Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Evolution
First Photographic and Video Documentation of the Booted Warbler (Iduna caligata) in Egypt Since Its First Record in 1993
Published: 2025-10-27
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Evolution, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The Booted Warbler (Iduna caligata) is a small migratory passerine breeding across Central Asia and wintering mainly in the Indian subcontinent. It is regarded as a rare vagrant in the Middle East and North Africa, with very few confirmed records from Egypt. This study presents the first verified photographic and video documentation of I. caligata in Egypt, recorded on 11 October 2025 at [...]
Complete de novo assembly of Wolbachia endosymbiont of contemporary Drosophila simulans using long-read genome sequencing.
Published: 2025-10-08
Subjects: Evolution, Genomics
We present a contemporary high-quality, complete de novo assembly of Wolbachia pipientis (wRi Merrill 23, CP199298), an alphaproteobacterial endosymbiont of Drosophila simulans. This assembly was generated using long read sequencing of wRi-infected D. simulans embryos collected from the Merrill College at the University of California, Santa Cruz in October 2023.
What fraction of the genomic basis of local adaptation are we missing?
Published: 2025-10-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
How will species adapt to changing environments? To what extent does adaptation to previous conditions maintain the variation needed to adapt to future conditions? To answer these kinds of questions, we need to identify locally adaptive alleles and quantify their effects. Theory shows that the architecture of adaptation can depend upon the nature of mutation and on how ecology shapes the [...]
PyTLidar: A Python Package for Tree QSM Modeling from Terrestrial Lidar Data
Published: 2025-09-16
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Evolution, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
PyTLidar is an open-source Python package that reconstructs 3D tree Quantitative Structure Models (QSM) from Terrestrial Lidar Scanning (TLS) data, providing a user-friendly tool that improves and expands upon the MATLAB-based TreeQSM method. QSMs are used to automate detection and calculation of various topological and volumetric measurements that would normally take great effort to gather in [...]
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: 2025-08-27
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: 2025-08-22
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: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Plant Biology, Population Biology
Predictive Evolutionary Genomics: Principles, Validation, and Practice
Published: 2025-08-10
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 [...]
Microevolutionary Responses to Seasonality Contribute to the Latitudinal Biodiversity Gradient
Published: 2025-07-22
Subjects: Evolution, Genetics, Population Biology
The latitudinal gradient in species richness is one of ecology’s oldest observed patterns, yet the mechanisms maintaining it remain debated. One prominent explanation links seasonality to the evolution of broad physiological tolerances, creating evolutionary conditions that impede population divergence and speciation. We tested whether seasonality leaves detectable signatures in the genetic [...]
Habitat availability, Jurassic and Cretaceous origins of the deep-bodied shark morphotype, and the rise of pelagic sharks
Published: 2025-07-17
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: 2025-07-15
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: 2025-06-20
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 [...]