Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Population Biology
Validating causal inference in time series models with conditional-independence tests
Published: 2025-03-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Population Biology, Sustainability
Ecologists often use time-series models to approximate dynamics arising from density dependence, species interactions, community synchrony, and other processes. Dynamic structural equation models can represent simultaneous and lagged interactions among variables with missing data, and therefore encompasses a wide family of analyses (linear regression, vector autoregressive models, and dynamic [...]
Mystery of the disappearing dogfish: transboundary analyses reveal steep population declines across the Northeast Pacific with little evidence for regional redistribution
Published: 2025-03-11
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Population Biology
Quantifying broad-scale population trends and distribution change is critical for effective management and conservation of marine species, particularly under climate change. However, fragmented regional survey data often hinder such efforts for transboundary populations. A prime example is Pacific Spiny Dogfish (Squalus suckleyi, Squalidae), a small shark with a remarkably slow life history and [...]
Rapid declines in southern Sierra Nevada fisher habitat driven by drought and wildfire
Published: 2025-02-27
Subjects: Forest Management, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Forest disturbances are a natural ecological process, but climate and land-use change are altering disturbance regimes at an unprecedented rate, posing significant threats to biological communities and species of concern. Our aim was to develop an automated habitat monitoring system for the Southern Sierra Nevada Distinct Population Segment of fisher (Pekania pennanti) in California, USA to [...]
Quantifying changes in fish population stability using statistical early warnings of regime shifts
Published: 2025-02-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Ecological conservation and management benefits from tools that can foresee impending problems, or those in early stages. Statistical early warnings of regime shifts, which can identify generic changes in system behavior associated with stability loss and potential abrupt changes to a new, distinct state, are theoretically well grounded and have been successfully applied in real-world settings. [...]
On the feasibility of nonadaptive, nonsequential abiogenesis. An alternative to the Oparin-Haldane model
Published: 2025-02-18
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Computational Biology, Evolution, Molecular Biology, Molecular Genetics, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences, Systems Biology
The emergence of life from non-living matter remains one of the most profound unresolved questions in natural philosophy. The Oparin-Haldane model assumes a gradualist evolution, where adaptive precursors are obligated. Yet, for more than a century, all experimental efforts have failed to achieve abiogenesis. May it be that this view is paradoxical in explaining how living matter arises without [...]
Northward expansion of the thermal limit for the tick Ixodes ricinus over the past 40 years
Published: 2025-02-14
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
The tick Ixodes ricinus is the main pathogen vector in Europe. Many speculations have been made about the effect of past climate change on the potential distribution of this ectothermic organism, despite a poor understanding of how climate change has resulted in distribution changes to date. In this study, we used a public cross-sectional dataset of I. ricinus abundance at the northern edge of [...]
Prevalence of Leaf Parasitism by Insects and Fungi in Wild Plant Communities: Implications for Community Assembly
Published: 2025-01-29
Subjects: Parasitology, Plant Pathology, Population Biology
Parasitism by infectious diseases and insect pests significantly shapes wild plant communities by stabilizing them through suppressing dominant species and destabilizing them by suppressing minor species. However, the dynamics of parasitism in wild ecosystems remain understudied. This study aimed to determine whether parasites infect a wide range of host species or are plant-specific, assess the [...]
Bottom-up interactions in age-structured stock assessment and state-space mass-balance modelling
Published: 2025-01-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Population Biology
Age-structured stock assessment models are used worldwide to predict the likely impact of changing harvest on future fisheries yield. However, age-structured models ignore the impacts of predator consumption on prey survival (top-down impacts) and prey availability on predator growth (bottom-up impacts), whereas multispecies statistical catch-at-age models often incorporate top-down but not [...]
AI and Big Data for invasion biology: finding, modelling and forecasting the population dynamics of invaders
Published: 2025-01-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the study and management of invasive species through analytical and predictive tools that optimize detection, monitoring, and automated eradication. In this work, we reviewed the fundamental principles of machine learning and deep learning, illustrated with recent case studies on invasive species. We also present the first systematic review of [...]
Reduced levels of relatedness indicate that great-tailed grackles disperse further at the edge of their range
Published: 2024-12-19
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology
It is generally thought that behavioral flexibility, the ability to change behavior when circumstances change, plays an important role in the ability of a species to rapidly expand their geographic range. To expand into new areas, individuals might specifically show flexibility in dispersal behavior, their movement away from their parents to where they themselves reproduce. Great-tailed grackles [...]
Traditional water structures in villages support amphibian populations within a protected landscape
Published: 2024-11-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Amphibians are among the most globally threatened vertebrates, with habitat loss and degradation being the primary drivers of their decline. While natural wetlands are essential for amphibian survival, artificial habitats can also play a significant role as refuges, especially in human-altered landscapes. This study examines the role of artificial waterbodies in supporting amphibian populations [...]
New technology for an ancient fish: A lamprey life cycle modeling tool with an R Shiny application
Published: 2024-11-25
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Population Biology, Systems Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Lampreys (Petromyzontiformes) are an ancient group of fishes with complex life histories. We created a life cycle model that includes an R Shiny interactive web application interface to simulate abundance by life stage. This will allow scientists and managers to connect available demographic information in a framework that can be applied to questions regarding lamprey biology and conservation. We [...]
Causes of recent changes in bill length in Crozet wandering albatross, a long-lived seabird
Published: 2024-11-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Population Biology
Phenotypes are changing in many wild populations, largely in response to environmental changes due to human activities. Phenotypic change can be driven by several mechanisms, with contrasted consequences for the persistence of populations. Identifying those mechanisms is key to understand current responses to human pressures and to predict the future fate of populations. Here we attempt to [...]
Evolutionarily Optimal Phage Life-History Traits
Published: 2024-11-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Population Biology
Optimal phage life-history traits are computed from data on phenotypic tradeoffs presented in De Paepe and Tadei (2006). A parameter is introduced, l_e, that describes the loss of virions in the environment. Hygienic interventions increase l_e. The optimal burst size decreases with l_e and the optimal capsid thickness increases with l_e. The optimal viral fitness also decreases with l_e. An [...]
Density dependence impacts our understanding of population resilience
Published: 2024-09-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Current metrics of demographic resilience (e.g., resistance, recovery) summarize the potential responses of populations to the frequent, varied disturbances that ecological systems experience. Much of the application of these metrics has focused on the potential response of time-invariant, density-independent structured population models to hypothetical disturbances. Here, we examine such [...]