Preprints
There are 2964 Preprints listed.
Among-trait covariance and cross-year repeatability for direct and indirect individual effects in producer-scrounger behaviour in wild house sparrows
Published: 2026-02-20
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 [...]
Influence of fire history on reproductive traits in a congeneric obligate seeder and facultative resprouter tree species
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Plant Sciences
In fire-prone regions globally, evolution of plant traits that confer resilience to historical fire regimes is widespread. However, many common plant species are currently declining due to a mismatch between historical and contemporary fire regimes. These changes threaten long term community trajectories of plants and the animal species relying on them for food or habitat. Understanding plant [...]
Kin recognition in non-native plants: a general hypothesis of invasiveness
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Understanding how non-native plants successfully invade new environments is a fundamental question in invasion ecology. Here, we propose a novel hypothesis of kin recognition - the ability of plants to differentiate between closely related and distantly related neighbors - as a mechanistic explanation for invasion success. To evaluate the idea, we reviewed existing evidence for kin recognition in [...]
Contribution and applications of demographic concepts to conservation
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Studying the demographic processes that shape how populations respond to environmental changes has long provided insights for conservation biology. Recent theoretical advances have deepened our understanding of these processes, yet their application in conservation remains unclear. We conducted a literature search to examine how six key demographic concepts — life-history trade-offs, the [...]
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), [...]
Anergiobiosis: a testable framework for microbial life under extreme power limitation
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Microbiology
"Aeonophily" was recently suggested as a new category of extremophily for ultra-slow-growing subsurface microorganisms. This terminology conflates a physiological state with potential extremophilic specialization. We propose "anergiobiosis" to describe life without sufficient power to sustain cell division, separating this state from questions about specialization. Analogous to temperature [...]
A Framework for Questionable Research Practices in Ecological Modelling
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Water Resource Management
1. Questionable research practices (QRPs) bias the published literature towards apparently strong and conclusive results, resulting in low rates of replicability. Recent metaresearch reveals that ecology is not immune to the ‘reproducibility crisis’ seen in other disciplines, due to similar rates of QRPs and a lack of transparency in published research. However, metaresearch to date focuses on [...]
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 [...]
Maternal swimming exercise training improves survival and the heritability of thermal tolerance and length in brown trout offspring
Published: 2026-02-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
Changing the narrative: encroached savannas are not forest
Published: 2026-02-19
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Savannas are globally important ecosystems but are often misclassified as forests because they can support high tree cover, leading to misguided management. This misunderstanding arises because the presence of grasses, a key defining component of savannas, critical for their structure and functioning, is overlooked. 2. Fundamental tree-based misunderstandings affect the interpretation of [...]
Dwarka Forest: A respite through the cracks of the city's concrete
Published: 2026-02-19
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Urban expansion has increasingly produced landscapes that fall outside conventional ecological and legal classifications, yet perform critical ecological and social functions. Dwarka Forest, located in southwest Delhi, represents one such landscape. Emerging through decades of spontaneous vegetation growth on land originally acquired for infrastructure development, the site has developed into a [...]
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 [...]
Climate warming dampens masting-driven pulsed resources
Published: 2026-02-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Pulsed resources arise when environmental forcing synchronizes biological responses. This synchrony generates episodic booms and busts that structure food webs. Mast seeding is a major example, yet climate warming is increasingly disrupting the synchrony that underpins these pulses. Importantly, the ecological consequences of masting depend on which tail is synchronized: spatially coherent seed [...]
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 [...]
mrangr: An R package for mechanistic simulation of metacommunities
Published: 2026-02-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Metacommunity theory unifies ecology by integrating local biotic interactions with regional dispersal and environmental filtering. However, testing theoretical predictions against empirical data remains challenging due to the difficulty of disentangling these processes in nature and the confounding effects of imperfect detection. 2. Here, we introduce mrangr, an R package designed for the [...]