Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Behavior and Ethology
Introduced urban lizards (Podarcis muralis) exhibit environmentally plastic activity patterns and precise behavioral thermoregulation
Published: 2025-09-14
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Integrative Biology, Zoology
The ability to effectively thermoregulate is important for most ectotherms, as body temperature determines the rate of nearly all physiological processes. However, for most organisms we lack understanding of which environmental factors affect thermoregulatory behaviors, especially outside of a laboratory setting, and how individual behaviors scale over an entire day and at the population level. [...]
Persefone.jl: Modelling Biodiversity in Dynamic Agricultural Landscapes
Published: 2025-08-31
Subjects: Agriculture, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Population Biology
Agricultural landscapes are highly dynamic, constantly changing across space and time due to the effects of farm management, plant phenology, and environmental fluctuations. These dynamics play a critical role in shaping biodiversity patterns and contribute to negative population trends in numerous species, but are rarely considered in ecological models of farmland biodiversity. Here, we present [...]
Lateralisation shapes spatial learning in lizards
Published: 2025-08-31
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Evolution, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Spatial memory is fundamental cognitive process that allows animals to navigate and interact with their environment effectively. While extensively studied in mammals and birds, the mechanisms underlying spatial cognition in reptiles remain less understood. In this study, we investigated spatial learning and the potential influence of behavioural lateralisation in the common wall lizard (Podarcis [...]
Habitual tool use on monopolizable resources affects group cohesion
Published: 2025-08-26
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology
Tool-aided extractive foraging changes animals’ interactions with their environment by expanding access to novel and/or high-quality foods. If and how habitual reliance on tool use impacts animals’ social dynamics is less understood. If materials for tool use are monopolizable, tool use might increase intragroup competition. While higher intragroup competition encourages greater group spread, [...]
Tracking the hidden niches: Movement-based insights into northern lapwing intraspecific variation and conservation
Published: 2025-08-01
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Entomology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Other Animal Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Zoology
Global monitoring data reveal farmland bird population declines, primarily driven by agricultural intensification, chemical inputs, and climate shifts. The northern lapwing (Vanellus vanellus) is a farmland bird that exemplifies this decline across Europe. The aim of this study is to quantify intraspecific variation in habitat selection and evaluate the degree of behavioural variance in resource [...]
Exploring the Integration of Traditional Ecological Knowledge with Artificial Intelligence to Mitigate Human-Wildlife Conflict in Kerala, India
Published: 2025-08-01
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Increasing human-wildlife conflict (HWC) in forest-fringe landscapes necessitates innovative and culturally acceptable mitigation strategies. This note proposes integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to mitigate HWC in Kerala. The proposition aims to translate African rural traditional knowledge of using alarm calls of Guinea fowls (Numida meleagris) [...]
okaapi: an R package for generating social networks based on trait preferences
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
Published: 2025-07-07
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences
1. Human activities are endangering animal species globally and implementing effective conservation strategies requires understanding animal behavior and ecology. Advancements in GPS tracking technology, accelerometry, and machine learning algorithms are allowing the in-situ study of animal movement and behavior remotely. However, the challenge of building supervised machine learning [...]
Ungeneralizable generalizations? A meta-meta-analysis of the influence of taxonomic bias on the study of behavior
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 overrepresented in the research we conduct. This [...]
Emerging tools to advance neuroethology in butterflies and moths
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 [...]
The Indian Street dog crisis and multispecies coexistence in tropical urban futures
Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Zoology
Preface Cities in the Global South struggle with human-animal coexistence conundrums, e.g., in South Asia, old and new collide: people raise livestock informally and feed animals within heterogeneously developed, juxtaposed patches. Digital economies boom amidst threats from waste piles that cause zoonotic diseases and conflicts, as exemplified by the ongoing free-ranging dog crisis in India. [...]
Nutritional needs and social bonds: early-life dependencies shape meerkat sociality
Published: 2025-06-17
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
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 have received less attention. In this study, we took a longitudinal approach targeting the developmental period from nutritional dependency to independent foraging, and toward sexual maturity, to [...]
From vocal homophily to vocal repertoire flexibility: Unravelling the socioecological drivers of language evolution
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)
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 selective pressures across biological levels. There are several known toxin resistance mechanisms–such as behavioral avoidance, metabolic detoxification, and target-site insensitivity but an integrative approach to consider multiple toxins and resistance strategies. Predators of amphibians, for example, must counteract multiple chemicals secreted by [...]
Quality, quantity, and the adaptive function of social relationships
Published: 2025-05-31
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology
Affiliative social relationships have clear links to fitness in many species, yet exactly why that is the case remains elusive. We unify theory from socio-ecology and network science to set forth testable predictions of how individuals should invest in their social relationships given the relative benefits of different social strategies across environmental contexts. We propose that relationship [...]