Preprints
There are 3763 Preprints listed.
Why are insects attracted to light?
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Life Sciences
The sight of insects swarming around lamps is ancient and well known, but the reasons for this behavior remain disputed. We propose that attraction to light is not merely a sensory accident, but an adaptive strategy during nuptial flights: under certain conditions, flying toward a light source can be the optimal way to encounter mates, because it aligns flight with pheromone gradients and [...]
Disease-Dependent Social Responses to Local Disease Composition in a Wild Reptile
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Emerging infectious diseases can generate persistent and locally heterogeneous patterns of risk across animal populations, yet how animal social behaviour varies under these conditions remains poorly understood. When pathogens persist in the environment, individuals may need to respond to disease conditions at fine spatial and temporal scales rather than rely on fixed social strategies. Here, we [...]
Spatially explicit sampling of AM fungal biomass reveals links to community characteristics and landscape context
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Agriculture, Biochemistry, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are important contributors to soil functioning, yet their biomass and diversity may respond differently to environmental characteristics and historical legacies. Understanding these relationships is necessary for evaluating AM fungi as indicators of soil health. We investigated relationships among AM fungal biomass, community properties and natural habitat [...]
Projecting kinship networks through time in variable environments
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Kinship networks shape key biological and social processes, yet their dynamics under changing environments remain poorly understood. Like population abundances, kinship structures are determined by past vital rates. Matrix population models provide a powerful framework for projecting population abundances through time and analysing the effects of environmental change on population dynamics, but [...]
Social decision-making in a freshwater gastropod
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Animals are hypothesized to plastically adjust their social behaviour expression dependent on their environment and their phenotype to ensure that its benefits outweigh its costs. There is a strong research bias towards socially complex vertebrates and eusocial insects. Thus, here we study mollusks, a taxon whose social behaviour is less well studied. As predation is one of the strongest drivers [...]
A unified systems model for evolution. Implications for human behaviour and survival
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Life Sciences
Here we present a systems-based and unified theory of evolution, more consistent with biological complexity than previous unified models, and addressing popular misconceptions about ‘survival of the fittest’ that have contributed to overcompetitive and overaggressive attitudes in our social and economic systems. These attitudes have played an important part in the global metacrisis of today. We [...]
Encounter behaviour shapes ecological distributions
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ecology’s foundational models keep only the first moment of the stochastic distributions of encounters. Yet, encounter behaviour (how animals search, aggregate, hide and move) sets the whole distributional shape: zeros, variance, skew and, where particular behaviours build them, heavy tails. That shape decides vital rates, persistence and spatial pattern, because the rates involved are [...]
Soil amendments for cost-effective tropical forest restoration
Published: 2026-10-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Introduction: Low-cost soil amendments hold promise for improving assisted forest restoration outcomes and reducing dependence on emission-intensive inputs, yet rigorous field-based comparisons of novel and standard amendments, including cost-effectiveness, remain rare. Objectives: We evaluated seedling performance and cost-effectiveness under three novel soil amendments: nutrient-rich [...]
Thermophilization but weak phosphorus-affinity shifts in freshwater phytoplankton communities
Published: 2026-10-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Climate warming and nutrient enrichment are reshaping many freshwater lakes, yet their relative roles in driving directional changes in phytoplankton communities across broad geographic gradients remain poorly understood. Using data from lakes repeatedly surveyed by the U.S. National Lakes Assessment in 2012, 2017, and 2022, we examined whether warming and phosphorus enrichment produced [...]
Comparative prey transport behaviour, demographics, and diet of two sympatric driver ant species in a central African rainforest
Published: 2026-10-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Driver ants (Dorylus) are considered to be the predominant invertebrate predators in Afrotropical ecosystems, conducting vast predatory raids across the forest floor. Although these raids are fundamental to driver ant ecology, quantitative data on the diet and prey transport behaviour across the worker demographic spectrum remain limited. We describe prey transport biomechanics and diet [...]
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 [...]
Does female personality drive mate preference and reproduction in wild house mice?
Published: 2026-10-07
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Comparative Psychology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Social Psychology
Personality, consistent individual behavioural variation, shapes how individuals move and engage with their socioecological environment, potentially influencing how they assess and choose mates. This makes personality a potential target of sexual selection. Indeed, personality is linked to partner choice, pair formation and mating outcomes in both human and non-human animals. However, it remains [...]
Amphibians and reptiles in bird nests and bird-excavated cavities: a mini review
Published: 2026-10-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Bird nests and bird-excavated cavities provide suitable environments for egg incubation and nestling development. However, bird-created structures are also exploited by a wide range of organisms, including taxa that are phylogenetically distant from the avian constructors. While birds, mammals, and invertebrates are well documented as secondary users of nests and cavities, the occurrence of [...]
Human disturbance and the magnitude and predictability of phenotypic divergence
Published: 2026-10-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Environmental change can drive phenotypic change within species, but it remains unclear whether such responses produce a general and predictable degree of phenotypic divergence across populations. We conducted a preregistered reanalysis of PROCEED v6.2, comprising 7,186 contrasts from 254 references and 253 species, to test whether the magnitude and predictability of phenotypic divergence differ [...]
Areas of high conservation priority for threatened terrestrial vertebrates are governed by novel ecological conditions
Published: 2026-10-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Over half of the terrestrial biosphere is exposed to highly novel conditions that differ from the historical state, resulting from anthropogenic pressures such as climate change, floristic disruption, and defaunation. Highly novel conditions result in unpredictable biodiversity outcomes, impacting the effectiveness of conservation and restoration actions and the ability for threatened species to [...]