Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Disease-Dependent Social Responses to Local Disease Composition in a Wild Reptile
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Emerging infectious diseases can generate persistent and locally heterogeneous patterns of risk across animal populations, yet how animal social behaviour varies under these conditions remains poorly understood. When pathogens persist in the environment, individuals may need to respond to disease conditions at fine spatial and temporal scales rather than rely on fixed social strategies. Here, we [...]
Spatially explicit sampling of AM fungal biomass reveals links to community characteristics and landscape context
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Agriculture, Biochemistry, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are important contributors to soil functioning, yet their biomass and diversity may respond differently to environmental characteristics and historical legacies. Understanding these relationships is necessary for evaluating AM fungi as indicators of soil health. We investigated relationships among AM fungal biomass, community properties and natural habitat [...]
Encounter behaviour shapes ecological distributions
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ecology’s foundational models keep only the first moment of the stochastic distributions of encounters. Yet, encounter behaviour (how animals search, aggregate, hide and move) sets the whole distributional shape: zeros, variance, skew and, where particular behaviours build them, heavy tails. That shape decides vital rates, persistence and spatial pattern, because the rates involved are [...]
Roasting in nest boxes: physiological, behavioural and fitness consequences of extreme heat in cavity-nesting birds and mitigation strategies
Published: 2026-10-07
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Artificial nest boxes are widely used to mitigate the loss of natural cavities caused by deforestation and habitat degradation, and they have become an important tool in both avian conservation and ecological research. However, the capacity of nest boxes to provide suitable microclimatic conditions for breeding birds is increasingly challenged by climate change. In particular, more frequent and [...]
Areas of high conservation priority for threatened terrestrial vertebrates are governed by novel ecological conditions
Published: 2026-10-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Over half of the terrestrial biosphere is exposed to highly novel conditions that differ from the historical state, resulting from anthropogenic pressures such as climate change, floristic disruption, and defaunation. Highly novel conditions result in unpredictable biodiversity outcomes, impacting the effectiveness of conservation and restoration actions and the ability for threatened species to [...]
Network structure and species connectivity drive asymmetric fitness outcomes in coevolving antagonistic communities
Published: 2026-10-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Antagonistic interactions are fundamental drivers of ecological community structure, generating strong reciprocal selective pressures that shape the evolution of functional traits across interacting species. Despite their ecological importance, the coevolutionary dynamics of antagonistic communities remain far less understood than those of mutualistic systems. Here, we develop a trait-based [...]
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 [...]
Probabilistic projections of human modification of the terrestrial biosphere from 2020 to 2040
Published: 2026-09-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Conservation actions are more effective when they anticipate future threats rather than respond only after loss occurs. Most spatial forecasts focus only on land-cover change and fail to capture the broader set of pressures that degrade biodiversity. To close this gap, we develop global probabilistic forecasts of cumulative human modification (HM), a continuous measure that combines 16 [...]
Toward a General Theory of Heteromorphic Reproduction
Published: 2026-09-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Organisms often divide reproductive investment among outputs that differ in morphology, timing, or reproductive mechanism. In this paper I extend the minimum-risk treatment of seed heteromorphism to the more general question of organisms with ‘portfolios’ of biologically distinct reproductive outputs. The resulting framework specifies a common investment and fitness currency, calculates returns [...]
Building from biodiversity assessment to place-based conservation action across scales of information and governance.
Published: 2026-09-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Scientific assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services are challenged by the need to examine systemic drivers of change while maintaining support in a polarized political climate. Recent US national policy shifts that reduce federal support for scientific assessments underscore the necessity of a broad-based, resilient, and scalable assessment framework with sustained engagement of [...]
The marine annelid trait manifesto: A call to rethink functional traits for ecological and conservation research
Published: 2026-09-24
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Animal Sciences, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
The Raunkiæran shortfall, defined as the scarcity of knowledge regarding species' attributes, represents one of the major obstacles to developing sound biodiversity conservation strategies and understanding ecological processes. In this context, despite the importance of marine annelids as dominant components of benthic ecosystems and key agents of marine ecosystem functioning, no comprehensive [...]
Time-lagged responses of soil biota are pervasive and require new approaches
Published: 2026-09-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
When land-use changes, soil biodiversity is typically assumed to respond immediately. Nonetheless, soils are inherently slow systems. We argue that soil communities often remain in a transient state for decades to centuries, generating persistent ecological legacies. These lags can arise through two interacting mechanisms: environmental inertia, as the physical and chemical properties of soils [...]
Validation of Japanese Collision Risk Models Using Post-Construction Carcass Survey Data
Published: 2026-09-04
Subjects: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Collision risk models (CRMs) are widely used to predict bird collisions with wind turbines; however, few studies have evaluated their performance using post-construction monitoring data. In this study, we assessed the validity of two collision risk models commonly used in Japan, the Ministry of the Environment model (CRMmoe) and the Yui and Shimada (2013) model (CRMyui), by comparing model [...]
TRIPLE-IJ and SHIFT as a coupled framework for characterising entomopathogenic nematode performance under abiotic stress
Published: 2026-08-26
Subjects: Agriculture, Entomology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) of the families Steinernematidae and Heterorhabditidae are widely recognised as promising biological control agents, yet the translation of laboratory-demonstrated virulence into consistent field-scale efficacy remains an unresolved challenge. A central reason for this gap is the fragmented way EPN performance is conventionally characterised: infectivity and [...]
Computational classification of SOD2 protein in coral and symbiotic algae from public genomic and transcriptomic data
Published: 2026-08-20
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
SOD2, or Manganese/Iron Superoxide Dismutase, plays a crucial role in maintaining cellular health across the tree of life. Existing literature is vague in identifying types of SOD2 proteins expressed in both corals and their symbiotic algae; most agree on the presence of a) mitochondrial targeting MnSOD in corals, and b) likely Mn dependent SOD2 in algae. This paper presents evidence for four [...]