Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Evolution
A standardised framework for classifying estimates of reproductive isolation across the Tree of Life
Published: 2025-09-10
Subjects: Evolution
Understanding reproductive isolation (RI) between lineages is a central goal of speciation research. While the strength of RI has been estimated across a broad range of taxa, synthesising these data remains challenging, partially because we lack a common language for classifying and reporting RI estimates. Here, we present the Reproductive Isolation Ontology (RIO), a structured framework designed [...]
Lateralisation shapes spatial learning in lizards
Published: 2025-08-31
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Evolution, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Spatial memory is fundamental cognitive process that allows animals to navigate and interact with their environment effectively. While extensively studied in mammals and birds, the mechanisms underlying spatial cognition in reptiles remain less understood. In this study, we investigated spatial learning and the potential influence of behavioural lateralisation in the common wall lizard (Podarcis [...]
Pollinator specialisation fails to explain rapid speciation in terrestrial orchids
Published: 2025-08-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Pollinator attraction is central to the reproductive biology and ecology of flowering plants, and pollinator specialisation has long been thought of as a driving force of species generation. Orchids are central to this idea, which dates back to Darwin’s work on pollinator-driven floral evolution. However, most macroevolutionary evidence for the speciation hypothesis comes from studies of genera [...]
Fast evolving flowers drive cactus diversification
Published: 2025-08-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The rise of biodiversity is shaped by variation in diversification rates. Across the Tree of Life, numerous forces are thought to influence these rates, including the evolution of adaptive traits, climate change, and interactions with other organisms. In the flowering plants, a longstanding hypothesis favoured by Darwin suggests that floral evolution is a driving force for plant diversity. [...]
Changes in pollen production, pollen heteromorphism and ovule production with increased selfing in Viola arvensis
Published: 2025-08-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Plant Biology, Population Biology
Predictive Evolutionary Genomics: Principles, Validation, and Practice
Published: 2025-08-11
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genomics, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Population Biology
Contemporary evolution occurs on observable timescales, enabling prospective evolutionary forecasting with quantitative frameworks rather than only retrospective inference. We propose a unified probabilistic framework that integrates three approaches linked to detectability windows through time. Trait-based models use multivariate quantitative-genetic equations to project correlated phenotypic [...]
Latitudinal genetic diversity gradients steepen toward the poles
Published: 2025-07-23
Subjects: Evolution, Genetics, Population Biology
Latitudinal biodiversity gradients are among the best-described biogeographic patterns. However, there is little agreement on whether genetic diversity, the most fundamental level of biodiversity, is also latitudinally distributed. The confusion about the distribution of genetic diversity at biogeographic scales stems in part from the fact that genetic diversity gradients have been described for [...]
Habitat availability, Jurassic and Cretaceous origins of the deep-bodied shark morphotype, and the rise of pelagic sharks
Published: 2025-07-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Macroevolutionary trends in morphology fundamentally shape our understanding of marine ecosystems through deep time. Sharks (Elasmobranchii: Selachii) have been suggested to broadly exhibit two discrete body forms: one ‘shallow-bodied’ form associated with slow-moving benthic species, and a ‘deep-bodied’ form typified by highly active pelagic taxa. Until now, the validity or evolution of these [...]
A systems-modelling approach to predict biological responses to extreme heat
Published: 2025-07-16
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences, Systems Biology
Anthropogenic climate change is leading to more frequent and extreme heat waves. These large-scale events are radically re-shaping interactions among organisms – impacting biodiversity, community composition and ecosystem services crucial to natural systems and food security. Predicting heat wave impacts on interacting species requires an understanding of the processes driving differential [...]
Allometry and shared ancestry, rather than ecology, shapes the evolution of 3D eye size in temperate butterflies
Published: 2025-06-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Sensory traits shape animal lifestyles due to the central role they play in retrieving and processing environmental information. However, being some of the most energetically expensive tissues to build and maintain, ecological demands often modulate investment in these organs. Evidence that ecology shapes the evolution of sensory traits is plenty but is heavily biased towards vertebrates and has [...]
Female driven reduction of sexual dimorphism in hominins
Published: 2025-06-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Sexual dimorphism is a key indicator of social structure and selective pressures in primate evolution, yet its evolutionary drivers in hominins remain contentious. Here, we combine cutting edge dimorphism estimation methods, with Bayesian phylogenetic comparative analyses to disentangle the sex-specific contributions and evolutionary dynamics underlying changes in body mass and canine size across [...]
From vocal homophily to vocal repertoire flexibility: Unravelling the socioecological drivers of language evolution
Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Animal Studies, Anthropology, Behavior and Ethology, Evolution
Since diverging from the last common ancestor with bonobos and chimpanzees, the communication system of the hominin lineage underwent a radical transformation. Vocal production learning - the ability to produce novel vocalizations based on experience - is the necessary pre-condition for changing an ape-like communication system into one that is infinitely flexible, extensively learned, and [...]
Toxin resistance mechanisms span biological scales in the Royal Ground Snake (Colubridae: Erythrolamprus reginae)
Published: 2025-06-13
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genomics, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Molecular Biology, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Physiology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences, Systems Biology, Zoology
Exposure to multiple toxic compounds imposes selective pressures across biological levels. There are several known toxin resistance mechanisms–such as behavioral avoidance, metabolic detoxification, and target-site insensitivity but an integrative approach to consider multiple toxins and resistance strategies. Predators of amphibians, for example, must counteract multiple chemicals secreted by [...]
Seabird range contraction and dispersal under climate change
Published: 2025-06-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Many marine ectotherms have historically adapted to local climate change by evolving smaller body sizes, reducing their energy demands in warmer waters but limiting their dispersal and speciation rate. Whether endothermic marine species respond similarly remains unclear, as temperature minimally affects their size diversity, and the drivers of their dispersal and speciation are poorly understood. [...]
Orphan and de novo Genes in Fungi and Animals: Identification, Origins and Functions
Published: 2025-06-03
Subjects: Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
Genes that don't have identifiable homologs in other species have been an intriguing and interesting topic of research for many years. These so-called orphan genes were first studied in yeast and since then, they have been found in many other species. This has fostered a whole field of research aiming at tracing back their evolutionary origin and functional significance. Orphan genes represent an [...]