Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Behavior and Ethology
Acute bacterial challenge in Drosophila reveals age and sex dependent feeding and macronutrient choice without generalised anorexia
Published: 2026-04-10
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Entomology, Integrative Biology, Zoology
Sickness behaviours are often interpreted as adaptive host responses that reallocate resources from performance to defence. Anorexia - a reduction in food intake - is one of the most frequently cited examples, yet evidence across insects is variable and rarely separates the effects of wounding, immune stimulation, and live infection. Here we use a factorial design in Drosophila melanogaster to [...]
Why are embodied social signals concentrated towards the rostral region? — The rostrum concentration hypothesis
Published: 2026-04-09
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biological Psychology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Although frequently embodied, the relationship of animal social communication with body layout has rarely been investigated from a unified cognitive perspective. Across animal taxa, socially relevant signals, ranging from facial expressions and gaze to colouration and morphology, are strikingly concentrated towards the anterior region of the body. Here, we propose the Rostrum Concentration [...]
Coexistence of phenotypic plasticity and habitat use in natural populations
Published: 2026-03-24
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
When studying how individuals adapt to environmental changes, the environment is traditionally viewed as a passive backdrop, with individuals modifying their phenotype in response to environmental conditions (i.e., phenotypic plasticity). However, this perspective overlooks the active role of habitat choice in mediating individual responses to environmental changes. In this paper, we argue for [...]
Genetic variance and phenotypic selection on pathogen-linked oviposition choice in Drosophila
Published: 2026-03-24
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Behavior and Ethology, Entomology, Evolution, Genetics, Integrative Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Zoology
Pathogen-avoidance behaviour is assumed to be adaptive, yet its phenotypic variability and genetic heritability are rarely quantified. In species lacking post-oviposition care, avoiding potentially infectious egg-laying substrates would improve offspring survival and should therefore be under strong selection. We used two-choice oviposition assays to quantify the phenotypic and genetic variance [...]
Heritabilities and genetic correlations of Drosophila melanogaster locomotory behaviour traits: a high-throughput phenotyping approach
Published: 2026-03-24
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Evolution
Genetic variance forms the basis for evolutionary inferences as it describes the evolutionary potential of traits. The major limitation of quantitative genetic studies is achieving sufficient power and sample sizes to estimate heritabilities with sufficient precision. This issue is especially important in the case of traits that are inherently susceptible to stochastic, nonbiological variation. [...]
Insect oviposition as a simple system to investigate the ecology and evolution of pathogen avoidance behaviour
Published: 2026-03-21
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Integrative Biology, Laboratory and Basic Science Research Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Zoology
Behavioural avoidance of pathogens and parasites is a ubiquitous first line of defence, yet we lack tractable systems that connect cue detection to fitness consequences, population transmission, and coevolution. We propose insect oviposition as a model that yields general principles for avoidance across taxa. Oviposition decisions fix offspring exposure, they are governed by well‑mapped sensory [...]
Towards a better understanding of adaptation: Problem description, partial solutions, and recommendations
Published: 2026-03-20
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Developmental Biology, Evolution, Human Ecology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Genetics and Genomics, Other Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Population Biology, Science and Technology Studies
This paper is the product of an international workshop aiming to make progress in our general understanding of adaptation. We met from 5-7 February 2025 in Hannover (Germany), funded by the foundation “Volkswagen Stiftung”. For our group of theoretical and empirical biologists, social scientists, and philosophers of science we set up a program to facilitate communication and collaboration between [...]
iDeer: A decision-support tool for managing deer alongside woodland creation
Published: 2026-03-19
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Increasing deer (Cervidae) densities driven by land-use change and climate warming represent a growing challenge to the establishment and management of woodlands across temperate biomes. Targeting deer management is challenging without spatially explicit information on potential impact risks under alternative management scenarios. Here we present the iDeer Tool [...]
Flexibility training does not increase behavioral diversity of Florida scrub-jays
Published: 2026-03-18
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Human modifications of environments are expanding, causing global changes that other species must adjust to or suffer from. Behavioral flexibility (hereafter 'flexibility') could be key to coping with rapid change. Behavioral research can contribute to conservation by determining which behaviors can predict the ability to adjust to human modified environments and whether these can be manipulated. [...]
Assessing the dual utility of nuptial patterning in the rainbow darter (Etheostoma caeruleum)
Published: 2026-03-16
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
In this study, we assessed the possible dual utility of nuptial color patterns in male rainbow darters (Etheostoma caeruleum) in the context of male-male territorial interactions and female mate choice. Using a cohort of wild-caught male E. caeruleum, we conducted simulated territorial contests between pairs of males in the lab. We scored the “winner” and the “loser” of each contest based on [...]
Drivers of roe deer use in fragmented forest landscapes; implications for management in the context of policy driven forest expansion
Published: 2026-03-14
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Zoology
Forest expansion is a major current land use change across Europe. How this will affect the forest use of the most common European wild ungulate species, roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), and associated forest ecosystem services and disservices is poorly understood. Using a forest-agricultural mosaic landscape in northeast Scotland, we selected forests across a size and connectivity gradient as a [...]
Long-lasting negative effects of poor early life conditions on cognitive performance in adulthood in a wild bird
Published: 2026-03-09
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Nutrition, Ornithology
Adverse conditions encountered during growth, such as stress or malnutrition, are known to affect cognitive development and functions in adulthood in humans and laboratory animals. However, how early life conditions can influence adult cognition in wild animals remains unclear. Yet cognitive abilities such as innovation can be crucial for animals to cope with rapidly changing environments. We [...]
The Individualised Niche in Motion; quantifying individualised niches with movement data
Published: 2026-02-26
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Evolution, Ornithology, Other Animal Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Individuals of the same species often differ consistently in their use of resources, their responses to environmental gradients, and their movement decisions. Between-individual variation across niche axes has been shown to have important ecological consequences. Yet practical frameworks that translate modern tracking data into operational, comparable measures of niche individual specialisation [...]
Anecdote: When courtship blurs: a case of male-directed sexual signaling in house crickets (Acheta domesticus)
Published: 2026-02-24
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Same-sex sexual behaviour has been reported across diverse animal taxa and is increasingly understood as a flexible outcome of sexual signaling rather than an evolutionary anomaly. In insects, such behaviours are often temporary, context dependent, and expressed alongside opposite-sex courtship. This pattern has led to increasing emphasis on condition-dependent mating filters, defined as how [...]
Among-trait covariance and cross-year repeatability for direct and indirect individual effects in producer-scrounger behaviour in wild house sparrows
Published: 2026-02-21
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution
Variation in social traits can be attributed to direct individual effects (DIEs) of the focal individual and indirect individual effects (IIEs) due to its social partners eliciting behavioural change, analogous to indirect genetic effects. Indirect effects affect the expressed phenotypic variation upon which selection can act, especially when they covary with direct effects, providing a potential [...]