Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Population Biology
A new computational framework for speeding up the fitting of multistate capture–mark–recapture models
Published: 2026-06-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
1. Multistate capture–mark–recapture (CMR) models are widely used to estimate the parameters governing demographic processes such as survival, dispersal, and recruitment in animal populations. In Bayesian analyses, the multinomial likelihood of multistate CMR models summarizes individual encounter histories into groups defined by states and capture occasions, and is regarded as a computationally [...]
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 [...]
Neural dynamic N-mixture model: a deep learning framework to infer demographic rates from count data
Published: 2026-06-18
Subjects: Population Biology
Changes in population abundance arise from underlying demographic processes, namely survival and recruitment, and knowledge of these two vital rates is crucial for better understanding biodiversity changes. Although demographic data based on individual encounter histories are often sparse in space and time, the dynamic N-mixture model provides an alternative by inferring survival and recruitment [...]
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 [...]
Mapping Mechanistic Modeling of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Across Migratory Flyways: A Systematic Review
Published: 2026-06-10
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Diseases, Epidemiology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Virus Diseases
Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses, particularly H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, continue to spread globally via wild migratory birds along defined flyway corridors. Mechanistic models are essential tools for understanding HPAI transmission dynamics in flyway systems. Yet the geographic distribution of such modeling efforts across migratory flyways remains unknown. To inform the global [...]
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: 2026-05-13
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: 2026-05-06
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 [...]