Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Evolution
Beyond the Vertebrate Model: Insights from Insect Stress Responses
Published: 2026-10-15
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Animal Studies, Behavioral Neurobiology, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Genetics, Molecular Genetics, Systems Biology, Zoology
Stress responses are essential for survival, coordinating behavioural, physiological and molecular adjustments that enable organisms to cope with challenges. Most research has focused on vertebrates, leaving invertebrate stress physiology comparatively underexplored, particularly in insects. In this review, we compare insect and vertebrate stress responses to examine what insects reveal about the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
On the Promise (and Practice) of Deep Comparative Methods: Expressivity, Limitations, and Design
Published: 2026-09-28
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution
Comparative biologists explain the diversity of organismal form and function by deciding which traits to measure and which evolutionary processes to model. These decisions make inference possible, but they also confine it to traits, relationships, and processes that can be specified a priori. Neural networks can expand this space, learning characters directly from complex observations and [...]
Multiple genetic routes to pelvic spine loss in brook stickleback
Published: 2026-09-10
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Pelvic spine loss has evolved repeatedly in stickleback species and represents an intriguing opportunity to study genetically parallel adaptation. While previous work has identified key loci associated with this trait, the extent to which different populations rely on the same genetic mechanisms remains unclear. The genetic basis of pelvic spine loss in Culaea inconstans (Kirtland 1840) has only [...]
Q&A: Genetic Lineages
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Evolution, Genetics, Population Biology
Genetic lineages are key to understanding evolution in complex scenarios and the evolution of genetic systems. However, they are often misunderstood; for example, confused with alleles or pedigrees. Here, we provide an accessible introduction to genetic lineages in question and answer format, from their definition as a physical object in space-time to their empirical characterization through [...]
Cell-autonomous immunity and the endosymbiotic theory: Septins at the origin?
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Biology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The origin of complex eukaryotic cells remains a long-standing mystery. Endosymbiosis gave rise to mitochondria and chloroplasts, the bacteria-derived organelles that underpin eukaryotic productivity. Early eukaryotes had to establish these partnerships while avoiding pathogens, using limited ancestral tools. Septins are cytoskeletal GTP-binding proteins best known for roles in cytokinesis, yet [...]
The Defensive Repertoire of New World Coral Snakes: Evolution and Natural History
Published: 2026-08-21
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution
The defensive repertoire of New World coral snakes is diverse, but its evolutionary history remains poorly understood. We compiled 280 records of 11 defensive behaviors across 85 species of Micrurus and one species of Micruroides from the literature and contributions by researchers, naturalists, and wildlife photographers. Fifty-seven records represented behaviors not previously documented for [...]
Sleep elasticity: accessory, useful and vital components of a single state
Published: 2026-08-19
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Systems Biology
Sleep is universal, homeostatically defended and apparently costly, and for half a century this combination has been read as evidence of a vital, conserved function still awaiting identification. The search has not converged. Instead, it has accumulated a dozen candidate functions, each defensible but none commanding assent. I argue that the difficulty lies with the question rather than with the [...]
Cold adaptation in mammals: mechanisms and genomic insights from bats
Published: 2026-08-14
Subjects: Evolution, Genetics, Physiology
Cold environments impose strong energetic constraints on mammals, driving adaptations including thermogenesis, insulation and torpor. Bats are the only mammals capable of powered flight and inhabit different climates, yet the evolutionary basis of their cold tolerance remains poorly understood. In this study, we screened 571 records and retained 137 studies on mammalian cold adaptation. While [...]
Plant sex chromosome evolution in the phylogenomic era
Published: 2026-08-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Plants harbor a tremendous diversity of sexual systems, including various forms of chromosomal sex determination that have arisen repeatedly across major clades, especially in angiosperms. The causes and consequences of sex chromosome evolution are far-reaching, with implications for sexual system, mating system, and life history evolution, genome architecture, and speciation, extinction, and [...]
Chromosomal speciation through holocentric lenses
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Chromosomal rearrangements (CRs) can trigger speciation by acting as barriers to gene flow. Two main theoretical frameworks were developed on how they contribute to speciation: causing infertility in heterokaryotypes (hybrid dysfunction) or creating islands of divergence through recombination suppression. However, these theories were developed with monocentric chromosomes in mind. Species with [...]
Beyond the mammalian nucleolus—a comparative perspective on nucleolar dynamics in stress and through the life cycle
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Cell and Developmental Biology, Cell Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Microbiology, Organismal Biological Physiology
Classically the site of ribosomal RNA transcription, processing and early ribosome assembly, the nucleolus is increasingly understood as a dynamic multiphase condensate reshaped by cell state. Most reviews of this plasticity are mammal-centred. Here we set mammals alongside fungi, plants and animal germlines, following the nucleolus through the life cycle under environmental change and through [...]
The series of genetic codes that preceded our own
Published: 2026-07-31
Subjects: Evolution, Genetics, Paleobiology
We produce a working hypothesis for the steps by which the canonical genetic code might have been constructed. We assume amino acids were added in the order inferred from their enrichment or depletion in ancestrally reconstructed sequences dating back to the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) relative to that in ancient but post-LUCA controls. To convert this ordering into a time series of [...]