Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology
Beyond the Vertebrate Model: Insights from Insect Stress Responses
Published: 2026-10-15
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Animal Studies, Behavioral Neurobiology, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Genetics, Molecular Genetics, Systems Biology, Zoology
Stress responses are essential for survival, coordinating behavioural, physiological and molecular adjustments that enable organisms to cope with challenges. Most research has focused on vertebrates, leaving invertebrate stress physiology comparatively underexplored, particularly in insects. In this review, we compare insect and vertebrate stress responses to examine what insects reveal about the [...]
Roasting in nest boxes: physiological, behavioural and fitness consequences of extreme heat in cavity-nesting birds and mitigation strategies
Published: 2026-10-07
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Artificial nest boxes are widely used to mitigate the loss of natural cavities caused by deforestation and habitat degradation, and they have become an important tool in both avian conservation and ecological research. However, the capacity of nest boxes to provide suitable microclimatic conditions for breeding birds is increasingly challenged by climate change. In particular, more frequent and [...]
Beneath the surface: physiology, behaviour, and performance of fossorial amphibians and reptiles
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Integrative Biology
Fossoriality has evolved recurrently in amphibians and reptiles, exposing organisms to a distinctive physical environment that has favoured diverse morphological, physiological, behavioural, and biomechanical adaptations to enable life beneath the surface. Despite substantial progress over recent decades, research has largely examined these traits independently, limiting our understanding of how [...]
Impact of warming on functional traits of a keystone grazer in Arctic lakes
Published: 2026-08-07
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Laboratory and Basic Science Research Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Temperature rise is one of the most pronounced abiotic changes currently affecting Αrctic ecosystems. Knowledge about the adaptation capacity of their key species is urgently needed to better understand the ecological consequences for these sentinel ecosystems. Previous work on a keystone zooplankton grazer, the obligatory parthenogenetic Daphnia pulicaria, from a lake in South-West Greenland [...]
Life-history traits do not always evolve in response to changing thermal environments
Published: 2026-08-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Integrative Biology, Zoology
Quantifying animals' capacity to evolve in response to changing environments is central to predicting ecological responses to climate change. However, empirical evidence for evolutionary responses to changing temperatures remains mixed, and we know little about how selection alters trait variance or generates trade-offs among traits. Here, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of 44 [...]
Lactate Dehydrogenase as a Candidate Genomic Marker of Climate Change in Mammals?
Published: 2026-07-13
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Evolution, Genetics, Genomics, Molecular Genetics, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Climate change imposes metabolic and thermal stress on mammals, yet genomic markers that track lineage specific adaptation remain limited. Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), a central enzyme in lactate metabolism and anaerobic stress response, has not previously been evaluated for its evolutionary association with climate change induced selection. Here, comparative genomics across 14 mammalian species [...]
A self tuning sliding window method for detecting phenotype linked regional poly-methylation architecture in sparse wildlife methylomes
Published: 2026-06-26
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Despite featuring extreme physiological adaptations integration of wildlife species into the modern ‘omics’ frameworks are limited due to the sparsity in the data. To address the sparsity limitation a self-tuning sliding-window framework was developed for the identification of the regional poly-CpG methylation architecture associated with phenotypic traits. Under the framework the iteratively [...]
In-silico evaluation of aspartate therapy for lactic acidosis in Alligator mississippiensis
Published: 2026-06-23
Subjects: Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Computational Biology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences
Hyperlactatemia, and/or lactic acidosis, is a common complication in wildlife due to the sensitivity of these species to capture induce complications. The treatment of lactic acidosis in humans is equally as controversial as in veterinary medicine. Stabilisation of blood pH during lactic acidosis is difficult to achieve. Crocodilians, such as the American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis), [...]
The scent of survival in a warming world: how monoterpenes drive thermal adaptation in thyme
Published: 2026-03-18
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Plant Sciences, Physiology, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Population Biology
1 Monoterpenes are key plant secondary metabolites with well known defensive and ecological functions, yet their role in abiotic stress tolerance remains poorly understood. In many Mediterranean plants, monoterpene composition varies markedly within and among species and is associated with climatic gradients, suggesting that these compounds may mediate plant responses to extreme heat. 2 We [...]
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 [...]
The statistical fragility of animal cognition findings: a meta-meta-analytic reappraisal
Published: 2025-11-06
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Comparative Psychology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Psychology
How reliable is the evidence in animal cognition research? Concerns are mounting over the statistical robustness of this and other fields. Many primary studies rely on small samples and rarely report null results, while meta-analyses sometimes overlook publication bias, all of which may contribute to unreliable conclusions. We conducted a second-order meta-analysis across 28 published [...]
A high-resolution physiological timeseries uncovers strong but variable seasonal acclimation of thermal limits in a copepod community
Published: 2025-09-23
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
How a community responds to warming depends on both intra-specific variation in thermal limits and variation in acclimation capacity across community members. These factors, however, are often overlooked, leading to uncertainties about how climate change affects biodiversity. In temperate regions, communities are exposed to large seasonal temperature fluctuations, providing an opportunity to [...]
The myth of the metabolic baseline: how sleep-wake cycles undermine a foundational assumption in organismal biology
Published: 2025-08-28
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Life Sciences, Physiology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Zoology
Basal and standard metabolic rates (BMR and SMR) are cornerstones of physiological ecology and are assumed to be relatively fixed intrinsic properties of organisms that represent the minimum energy required to sustain life. However, this assumption is conceptually flawed. Many core maintenance processes underlying SMR are temporally partitioned across sleep and wakefulness and are not [...]
Physical and Migration Metrics of White Storks (Ciconia ciconia) and the influence that landfills play in their variation
Published: 2025-07-24
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Zoology
1. White storks (Ciconia Ciconia) are a traditionally fully migratory species and their numbers in western Europe were decimated in the last century. Their numbers have since boomed and they have altered their migratory strategy to have become a partially migratory species. This change has been ascribed in large part to anthropogenic food subsidies, particularly in the form of landfill sites. 2. [...]
A systems-modelling approach to predict biological responses to extreme heat
Published: 2025-07-16
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences, Systems Biology
Anthropogenic climate change is leading to more frequent and extreme heat waves. These large-scale events are radically re-shaping interactions among organisms – impacting biodiversity, community composition and ecosystem services crucial to natural systems and food security. Predicting heat wave impacts on interacting species requires an understanding of the processes driving differential [...]