Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Evolution
The global protected area network does not harbor genetically diverse populations
Published: 2024-04-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Evolution, Life Sciences
Global biodiversity conservation targets include expanding protected areas and maintaining genetic diversity within species by 2030. However, the extent to which existing protected areas capture genetic diversity within species is unclear. We examined this question using a global sample of nuclear population-level genetic data comprising georeferenced genotypes from 2,513 local populations, [...]
Why there are so many definitions of fitness in models
Published: 2024-04-11
Subjects: Biology, Computational Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Population Biology
“Fitness” quantifies the ability to survive and reproduce, but is operationalized in many different ways. Generally, short-term fitness (e.g., expected number of surviving offspring) is assigned to genotypes or phenotypes, and used to non-trivially derive longer-term operationalizations of fitness (e.g. fixation probability or sojourn time), providing insight as to which organismal strategies [...]
Temperature drives the divergent evolution of male harm to females
Published: 2024-03-12
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution
Strong sexual selection promotes population viability and evolvability, but sexual conflict can offset such benefits. Male harm adaptations leading to pre-copulatory (i.e. harassment) and/or copulatory (i.e. traumatic insemination) harm to females are taxonomically widespread, depress population growth, and can affect the dynamics of adaptation and evolutionary rescue, but we largely ignore what [...]
How bottlenecks shape adaptive potential: from theory and microbiology to conservation biology
Published: 2024-02-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Wild populations frequently undergo demographic changes that can destabilize their persistence and, thus, the equilibrium of ecosystems. For instance, habitat loss due to human activities leads to a drastic population size reduction, a process called a bottleneck. By reducing genetic diversity, a bottleneck may prevent a population from adapting to subsequent environmental changes. In the context [...]
Adult telomere length is positively correlated with survival and lifetime reproductive success in a wild passerine
Published: 2024-02-01
Subjects: Evolution
Explaining variation in individual fitness is a key goal in evolutionary biology. Recently, telomeres, repeating DNA sequences capping the ends of chromosomes, have gained attention as a biomarker for body state, individual quality, and ageing. However, existing research has provided mixed evidence for whether telomere length correlates with fitness components, including survival and reproductive [...]
The genetic basis of a regionally isolated sexual dimorphism involves cortex
Published: 2024-01-29
Subjects: Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Sexual dimorphisms represent a source of phenotypic variation and result from differences in how natural and sexual selection act on males and females within a species. Identifying the genetic basis of dimorphism can be challenging, especially once it is fixed within a species. However, studying polymorphisms, even when fixed within a population, can provide insights into the genetic basis of [...]
The fossil record of the Neogene Carnivore Mammals from Spain
Published: 2024-01-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Carnivore mammals (Carnivora, Mammalia) constitute a significant component of the Spanish Neogene faunas, not so much due to their fossil abundance, which is generally low, but rather because of their high degree of taxonomic diversity. We assessed their evolutionary dynamics from the fossil record of Iberian carnivores using per-taxon rates of origination, extinctions and turnover combined with [...]
Hybridization potential of brown trout, with particular reference to invaded environments
Published: 2024-01-25
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Population Biology
Hybridization is a complex process beginning with the mating of two species. However, hybrid offspring frequency does not predict hetero-specific mating frequency, as post-mating, both pre-zygotic and post-zygotic barriers influence their occurrence. Post-zygotic outbreeding depression usually results in poor embryo-juvenile survival or the production of sterile hybrid offspring. Females have [...]
Beyond Darwin - the general evolutionary theory as unification of biological and cultural evolution
Published: 2024-01-22
Subjects: Evolution, Social and Cultural Anthropology
The general evolutionary theory can be seen as a comprehensive generalization and extension of Darwin's theory. The basic idea is to consider not only the evolution of genetic information - as Darwin did - but also the evolution of very general information. It shows that evolution is characterized by the fact that new types of information have developed in leaps and bounds, each with new storage [...]
The meaning and measure of concordance factors in phylogenomics
Published: 2024-01-03
Subjects: Evolution
As phylogenomic datasets have grown in size, researchers have developed new ways to measure biological variation and to assess statistical support. Larger datasets have many more sites and many more loci, and therefore less sampling variance. While this means that we can more accurately measure the mean signal in these datasets. the lower sampling variance is often reflected in widely used [...]
Developmental axioms in life history evolution
Published: 2023-12-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution
Life history theory is often invoked to make universal predictions about phenotypic evolution. For example, it is conventional wisdom that organisms should evolve older ages at first reproduction if they have longer lifespans. We clarify that life history theory does not currently provide such universal predictions about phenotypic diversity. Using the classic Euler-Lotka model of adaptive life [...]
Detecting context-dependence in the expression of demographic tradeoffs
Published: 2023-12-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Population Biology
Life history tradeoffs are one of the central tenets of evolutionary demography. Tradeoffs, depicting negative phenotypic or genetic covariances between individuals’ demographic rates, arise from a finite amount of resources that each individual has to allocate in a zero-sum game between somatic and reproductive functions. While theory predicts that tradeoffs are ubiquitous, empirical studies [...]
Natural selection is less efficient at species range edges
Published: 2023-12-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Changing species distributions due to global change underscore a pressing need to better understand range limits. However, our knowledge of general determinants of range limits remains poor despite over a century of work. Theoretical models demonstrate that genetic drift should strengthen across environmental gradients. This can limit natural selection to the point where populations can no longer [...]
Honest Signalling Made Simple
Published: 2023-11-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Honest communication is a common phenomenon in animal behaviour, and is frequently explained by appeal to the so-called handicap hypothesis by which signal costs deter dishonesty. However, the handicap models commonly used to explain honest signalling have has been subject to several lines of criticism in recent literature. This trend may have led researchers outside of the field of animal [...]
Covariance reaction norms: A flexible approach to estimating continuous environmental effects on quantitative genetic and phenotypic (co)variances
Published: 2023-11-21
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Zoology
Estimating quantitative genetic and phenotypic (co)variances plays a crucial role in investigating key evolutionary ecological phenomena, such as developmental integration, life history tradeoffs, and niche specialization, as well as in describing selection and predicting multivariate evolution in the wild. While most studies assume (co)variances are fixed over short timescales, environmental [...]