Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Evolution
A mathematical foundation of modelling thermal injury and repair dynamics in ectotherms
Published: 2026-06-18
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Evolution, Life Sciences, Physiology, Plant Sciences, Population Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Survival Analysis
As global temperatures rise and extreme heat events impair ectotherm performance and survival, it is becoming increasingly important to predict how organisms accumulate and repair thermal injury under realistic benign and stressful temperatures. The thermal death time (TDT) model quantifies how heat events translate into thermal injury, but under natural temperature fluctuations the TDT model is [...]
Saved by the Symbiont: Environmental Stress Intensity and Endosymbiont-Mediated Stress Response Determine Evolved Host Complexity
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Evolution, Life Sciences
Understanding how stress responses affect the trajectory of host–symbiont coevolution is central to predicting and managing species outcomes in the face of disturbances to ecosystems. Critically, it remains an open question how exactly we expect stressors to influence the coevolutionary dynamics of symbioses (on either end of the parasitism–mutualism continuum). In this work, we use in silico [...]
An integrated framework for unifying our understanding of nonconsumptive predation risk effects
Published: 2026-06-12
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Predation risk can induce risk-induced trait responses (RITRs) – changes in prey defensive traits including behavior, morphology, life history, and physiology – thought to have profound effects on prey fitness and population dynamics (termed ‘nonconsumptive effects’). Yet, predicting the magnitude of RITRs and their fitness consequences remains difficult because outcomes depend heavily on [...]
Gradual development and chance beget individuality
Published: 2026-06-02
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Developmental Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution
Behaviors – and thus behavioral individuality – rarely emerge fully formed but are instead built gradually through development, shaped by processes involving learning, skill formation, and experience. Prevailing theory in behavioral ecology, however, has largely focused on static equilibrium outcomes where behaviors are analyzed only as fully formed traits, often neglecting development. Here, we [...]
The coevolution of cooperation and socially-mediated dispersal: a model
Published: 2026-06-01
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Evolution, Population Biology
Limited dispersal can promote the evolution of cooperation by increasing relatedness between social partners. However it also intensifies kin competition, potentially cancelling the benefits of helping. Here, we analyse a model in which individuals evolve both (i) the probability of cooperating within social groups as adults, and (ii) the dispersal probability of juveniles conditional on the [...]
The holobiont is not a useful model for most host-microbiome interactions
Published: 2026-05-20
Subjects: Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Evolution, Life Sciences
The holobiont concept refers to a host and associated microbes. It has been critiqued over the last decade, primarily based on the argument that individual holobionts are not an appropriate level for analyzing multi-generation host dynamics, as most microbes are acquired from the environment. Several responses were given to this and other criticisms. The main response has been that the holobiont [...]
Summarizing Populations: Characterizing the Effects of Sampling in Computational Evolutionary Replay Experiments
Published: 2026-05-19
Subjects: Evolution
When we sample an evolving population, how well do we capture its long-term evolutionary potential? This question underlies the validity of analytical replay experiments, which restart evolution from multiple points in a population’s history to measure how long-term potential changed over time. Analytical replay experiments are becoming increasingly popular in both wet-lab and computational [...]
The bacterial immune system: identifying evolved defense adaptations
Published: 2026-05-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Microbiology
The last few years have witnessed a rapid expansion of reported bacterial defense mechanisms. Alongside established mechanisms of defense against molecular parasites (e.g. CRISPR-Cas, restriction-modification), hundreds of novel defenses are being described each year, contributing to an ever-expanding ‘bacterial immune system’. Terms like ‘defense’ and ‘immune’ are often used as shorthand for an [...]
Sexually antagonistic selection: a review of the theory and its implications
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Population Biology
Sexually antagonistic selection arises when females and males have different fitness optima for traits with a shared genetic basis, so that the same alleles are favoured in one sex but disfavoured in the other. It has been implicated in a wide range of ecological and evolutionary processes, from the maintenance of a sex load to the evolution of sex chromosomes. Mathematical models have long been [...]
The evolutionary link between food, condiments and medicine
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Anthropology, Biodiversity, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Food Science, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The deep relationship between humans and plants is of great interest to ethnobotanists, human ecologists, and evolutionary biologists. Humans have incorporated thousands of plant species into both traditional medicine and our diets, as foods and condiments. Many of these provide not only calories but also micronutrients and other bioactive compounds that contribute to health [1]. The boundaries [...]
Sex differential effects of developmental heat stress on life-history and reproductive traits
Published: 2026-05-01
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Global warming has led to increased mean global temperatures with projections suggesting continued warming throughout this century, posing an escalating threat to biological systems worldwide. Ectotherms are most vulnerable to this change as heat stress conditions can have severe implications on their development, mating interactions, and fitness. However, the sex-specific effects of [...]
Lead and slant on the geometry of coiling in gastropods
Published: 2026-05-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Molluscan shells have been studied with various geometric models. Here I show that lead angle, the defining slope of a conical helix, emerges as a more useful parameter in morphometric analyses and (adaptationist) interpretation of covariation in coiling parameters. The widely used apical semiangle becomes redundant and uninformative, a passive consequence of taxon-specific lead angles and [...]
What is the human germline mutation rate? methodological innovations, challenges, and evolutionary implications
Published: 2026-04-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
Germline mutations are the ultimate source of heritable genetic variation, driving evolution, enabling adaptation, and underlying disease. Despite their fundamental importance, key questions remain unanswered: How frequently do germline mutations arise? Do mutation rates vary systematically across individuals, populations, and local genomic context? And what determines whether a mutation arising [...]
Endosymbiotic mutualism can constrain host diversity and evolved complexity
Published: 2026-04-03
Subjects: Evolution, Life Sciences
Coevolutionary arms races between hosts and parasites are known to promote the evolution of complex traits in hosts. However, the evolutionary effects of mutualistic endosymbionts (symbionts that live inside a host) are less well understood. Here, we use populations of self-replicating computer programs (digital organisms) to investigate the effects of trait matching mutualisms on evolution. We [...]
Incorporating population genomic perspectives into kelp conservation and aquaculture in the Pacific Northwest
Published: 2026-04-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Recent kelp forest declines and growth in the kelp aquaculture industry have fueled increasing interest in ecological and evolutionary research on kelp forests, including kelp population genomics. While many kelp management activities have inherent genetic and evolutionary implications, kelp management in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of North America has to date made only limited use of [...]