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Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Behavior and Ethology

okaapi: an R package for generating social networks based on trait preferences

Josefine Bohr Brask, Lauren J. N. Brent, Delphine De Moor

Published: 2025-07-09
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Modelling of simulated networks with generative network models plays a central role for our understanding of the emergence and consequences of network structures. Accessible software that generates simulated networks based on relevant processes can facilitate the use of this important approach in behavioural ecology, and can help drive forward our understanding of animal social structures. Here [...]

Using accelerometer-based behavioral classification to enhance scavenger conservation

Gideon Vaadia, Marta Acácio, Tal Agassi, et al.

Published: 2025-07-08
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences

Human activities are endangering animal species globally and implementing effective conservation strategies requires understanding animal behavior and ecology. Technological advancements in GPS tracking technology, accelerometry, and machine learning algorithms are now making it possible to study animal movement and behavior remotely. However, due to the challenge of building supervised machine [...]

Ungeneralizable generalizations? A meta-meta-analysis of the influence of taxonomic bias on the study of behavior.

Ned A Dochtermann, MA Sekhar, Shinichi Nakagawa

Published: 2025-07-03
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Meta-analysis is a powerful tool for synthesizing behavioral research and identifying general patterns. However, are the conclusions we draw from these analyses truly representative across animal groups? Alternatively, are our conclusions shaped by taxonomic biases in the underlying research? For example, in animal behavior, vertebrates are often overrepresented in the research we conduct. This [...]

Emerging tools to advance neuroethology in butterflies and moths

Francesco Cicconardi, Max S. Farnworth, Robin Grob, et al.

Published: 2025-06-30
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Entomology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Butterflies and moths have played historically important roles in developing our understanding of both ecology and evolutionary biology, and neuroethology. In both contexts, the diversity of behavioral strategies and specializations displayed by different Lepidoptera make them informative case studies. However, as in neuroscience more broadly, lepidopteran neuroethology has tended to focus on [...]

Free-ranging dogs in the streets: foreseeing a multispecies coexistence crisis beyond shortsighted kindness or conflicts

Nishant Kumar

Published: 2025-06-21
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Zoology

Coexistence solutions tout conflict mitigation goals for commensals and wildlife, often ignoring the lived multispecies entanglements. Tropical cities have become battlegrounds of misguided kindness and escalating conflicts with animals. Human niche expansion creates a paradox for free-ranging denizens: abundant food sources from waste, yet unprecedented ecological pressures from infrastructural [...]

Nutritional needs and social bonds: how early-life dependencies shape meerkat sociality

Zoe Jayne Turner, Christof Neumann, Tommaso Saccà, et al.

Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Across species, social systems vary in their extent of interactions, competition, cooperation, and cohesion. Though there has been considerable research on overall social structures, the dynamics of how an individual's social niche develops during early life and how biological needs of offspring shape sociality has received less attention. In this study, we took a longitudinal approach targeting [...]

From vocal homophily to vocal repertoire flexibility: Unravelling the socioecological drivers of language evolution

Sabine Stoll, Carel van Schaik, Judith M Burkart, et al.

Published: 2025-06-16
Subjects: Animal Studies, Anthropology, Behavior and Ethology, Evolution

Since diverging from the last common ancestor with bonobos and chimpanzees, the communication system of the hominin lineage underwent a radical transformation. Vocal production learning - the ability to produce novel vocalizations based on experience - is the necessary pre-condition for changing an ape-like communication system into one that is infinitely flexible, extensively learned, and [...]

Toxin resistance mechanisms span biological scales in the Royal Ground Snake (Colubridae: Erythrolamprus reginae)

Valeria Ramírez-Castañeda, Samantha Nixon, Dario Alarcón-Naforo, et al.

Published: 2025-06-13
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genomics, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Molecular Biology, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Physiology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences, Systems Biology, Zoology

Exposure to multiple toxic compounds imposes diverse selective pressures, potentially leading to a toxin-resistant phenotype that operates across biological levels. There are several known toxin resistance mechanisms–such as behavioral avoidance, metabolic detoxification, and target-site insensitivity. However, most studies have been conducted with exposure to a single toxin or have focused on [...]

Quality, quantity, and the adaptive function of social relationships

Delphine De Moor, Lauren J. N. Brent

Published: 2025-05-31
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology

Affiliative social relationships have clear links to fitness in a variety of species, yet exactly why that is the case remains elusive. One major development has been the recognition that animals form different kinds of social relationships. These likely represent distinct evolutionary strategies, beneficial in different environments. To set the stage for investigating this idea systematically, [...]

The role of touch in marine mammal sociality: a review and future directions

Ana Eguiguren, Sam Froman Walmsley, Laura Joan Feyrer, et al.

Published: 2025-05-28
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences

While social living has many advantages, it also has significant challenges associated with differences in individual interests, abilities, and intentions. Individuals in social species rely on diverse behaviours and signals across senses to mediate their relationships. In some species—particularly primates—touch plays a key role in establishing, affirming, and repairing social bonds. However, [...]

Cellular Innovations and Diversity in the Lepidopteran Compound Eye

Wei Lu, Marcus R. Kronforst

Published: 2025-05-28
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics

Lepidoptera, having co-diversified with flowering plants and adapted to various diel niches, present a remarkable system for studying compound eye cell type diversity. Here we synthesize the latest research regarding lepidopteran eye evolution across different timescales, from species-level variation to family-level changes, and mechanistic levels, from broad anatomical variation to molecular [...]

Can physical closeness measure variation and change in pair association strength in captive geckos?

Alena L. Krummenacher, Birgit Szabo

Published: 2025-05-27
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Zoology

Pair bonding is a key social behaviour but remains understudied in reptiles despite a growing body of evidence suggesting that some species exhibit complex sociality. The lack of evidence regarding the expression of pair association in social lizards species hampers our understanding of its effects on captive welfare. As a first step towards a better understanding of pair related social behaviour [...]

State-space models and inference approaches for aquatic animal tracking with passive acoustic telemetry and biologging sensors

Edward Lavender, Andreas Scheidegger, Helen Moor, et al.

Published: 2025-05-15
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

1. Passive acoustic telemetry systems are widely deployed to track animals in aquatic environments. However, investments in integrative methods of data analysis have remained comparatively limited, with current workflows typically considering individual movements separately from space use, home ranges and residency. 2. This review presents a unifying perspective that bridges this divide. We [...]

Aligning Behavioural Ecotoxicology with Real-World Water Concentrations: Current Minimum Tested Levels for Pharmaceuticals Far Exceed Environmental Reality

Jake Mitchell Martin, Jack A. Brand, Erin S. McCallum

Published: 2025-05-13
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Environmental Health Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Toxicology

Behavioural ecotoxicology has rapidly emerged as a key area of research, offering sensitive and ecologically meaningful endpoints for detecting sub-lethal effects of contaminants. Much of this work has focused on pharmaceutical pollutants, now widely recognised as contaminants of emerging concern in aquatic systems. Given the field’s rapid growth and the availability of large-scale open-access [...]

Acclimation to fluctuating hypoxia alters activity and escape performance, but not metabolism, in guppies

Elise Doddema, Malin Fløysand, Andrea Campos-Candela, et al.

Published: 2025-05-02
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology

Organisms living in fluctuating environments must cope with constantly changing conditions. Here we investigated how acclimation to either fluctuating or constant oxygen affects behavioural and physiological responses to hypoxia in guppies (Poecilia reticulata). Guppies were acclimated to either fluctuating hypoxia (100% of air saturation during day to 40% at night) or constant normoxia (100% of [...]

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