Preprints
There are 3319 Preprints listed.
The Mother’s Dilemma: Ancient maternal trade-offs explain egalitarian moral cooperation.
Published: 2026-06-01
Subjects: Biological and Physical Anthropology
The emergence of egalitarian moral norms is widely regarded as a crucial transition in human social evolution, yet it remains a puzzle. Existing explanatory models leave several issues unresolved and share a common reliance on male social agency and alliance-making, which predisposes them towards mechanisms based in social competition. By contrast, drawing on comparative panin socioecology, this [...]
Deterministic by design: causal inference challenges for ‘biodiversity change’ syntheses
Published: 2026-06-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Understanding biodiversity change over space and time is a central goal of ecology. A common approach to asking why biodiversity is changing over time, is to collate biodiversity time series from multiple sites and undertake a two-step analysis: First, site-level estimates of ‘biodiversity change’ are calculated. Second, those change estimates are regressed on putative environmental drivers, such [...]
A simple demographic explanation for the evolution of the dietary restriction response and its ecological relevance
Published: 2026-06-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Considerable life history plasticity is observed in response to variation in food availability and composition. This is perhaps best known in the context of dietary restriction, which consistently induces lower reproduction and higher survival across taxa, with nutritional geometry studies further demonstrating the importance of food composition as well as amount. Although there is a huge amount [...]
The coevolution of cooperation and socially-mediated dispersal: a model
Published: 2026-06-01
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Evolution, Population Biology
Limited dispersal can promote the evolution of cooperation by increasing relatedness between social partners. However it also intensifies kin competition, potentially cancelling the benefits of helping. Here, we analyse a model in which individuals evolve both (i) the probability of cooperating within social groups as adults, and (ii) the dispersal probability of juveniles conditional on the [...]
Do the benefits of hybridization outweigh the costs under conditions of global change?
Published: 2026-06-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Global change is predicted to facilitate hybridization but whether the hybrid populations persist and shape biodiversity remains unknown. At the grey zone, before speciation is completed, hybridization is likely leading to simultaneous costs and benefits for hybrid fitness. Whether the benefits outweigh the costs depends on the environment, as hybrid fitness, and potential incompatibilities, can [...]
Still Money for Nothing? Two Decades of Empirical Evaluation of Conservation Investments
Published: 2026-05-29
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Twenty years ago, the landmark paper “Money for Nothing?” argued that biodiversity conservation relied too little on empirical evidence. It called for more evaluations of conservation effectiveness based on explicit counterfactuals, comparing observed outcomes with those that would likely have occurred in the absence of intervention. To assess progress towards this goal, we systematically [...]
Disentangling the global drivers of species use and use-driven extinction risk
Published: 2026-05-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
The use and trade of wild species is a cornerstone of subsistence livelihoods and global economies. Understanding which drivers of use threaten species is critical in distinguishing between beneficial sustainable exploitation and harmful overexploitation, and ensuring that conservation efforts are targeted where they are most urgently needed. We provide the first nuanced global assessment of [...]
Sex-reversed males are morphologically similar but have lower testosterone levels compared to sex-concordant males in the agile frog
Published: 2026-05-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Environment-induced sex reversal – the mismatch between genetic and phenotypic sex caused by external conditions during early development – is increasingly documented in ectothermic vertebrates, yet its fitness-related consequences in natural populations remain poorly tested. To address this gap, we compared sex-reversed XX males and sex-concordant XY phenotypic males in agile frogs (Rana [...]
Developmental Plasticity in Response to Temperature Aligns with Allen’s but not Bergmann’s Rule
Published: 2026-05-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Increases in average global temperatures have caused researchers to revisit how species and populations are expected to respond to changing temperatures. Allen’s rule and Bergmann’s rule describe two ecogeographic patterns where species in high (cold) latitudes have shorter limbs and larger bodies, respectively, than species at low (warm) latitudes. This pattern is purported to be due to the [...]
Methodological choices influence ecological inference in passive acoustic monitoring of a Neotropical nightjar
Published: 2026-05-29
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Population Biology
Passive acoustic monitoring is increasingly used to investigate species activity and habitat use through occupancy analyses. Yet, the complex analytical workflow, from automated detector choice to confidence thresholds and statistical modeling framework, is amongst the factors that influence ecological inference, and the extent these decisions affect modelling outputs is poorly debated. Here, we [...]
Reimagining Training for the Next Generation of Ecologists
Published: 2026-05-29
Subjects: Education, Life Sciences
Rampant environmental degradation and biodiversity loss underscore an urgent need for ecological knowledge that can directly help address social‑environmental challenges. We argue that improved Earth stewardship needs ecologists to integrate foundational ecological knowledge to contextual understanding, relational practices, and engagement with decision‑making when proposing effective solutions. [...]
The ecologist’s guide to microclimate modelling and thermal biology in R
Published: 2026-05-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
Many ecological studies relate organismal responses to climate, but available datasets are often poor surrogates for the conditions experienced in nature. Microclimate models address this limitation by translating standard meteorological data into estimates of local temperature, humidity, and radiation at the scales relevant to organisms. Here, we provide a practical guide to mechanistic [...]
Inconsistent findings of ageing across different feather-quality indices in a wild passerine
Published: 2026-05-28
Subjects: Life Sciences
In most animals, individuals tend to decline in performance in later life, known as ageing. In birds, studies of ageing have traditionally concentrated on metrics of survival and reproductive success, whereas morphological traits have received comparatively little attention. Feather quality is a key morphological trait for passerines as it contributes to flight performance, camouflage and [...]
Sexual dichromatism in agile frogs: sex-reversed males closely resemble typical male coloration
Published: 2026-05-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
In species with sexual dichromatism, colouration can play an important role in intraspecific communication and affect breeding success. Communication by visual signals during the breeding season has been increasingly recognized to occur in anuran amphibians. However, most studies of sexual dichromatism have focused on consistent differences between males and females, and species with varying [...]
Hidden role plasticity of the reproductive caste in a morphologically differentiated termite society
Published: 2026-05-28
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Reproductive division of labor is the defining characteristic of eusocial insects, separating germline-like reproductives from soma-like workers. While most studies have focused on worker sterility, it is generally assumed that developing reproductives invest only in maturation, not in colony labor. Here we show that nymphs (pre-alates) in a highly structured termite society can contribute to [...]