Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Animal Studies
Standardizing turn-taking metrics: A methodological toolkit for data annotation across species and taxa
Published: 2026-03-27
Subjects: Animal Studies, Communication, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Conversational turn-taking, the cooperative reciprocal exchange of short and flexible turns, is fundamental for communication and social coordination. Initially thought to be uniquely human, recent research showed some evidence of cooperative turn-taking also in other animal species. However, systematic evaluations and comparisons of turn-taking skills within and across species pose considerable [...]
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 [...]
Personality tips the scale: How individual differences in exploration shape behavioural and hormonal adjustment to different environments
Published: 2026-01-07
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Animal Studies, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Individuals show consistent differences in their behaviour across time and/or context, usually referred to as animal personality in behavioural ecology. These inter-individual differences raised the question if animals of different personalities also vary in how they adjust to certain environmental conditions. In the present study, we aimed to investigate personality-dependent adjustments to [...]
Behavioural repertoire and the onset of precocious sexual behaviours in juvenile ruffs (Calidris pugnax)
Published: 2025-12-10
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Adult phenotypes are shaped by developmental processes during early life. This also applies to reproduction and dominance-related behaviours before maturation, called precocious sexual behaviours. However, beyond largely anecdotal reports, the onset of such behaviours is rarely studied. Here we document the development of precocious sexual behaviours in the ruff Calidris pugnax, a lekking [...]
Going with, or going to the dogs: City Serenade of Multispecies Survival
Published: 2025-11-03
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Community-based Research, Human Ecology, Ornithology, Other Animal Sciences, Population Biology, Urban Studies and Planning, Zoology
1. As tropical cities rapidly urbanise, multispecies coexistence faces unprecedented challenges. Ground-dwelling (dogs), arboreal (macaques), and aerial (black kites) urban commensals navigate complex social-ecological systems shaped by anthropogenic resource provisioning, cultural practices, and architectural constraints. Despite escalating human-animal conflicts—20 million annual dog bites in [...]
Women's Role in Elasmobrnach Fishery in Indonesia
Published: 2025-09-29
Subjects: Animal Studies, Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sociology
Women play a significant role in the fisheries chain, particularly in trade and processing, yet they are still not adequately acknowledged. Indonesia is the world's largest shark fishing country, with an average annual production exceeding 100,000 tons. The shark fishery, on its right, is a controversial and often misunderstood topic, not to mention the involvement of vulnerable groups in the [...]
Observation methods in animal behaviour: a simulation study of performance
Published: 2025-08-22
Subjects: Animal Studies, Biological Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Most behavioural studies rely on systematic samples of behaviour, as observing and recording all behavioural events that occur is rarely feasible. Choosing an observation method involves several key decisions, including which individuals to observe, how to sample their behaviour, and how to distribute sampling effort over time. These decisions influence how closely behavioural estimates reflect [...]
Behavioural tactics across thermal gradients align with partial morphological divergence in brook charr
Published: 2025-07-15
Subjects: Animal Studies, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences
Understanding how animals balance environmental constraints is essential for predicting species persistence under climate change. In thermally stratified lakes, cold-water fishes such as brook charr (Salvelinus fontinalis) must navigate vertical gradients in temperature and oxygen to optimize foraging while avoiding physiological stress. We hypothesized that individuals would exhibit behavioral [...]
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 [...]
The role of touch in marine mammal sociality: a review and future directions
Published: 2025-05-27
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, [...]
Facing the heat: behavioral and molecular underpinnings of heat stress in bumblebees
Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavioral Neurobiology, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Climate change heralds an era of increased heat waves. Insects, due to their short generation times and their sensitive ecological requirements, offer a powerful model for studying rapid physiological and behavioral responses to high temperatures. Solitary insects primarily respond to temperature extremes by moving in space or time to remain in a constant environment, or by exploiting phenotypic [...]
Alike but still different: coexistence of four raptor species explained by breeding niche overlap
Published: 2025-03-20
Subjects: Animal Studies, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Understanding how species competing for similar resources coexist and influence each other has been, and still is, one of the big questions of community ecology. This question has often been tackled by comparing ecological niches of species pairs, although usually more than just two species compete for the same resources. We analysed the niche overlap of the breeding niche of four raptorial bird [...]
Socioecology and the role of scramble competition
Published: 2025-03-11
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Animal Studies, Anthropology, Behavior and Ethology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Zoology
Ecological explanations for social organization and behavior are central to behavioral ecology. Unfortunately, the continuing mismatch between theoretical predictions and some empirical data led to increasingly complex hypotheses with numerous factors, raising doubts about their predictive value or even falsifiability. Moreover, several taxon-specific socioecological hypotheses have been [...]
Shaped from an early age: hormonal and behavioural phenotypes in juvenile male guinea pigs living in distinct social environments
Published: 2025-02-05
Subjects: Animal Studies, Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Individuals can adjust to different social environments via shaping of behavioural and endocrine phenotypes. As the social environment can change at any time, individuals need to be able to adjust throughout their lives. Our goal was therefore to examine potential effects of different social environments on the endocrine and behavioural phenotype in male guinea pigs during juvenility, an [...]
Cognitive evolution in major vertebrate clades: the Lack of Attentional Control hypothesis and the Cognition-Opportunities-Needs framework
Published: 2025-01-29
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Animal Studies, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Neuroscience and Neurobiology
The observed difference in relative brain size between endotherms and ectotherms raises questions about potential resulting disparities in brain function between these two groups. Until recently, no clear cognitive advantage was found in endotherms, with ectotherms occasionally even outperforming them in seemingly complex tasks. However, recent research on working memory—a core executive [...]