Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
An Exact Coarse-Graining Consistent Metapopulation Model
Published: 2025-08-20
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Different levels of coarse-graining are of paramount importance to understand how conclusions drawn from local studies can be made general and extrapolated to larger regions. We here investigate how consist metapopulation model are when considering different resolutions of the landscape matrix, i.e. different levels of coarse-graining. A formulation of the metapopulation model, taking into [...]
Eclipse of reason: debunking speculative anticipatory behavior in trees
Published: 2025-08-12
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Advancing plant behaviour research requires adherence to robust experimental designs, the formulation of alternative falsifiable hypotheses, sufficient replication, and stringent controls. These tenets safeguard the field from slipping into pseudoscience. A recent study by Chiolerio et al. (2025) claims that Picea abies trees collectively anticipate solar eclipses via electrome-based signalling. [...]
Five misunderstandings in animal social network analysis
Published: 2025-08-04
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Animal social network analysis has become central to behavioural ecology, offering powerful tools to explore the links between social behaviour and ecological or evolutionary processes. While rooted in the broader field of social network analysis, the methods used in animal studies have diverged from contemporary practices in the broader field. This divergence has led to conflicting guidance on [...]
okaapi: an R package for generating social networks based on trait preferences
Published: 2025-07-09
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Modelling of simulated networks with generative network models plays a central role for our understanding of the emergence and consequences of network structures. Accessible software that generates simulated networks based on relevant processes can facilitate the use of this important approach in behavioural ecology, and can help drive forward our understanding of animal social structures. Here [...]
Mathematical Perspectives on Rewilding
Published: 2025-07-08
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Achieving sustainable human-wildlife coexistence in well-functioning ecosystems is a vitally important and major challenge under global change. In response, rewilding is an emerging paradigm in ecosystem service provision through the re-establishment of natural ecological processes in self-sustaining ecosystems. Effective prediction of ecological changes in rewilding projects requires tools [...]
A Unified Hypergraph- and SuperHyperGraph-Based Framework for Food Web Extension: From Classical Food Webs to SuperHyperWebs in Ecological Systems
Published: 2025-07-01
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Food Science, Life Sciences, Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Hypergraphs generalize graphs by allowing hyperedges to join any number of vertices, while superhypergraphs further extend this idea by layering iterated powersets to capture hierarchical, self-referential connections. A food web models an ecosystem as a directed graph whose nodes are species and whose edges represent predator–prey interactions. In this paper, we introduce two novel extensions of [...]
Toward Ecological Forecasting of West Nile Virus in Florida: Insights from Two Decades of Surveillance
Published: 2025-05-20
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistical Models, Virus Diseases
West Nile Virus (WNV) is the leading cause of mosquito-borne disease in the United States, yet transmission activity remains difficult to predict. This study used 20 years of digitized WNV seroconversion data from 526 sentinel chicken coops across Florida to develop spatiotemporal models with landscape and climate variables to predict WNV seroconversion at monthly and seasonal timescales. We [...]
Disordered and Partially Structured Models in Community Ecology: What are they? And how do we use them?
Published: 2025-05-15
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Community ecology describes how species interact with each other and with their environment. In nature, processes can be very complex because they involve hundreds to thousands of species interacting with each other in complex environmental landscapes. Classical approaches that have provided key insights have largely focused on the study of tractable subsets of species and patches, but these do [...]
The Hunt for Ancient DNA – Natural & Artificial
Published: 2025-05-13
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract: The recently released documentary titled “The Hunt for the Oldest DNA” was the inspiration for the writing of this paper. It is because Professor Eske Willerslev and I, David R. Wood, are both peers in two mirror fields of evolutionary science achieving similar breakthrough results using similar techniques to unconceal ancient DNA – natural and artificial. This paper goes through the [...]
Correcting Mesoudi’s Failed Concept of Societal Culture
Published: 2025-05-13
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract: The natural species homo sapiens are not a cultural species. Homo sapiens instead artificially segregates itself into many artificial species (i.e., cultures) for competitive advantage in natural intraspecies competition – warfare, economics, etc. These artificial species are defined and categorized based on the distinct combination of artificial genomes, artificial structural [...]
Dragon Kill Points: applying a transparent working template to relieve authorship stress
Published: 2025-03-20
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Business, Education, Engineering, Law, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The concept of authorship, while straightforward in theory, proves to be remarkably complex in practice. While existing frameworks provide a foundation for classifying and ranking authorship roles, conflicts still arise when contributions are ambiguous or poorly documented. To address these issues, we propose Dragon Kill Points, adapted from multiplayer gaming, which tracks individual [...]
Overcoming “doom and gloom”: Envisioning desirable futures for Arctic biodiversity
Published: 2025-02-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sustainability
We co-created visions of desirable futures for Arctic biodiversity during a workshop which included representatives from academia, Indigenous Peoples, business and policy-making. Appreciating our diverse perspectives, we identified key actions that would enable the positive outcomes shared in our visions: boosting education, rethinking Arctic biodiversity governance, elevating the voices of [...]
Population structure plays a key role in community stability
Published: 2025-01-09
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The relationship between ecosystem complexity and stability remains unresolved and a mechanistic explanation for the stunning levels of biodiversity observed in communities and ecosystems is still lacking. Recent work has shown that differences in the foraging capacity and predation risk of juveniles versus adults within populations result in larger, more complex communities than predicted by [...]
Laguna Beach Nearshore Giant Kelp and Bryozoan
Published: 2024-12-14
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This paper examines the scattered nearshore kelp beds in Laguna Beach subtidal shallow rock reef substrate between Brooks Street and Thalia Street, referred to as town. The nearshore kelp is approximately 200 meters from the shore. This area has been protected since 2012 when it was considered a California Marine Protected Area (MPA) and classified as Laguna Beach State Marine Reserve (LBSMR). [...]
One Earth + One Health: An agile, evolutionary, system-of-systems, convergence paradigm for societal challenges of the Anthropocene
Published: 2024-12-06
Subjects: Education, Engineering, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Evolutionary mechanisms enabled humans to profoundly transform Earth systems. Because the resulting Anthropocene systems are highly interdependent and dynamically evolving, often with accelerating rates of cultural and technological evolution, the ensuing family of societal challenges must be framed and addressed in a holistic fashion. An agile, evolutionary, system-of-systems, convergence [...]