientific information. To strengthen the interface between science and [...]
SPECIES OF PASSIONATE INTEREST: Practicing Biocultural Conservation and Eco-social Transformation Together
Published: 2026-01-27
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Species of Passionate Interest expands on the concept of the "cultural keystone species," reviewing its intellectual history and proposing future applications in the field of biodiversity conservation. The paper critiques the classic view of the "keystone" species in Western conservation science, emphasizing the need to consider the dynamic cultural context and the diversity of emotional [...]
Reversing the gaze on nature in an era of technological innovation
Published: 2026-01-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences
How nature is understood and ‘seen’ by governing institutions influences how it is managed. The rise of new digital and remote sensing technologies has reinforced a global gaze ‘from above’ that separates the seer from the people and places seen. This gaze has generated critical data on global climate and biodiversity trends and informed ambitious environmental targets. Yet it also obscures a [...]