Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Population Biology
Should hunters fear the wolf? Effects of wolf recolonization on ungulate harvests in a multi-species European landscape
Published: 2026-02-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Zoology
1. The recolonization of European landscapes by the gray wolf Canis lupus raises questions about the ecological effects of predators and their impact on human interests such as large-game hunting bags, leaving room for alarmism among hunters. 2. We investigated the impact of wolf on recreational hunting by using long-term (2006-2023) and high-resolution (234 hunting districts) hunting bag data on [...]
Predicting demographic impacts from sublethal cumulative effects of offshore renewable developments on breeding seabirds
Published: 2026-02-05
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology, Population Biology
1. Offshore renewable developments (ORDs) are often located in habitat used by protected seabird species and may cause sublethal effects by altering movement patterns and displacing individuals from key resources. Predicting how these effects translate into population-level impacts is challenging for long-lived species because demographic consequences emerge from complex, state-dependent [...]
Population dynamics and disease-linked host use of the sea urchin symbiont Dactylopleustes yoshimurai (Crustacea: Amphipoda: Pleustidae) on Strongylocentrotus intermedius
Published: 2026-01-29
Subjects: Marine Biology, Population Biology
Dactylopleustes yoshimurai is an echinoid-associated amphipod that frequently aggregates on disease lesions of the short-spined urchin Strongylocentrotus intermedius in Otsuchi Bay, northeastern Japan. However, its life history and use of diseased hosts remain poorly understood. We combined four years of monthly SCUBA surveys (Jan 2020–Jan 2024) with quantitative sampling of diseased and healthy [...]
Inspiring systematic inclusion of individual animal states to enhance the quality of research
Published: 2026-01-23
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Animal Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Studies on animals continue to attract criticism over data quality, reproducibility and generality of findings, yet one source of variation remains rarely addressed: differences in individuals’ affective states. In this paper, we suggest that evaluating affect should be considered standard good practice in ecological and behavioural research with wild animals, alongside familiar variables such as [...]
How does the rate of environmental change affect density-dependent population dynamics?
Published: 2026-01-19
Subjects: Dynamic Systems, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Population Biology
Natural populations experience variable environments. Anthropogenically driven environmental change, in particular, is expected to impose trends on key demographic parameters such as reproduction and survival. Theoretical studies of how such environmental changes affect populations have highlighted dynamical phenomena including bifurcation-related tipping points – typically identified by [...]
The role of barrier zones in controlling invasive species: A microcosm experiment
Published: 2026-01-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Around the world, invasive species have altered ecosystems, entailing both social and economic consequences. Further, preventing and controlling their spread requires high costs. One common approach to control invasive species is through barrier zones. A barrier zone is a region surrounding an initial invasion where management of the invasive species is conducted, including direct harvesting. [...]
Ecological examples of nonstationarity, nonlinearity, and statistical interactions in dynamic structural equation models
Published: 2026-01-13
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ecologists are adapting structural causal modelling for spatial, phylogenetic, and time-series analysis. However, ecological extensions of path analysis and structural equation models (SEM) typically assume that interactions (“path coefficients”) are stationary, linear, and additive, while ecological and evolutionary dynamics are often nonstationary, nonlinear, and include statistical [...]
From patterns to predictions: A framework for the spatial epidemiology of wildlife diseases
Published: 2025-12-08
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Biodiversity, Epidemiology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Population Biology, Statistics and Probability, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Preventive Medicine, Epidemiology, and Public Health, Zoology
Wildlife diseases pose a significant threat to public health, livestock, and biodiversity conservation. In this context, spatial epidemiology offers a robust framework for elucidating disease dynamics and informing policy-making and disease management. The workflow in spatial epidemiology involves three main steps: (1) descriptive analysis of spatial dynamics; (2) exploration of the observed [...]
Barking up the wrong tree? Indian street dog woes are emblematic of ecological governance failures for multispecies coexistence
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
On August 11, 2025, India’s Supreme Court mandated relocating 2.5 million dogs to address bites and zoonotic disease/death concerns—but reversed course twice since then—revealing that solutions require sequential waste management, education, and sterilization that prioritize addressing root demographic and behavioral drivers over reactive management.
Recolonisation dynamics of grey wolves: delayed recovery in a Central European country
Published: 2025-11-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Population Biology, Zoology
Grey wolves have been recovering throughout Europe over the last decades, widely portrayed as a conservation success story. We evaluated the trends and demography of two wolf populations that recolonised the Czech Republic between 2011/2012 and 2022/2023, integrating a variety of fieldwork and laboratory methods including snow tracking, camera trapping, telemetry and non-invasive genetics, with [...]
How much monitoring is needed to reliably track progress towards genetic diversity targets?
Published: 2025-11-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Population Biology
Achieving global biodiversity targets hinges on indicators of biodiversity change that convert raw data into reliable numbers that can shape policy, conservation, management, and, ultimately, the future of biodiversity worldwide. Indicators can only be used confidently if they detect and summarise biodiversity trends as intended, given the available data worldwide. Knowing whether indicators can [...]
Going with, or going to the dogs: City Serenade of Multispecies Survival
Published: 2025-11-03
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Community-based Research, Human Ecology, Ornithology, Other Animal Sciences, Population Biology, Urban Studies and Planning, Zoology
1. As tropical cities rapidly urbanise, multispecies coexistence faces unprecedented challenges. Ground-dwelling (dogs), arboreal (macaques), and aerial (black kites) urban commensals navigate complex social-ecological systems shaped by anthropogenic resource provisioning, cultural practices, and architectural constraints. Despite escalating human-animal conflicts—20 million annual dog bites in [...]
Host specificity and activity synchronization drive frog-biting midge incidence on torrent frogs (Hylodidae) in southeastern Brazil
Published: 2025-10-27
Subjects: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Frog-bitting midges (Corethrellidae) are widespread micropredators that feed on the blood of frogs. Furthermore, frog-biting midges carry pathogens such as Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), an important cause of worldwide amphibian declines. Female midges usually target calling male frogs by using acoustic cues. However, how midges target frogs that use conspicuous visual cues, especially [...]
Neighbourhood canopy cover alleviates increased tree mortality after exceptionally dry summers at a climatic range limit
Published: 2025-10-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Biology, Population Biology
Populations situated at range margins are often at their environmental niche limit. The stress gradient hypothesis posits that facilitation effects should be more common in such conditions, but few studies have examined the joint effects of biotic interactions and climatic factors on vital rates at species range limits. We used eight years of annual unmanned aerial vehicle surveys to assess the [...]
Invasive mosquitofish become more aggressive in the presence of native pike young-of-year: implications for native predator recruitment
Published: 2025-10-14
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Invasive species often exhibit aggressive behaviour, boldness, and high foraging activity, which contribute to their establishment success and impact on native ecosystems. The mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki), one of the world’s most invasive fish species, is known for its aggressive nature, which threatens the survival of native species. Lake littoral zones, critical for juvenile fish [...]