Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Zoology
Reindeer habitat selection and movement changes with cumulative impacts from mining and wind power development
Published: 2026-04-29
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Industrial expansion often occurs in landscapes already affected by multiple disturbances, leading to cumulative impacts on biodiversity and local communities. With the societal pressure for an rapid ‘green transition’, land-use changes intensifies, yet most impact assessments remain local and project-based, disregarding cumulative impacts. We conceptualized and disentangled key dimensions of [...]
Toward repurposing global passive air sampling networks for insect monitoring: Promises and pitfalls of airborne eDNA
Published: 2026-04-28
Subjects: Entomology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
1. Polyurethane foam passive air samplers (PUF-PAS) are widely deployed to monitor environmental pollutants, yet their capacity to capture biological signals such as environmental DNA (eDNA) remains largely unexplored. Recent advances in airborne eDNA research create a timely opportunity to evaluate PUF-PAS as a tool for biodiversity monitoring and to leverage existing global sampling networks [...]
Plastic shifts in thermal preference and thermoregulation strategy across ontogeny in an invasive fly
Published: 2026-04-21
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology
Behavioural thermoregulation allows ectotherms to escape extreme or seek optimal temperatures. Its precision can impact survival and fitness under changing conditions and its plasticity can be an adaptive strategy when the plasticity of thermal limits is insufficient to buffer against warming. We explore the developmental and intergenerational plasticity of behavioural thermoregulation strategies [...]
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 [...]
Integrating ecoacoustic monitoring with machine learning to survey black-and-white ruffed lemurs (Varecia variegata) in Madagascar's Corridor Forestier d'Ambositra Vondrozo (COFAV)
Published: 2026-04-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Zoology
Black-and-white ruffed lemurs (Varecia variegata) are a Critically Endangered species limited to the fragmented eastern Malagasy rainforests. The importance of their conservation is underscored by their vital seed dispersal and pollinator niches; they are a keystone species and indicator of forest health. Little is known of their distribution in the Corridor Forestier d'Ambositra Vondrozo [...]
Male scent-marks predict fitness via socio-spatial dominance, but not female choice, in a lacertid lizard
Published: 2026-04-03
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Zoology
Chemical communication via scent-marks is widely recognised as a key mediator of sexual selection in lizards, yet their role remains contentious because we mostly ignore how scent-mark composition ultimately impacts male fitness in nature. Male scent-marks are often proposed to function as condition-dependent honest sexual signals mediating female choice, but an arising alternative hypothesis is [...]
Genetic variance and phenotypic selection on pathogen-linked oviposition choice in Drosophila
Published: 2026-03-23
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 [...]
Insect oviposition as a simple system to investigate the ecology and evolution of pathogen avoidance behaviour
Published: 2026-03-20
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 [...]
Drivers of roe deer use in fragmented forest landscapes; implications for current and future management in the context of policy driven forest expansion
Published: 2026-03-13
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 [...]
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 [...]
Composite virulence: useful metric or conceptual trap?
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Animal Experimentation and Research, Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, Immunopathology, Life Sciences, Medical Microbiology, Microbiology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Immunology and Infectious Disease, Parasitic Diseases, Parasitology, Pathogenic Microbiology, Plant Pathology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Zoology
Virulence, the harm an infection causes to its host, is a cornerstone concept in ecology and evolution, yet it remains difficult to quantify because infection impact is multidimensional, dynamic, and context-dependent. Infections can reduce host performance through multiple, partially redundant routes (including mortality, fecundity loss, behavioural impairment, and physiological disruption), [...]
Roe Deer show an affinity for woodland and reluctance to cross roads
Published: 2026-02-19
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Animals use landscapes unequally and have differential responses to anthropogenic changes such as land cover modification. Predicting such responses can be challenging, requiring knowledge of animal movements. This knowledge is particularly valuable where human-animal interactions have implications for either's well-being. Large herbivores, with relatively high mobility, often come in contact [...]
Chemical Ecology of Arachnids - Morphology, Behaviour, and Semiochemicals
Published: 2026-02-17
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Arachnids represent a diverse and ecologically influential paraphyletic assemblage of chelicerate arthropods that has colonized virtually every terrestrial habitat. Arachnids contribute to ecosystems as predators, parasites and decomposers. Yet, the chemical mechanisms that allow arachnids to interact with the environment remain strikingly understudied relative to their taxonomic breadth. Much of [...]
Maximum performance, repeatability, and intraindividual variability of sprinting in common wall lizards (Podarcis muralis)
Published: 2026-02-17
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Integrative Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Zoology
The repeatability of functional traits like physiological maxima (maximum performance) measures the reliability of underlying measurements. However, best practices for analyzing maximal performance while accounting for within-individual variation are lacking. Here, we quantify the coefficient of variation and repeatability of maximum sprinting speed in common wall lizards (Podarcis muralis) from [...]
Should hunters fear the wolf? Effects of wolf recolonization on ungulate harvests in a multi-species European landscape
Published: 2026-02-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Zoology
1. The recolonization of European landscapes by the gray wolf Canis lupus raises questions about the ecological effects of predators and their impact on human interests such as large-game hunting bags, leaving room for alarmism among hunters. 2. We investigated the impact of wolf on recreational hunting by using long-term (2006-2023) and high-resolution (234 hunting districts) hunting bag data on [...]