Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Population Biology
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 [...]
Methodological choices influence ecological inference in passive acoustic monitoring of a Neotropical nightjar
Published: 2026-05-30
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Population Biology
Passive acoustic monitoring is increasingly used to investigate species activity and habitat use through occupancy analyses. Yet, the complex analytical workflow, from automated detector choice to confidence thresholds and statistical modeling framework, is amongst the factors that influence ecological inference, and the extent these decisions affect modelling outputs is poorly debated. Here, we [...]
A systematic review on the effectiveness of salmonid spawning habitat improvements, and recommendations to potentially increase productivity of depressed Newfoundland Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) populations
Published: 2026-05-23
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Parasites and forage as determinants of body condition and population size in an imperiled ungulate.
Published: 2026-05-20
Subjects: Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Parasitology, Population Biology
Rapid environmental changes are resulting in widespread changes in population size, health, and physiology of wildlife, especially at northern latitudes where the impacts of climate change are more pronounced. Barren-ground caribou (Rangifer tarandus groenlandicus) have declined across much of their range in recent decades, and while the ultimate causes are unknown, western science and local [...]
A Game-Theoretic and Dynamical-Systems Framework for Anti-Poaching Resource Allocation: A Case Study of Etosha National Park
Published: 2026-05-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Natural Resources and Conservation, Population Biology
Wildlife poaching threatens biodiversity across sub-Saharan Africa, and is especially acute for critically endangered species such as the black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis). Etosha National Park, Namibia (22,935 km²), is patrolled by approximately 295 anti-poaching rangers—fewer than 0.02 per km²—posing two interlinked operational questions: where should a limited workforce be placed to maximise [...]
Sexually antagonistic selection: a review of the theory and its implications
Published: 2026-05-09
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 [...]
Making survival spatial: an integrated model for territory occupancy and capture-recapture data
Published: 2026-05-05
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Knowledge about spatial variation in survival is central to understanding population dynamics and guiding conservation, yet assessing it is very hard. This limitation arises because capture-mark-recapture (CMR) data required for such inference must be collected over large spatial extents, which is logistically demanding and seldom possible. By contrast, territory occupancy (TO) data are typically [...]
Species Field Theory: Discovery of Latent Ecological Structure from Community Time Series
Published: 2026-05-04
Subjects: Population Biology
Ecological abundance time series are shaped not only by interactions among species, but also by broader community-level dynamics such as hidden resources and shared ecological constraints. We introduce Species Field Theory (SFT), a field-based framework for discovering latent ecological structure from abundance time series. SFT recovered directed interactions in a six-species Lotka--Volterra [...]
Autonomous biodiversity credits on the horizon?
Published: 2026-04-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Biodiversity credits are being pushed as a means to fund nature conservation. Much of the debate around credits has concerned additionality, leakage, and permanence, and the extent to which biodiversity can be captured in an individual unit. As AI models continue to develop, however, technology could create a new kind of loss-of-control problem for biodiversity credits. In this Perspective, we [...]
When does sampling uncertainty matter in matrix population models? Evidence from published projection matrices
Published: 2026-04-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
1. The collation of thousands of population projection matrices in the COM(P)ADRE Matrix Databases has enabled large-scale comparative analyses in ecology, evolution, and demography. A persistent challenge is that transition rates are estimated from finite samples, yet the resulting sampling uncertainty is rarely reported and typically ignored in downstream analyses. Although sampling uncertainty [...]
A review of 28 Years of beach-nesting Australian Pied Oystercatcher Haematopus Longirostris conservation in the Richmond River Area, New South Wales
Published: 2026-04-06
Subjects: Ornithology, Population Biology
The Australian pied oystercatcher Haematopus longirostris is a shorebird that is Endangered in the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. This study reviewed data from the Richmond River Area Pied Oystercatcher Protection Program 1997–2013 and Richmond River Area Shorebird Protection Program 2014–2024, on the north coast of NSW. The increase in breeding population size from an estimated 25 [...]
Land use and climate shape amphibian multidimensional diversity and conservation in a coffee agroforestry landscape, Western Ghats
Published: 2026-04-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Shade coffee agroforests are recognized as refuges for biodiversity and potential allies in conservation across the human-modified tropics. However, biodiversity is strongly influenced by coffee cultivation methods and climates, both of which vary widely and are increasingly dynamic. In this context, one significant but understudied change is the shift in cultivated species from arabica (Coffea [...]
Efficient Bayesian implementations of capture-recapture models with Stan
Published: 2026-04-02
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Survival Analysis
Capture-recapture (CR) methods are a mainstay of ecological statistics for estimating demographic parameters and population sizes in animal populations. The advent of Bayesian methods made complex hierarchical formulations accessible to practitioners, largely relying on conditional likelihood formulations with latent discrete parameters. However, modern gradient-based MCMC methods that are the [...]
Will Climate Change Affect the Sustainability of Krill Fishing? A Simulation Study.
Published: 2026-03-31
Subjects: Marine Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
In the Southern Ocean, Antarctic krill form the base of the food web, and are the primary food source for a wide range of species, including whales, penguins and fish. Krill also comprises the largest fishery resource in Antarctica, but are increasingly thought to be impacted by changing environmental conditions associated with climate change. In order to explore potential synergistic impacts of [...]
On Information in Evolutionary Processes
Published: 2026-03-26
Subjects: Evolution, Population Biology
Since the first attempts to introduce an information-theoretical formalism into the description of evolutionary processes, several authors have argued that such approaches are inappropriate because biological evolution does not unfold in a predefined space of possibilities. To properly address that objection, we need to separate the semantics of the emergence of biological functions from the [...]