Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Evolution
“A history of the world imperfectly kept”: Will we ever know how biodiversity has changed over deep time?
Published: 2025-05-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Evolution, Paleobiology
The fossil record is our only direct source of evidence for how life on Earth has waxed and waned over its long history. However, the fossil record is also incomplete and biased in many ways, after passing through biological, geological, and socio-economic filters. This means that we only possess snapshots of information, relating to specific places and times in Earth history, from which to try [...]
Mechanistic and Phylogenetic Perspectives on Pregnancy Sickness
Published: 2025-04-14
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Endocrinology, Evolution, Maternal and Child Health
Evolutionary biologists have long been fascinated by the peculiar trait of pregnancy sickness, the syndrome experienced by two-thirds of pregnant individuals which includes nausea and vomiting of pregnancy and, in 2% of cases, progresses to a pathological extreme known as hyperemesis gravidarum. With the recent discovery of the placental hormone GDF15 as the main causal factor in pregnancy [...]
Deep-learning technology provides insights into the morphological evolution of birds
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Computational Engineering, Evolution, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
The evolution of biological morphology is critical for understanding the diversity of the natural world, yet traditional analyses often involve subjective biases in the selection and coding of morphological traits. This study employs deep learning techniques, utilizing a pretrained ResNet34 model capable of recognizing over 10,000 bird species, to explore avian morphological evolution. We [...]
Plant genomic variation and its implications for proposed EU NGT legislation
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Biotechnology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics, Plant Breeding and Genetics Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
The European Commission proposal for New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) of July 2023 specifies that NGT1 plants, which are considered equivalent to conventional plants, may differ from the recipient or parental plant by no more than 20 insertions, which cannot be longer than 20 bp; deletions can be of any size and number. Here, we examine the proposed 20/20 NGT1 limit against the background of the [...]
The molecular evolutionary basis of species formation revisited
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
How do new species arise? This is among the most fundamental questions in evolutionary biology. The first genetic model for how reproductive barriers leads to the origin of new species was proposed nearly 90 years ago. However, empirical evidence for the genetic mechanisms that cause reproductive barriers took many decades to accumulate. In 2010, Presgraves presented a comprehensive review of the [...]
Ecological harshness mediates reproductive trade-offs in a great tit population
Published: 2025-04-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Population Biology
Lack’s seminal work on bird clutch sizes has spurred expansive research on reproductive trade-offs, especially focusing on offspring quantity–quality trade-offs and the potential fitness consequences for the parents. The environment is a critical driver of the expression of individual reproductive traits, influencing them through plastic responses. However, the plasticity of reproductive [...]
Variability, drivers, and utility of genetic diversity-area relationships in terrestrial vertebrates
Published: 2025-04-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
Maintaining genetic diversity within and among populations is critical for conservation and a prominent goal of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. However, direct estimates of genetic diversity are unavailable for most species, and time and resources are insufficient to fill these substantial data gaps and meet conservation target timelines. Robust, proxy-based predictions of [...]
Evolution under fluctuating conditions and exposure to heatwaves in the seed beetle, Callosobruchus maculatus
Published: 2025-03-24
Subjects: Evolution
Heatwaves, temporary periods of elevated temperatures, are increasing both in magnitude and in frequency and have been shown to have devastating negative effects on a wide range of taxa. However, to date, most studies investigating the impacts of heatwaves have either focus on populations that have evolved under constant conditions prior to assaying or, more importantly, only investigated the [...]
Quantifying macro-evolutionary patterns of trait mean and variance with phylogenetic location-scale models
Published: 2025-03-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Understanding how both the mean (location) and variance (scale) of traits differ among species and lineages is fundamental to unveiling macroevolutionary patterns. Yet, traditional phylogenetic comparative methods primarily focus on modelling mean trait values, often overlooking variability and heteroscedasticity that can provide critical insights into evolutionary dynamics. Here, we introduce [...]
No evidence for assortative mating in the Atlantic puffin
Published: 2025-03-20
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Assortative mating occurs when individuals with similar phenotypes mate together more often than by chance and can contribute to increases in homozygosity, linkage disequilibrium between loci, and premating isolation in a phenotypically divergent population. While this phenomenon has been well documented in many avian species, evidence is relatively scarce in seabirds. Most seabirds are [...]
Viability selection on coat spot patterns correlates with temperature anomalies in Masai giraffes
Published: 2025-03-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Remarkable variation in animal colour patterns is often shaped by heterogeneous selection, reflecting adaptation to variable environmental conditions. However, the adaptive functions of patterns and drivers of selection remain poorly understood. Shape and size of colour patterns may help with thermoregulation and thus be altered by temperature anomalies, which are predicted to be more frequent [...]
Measuring natural selection on the transcriptome
Published: 2025-03-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Other Genetics and Genomics
The level and pattern of gene expression is increasingly recognized as a principal determinant of plant phenotypes and thus of fitness. The estimation of natural selection on the transcriptome is an emerging research discipline. We here review recent progress and consider the challenges posed by the high dimensionality of the transcriptome for the multiple regression methods routinely used to [...]
Socioecology and the role of scramble competition
Published: 2025-03-11
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Animal Studies, Anthropology, Behavior and Ethology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Zoology
Ecological explanations for social organization and behavior are central to behavioral ecology. Unfortunately, the continuing mismatch between theoretical predictions and some empirical data led to increasingly complex hypotheses with numerous factors, raising doubts about their predictive value or even falsifiability. Moreover, several taxon-specific socioecological hypotheses have been [...]
Tracheal chambers as a key innovation for high frequency emission in bat echolocation.
Published: 2025-03-05
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Zoology
Key innovations play a crucial role in driving biodiversity and facilitating evolutionary success by enabling organisms to adapt to various ecological niches through the diversification of phenotypic traits. These innovations have been observed in different vertebrate clades, such as mammals evolving hypsodonty to graze on contemporary grasses and bats with the evolution of echolocation, [...]
Exploring the interplay of epigenetics and individualization
Published: 2025-03-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution
Considering individual differences enhances our understanding of eco-evolutionary processes. Epigenetic modifications, which enable the same genotype to produce different phenotypes, may serve as a key proximate mechanism underlying these differences. We propose that epigenetic mechanisms mediate the realization of individualized niches. This process is best understood by distinguishing between [...]