🌿 Category

ecology

368 papers

Ecology explores the intricate relationships between living organisms and their environments, revealing how life adapts, interacts, and sustains itself across the planet. From microscopic soil communities to vast migratory patterns, this field examines the delicate balance that keeps ecosystems functioning and resilient. Understanding these connections is vital for addressing urgent challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss.

At Gist.Science, we make the latest research from bioRxiv accessible to everyone. We process every new preprint in this category as it appears, offering both clear plain-language explanations and detailed technical summaries to suit every reader. This approach ensures that groundbreaking findings in ecological science are not locked behind complex terminology but are available for immediate understanding and discussion.

Below are the latest papers in ecology, curated to help you stay informed about the evolving story of life on Earth.

🌿 ecology

Population-level migration modeling of North America's birds through data integration with BirdFlow

This study introduces a generalized tuning framework for the BirdFlow model that integrates eBird distribution data with multiple individual-tracking sources (GPS, banding, and telemetry) to generate biologically realistic, continental-scale population-level migration forecasts for 153 North American bird species, including data-limited species modeled via taxonomically informed hyperparameter transfer.

Chen, Y., Slager, D. L., Plunkett, E., Fuentes, M., Deng, Y., Mackenzie, S. A., Berrigan, L. E., Fink, D., Sheldon, D. (…)2026-04-16
🌿 ecology

Ambient humidity and temperature influence physicochemical drift during laboratory storage of field-collected mosquito breeding water

This study demonstrates that the physicochemical stability of field-collected mosquito breeding water during laboratory storage is significantly influenced by ambient humidity and temperature, necessitating strict environmental standardization and parameter monitoring to ensure bioassay reproducibility.

Akorli, J., Boateng, J. K., Adams, B. A., Aboagye-Antwi, F.2026-04-16
🌿 ecology

Coral reef ecosystem functions in a human-dominated world

By analyzing metabolic processes across 1,100 global reefs, this study reveals that coral reef ecosystem functions exist on a continuous, context-dependent spectrum with uncoupled benthic and fish communities, demonstrating that natural variability and local conditions often outweigh human impacts and necessitating tailored conservation strategies over universal benchmarks.

Parravicini, V., McWilliam, M., Schiettekatte, N. M., Carlot, J., Morais, R. A., Barneche, D. R., Karkarey, R., Adjeroud (…)2026-04-16
🌿 ecology

CoralBlox: A computationally efficient coral model for decision support

The paper introduces CoralBlox, a computationally efficient and mechanistic discrete-time model designed to support rapid decision-making in coral reef management by simulating key ecological processes and validating against Great Barrier Reef data to evaluate diverse conservation strategies under climate change.

Ribeiro de Almeida, P., Crocker, R., Tan, D., Bairos-Novak, K. R., Ani, C. J., Benthuysen, J. A., Robson, B. J., Matthew (…)2026-04-16
🌿 ecology

A Matter of Degrees: Latitudinal Variation in the Transcriptional Response to High and Low Temperatures in an Estuarine Cnidarian

This study reveals that while the estuarine sea anemone *Nematostella vectensis* shares a core set of heat-stress genes across its geographic range, its transcriptional responses to temperature extremes vary significantly by latitude, with northern populations showing distinct cold-response patterns and southern populations exhibiting unique heat-response mechanisms driven by differential transcription factor binding.

Bhalodi, J. A., Reitzel, A. M.2026-04-16
🌿 ecology

Habitat-loss-driven predictor coupling limits inference about the independent effects of configuration in additive habitat-amount models: implications for the fragmentation debate

This paper demonstrates that additive habitat-amount models fail to reliably infer independent configuration effects in observational datasets because habitat loss and configuration are geometrically coupled in a nonlinear, asymmetric manner, meaning that near-zero fragmentation coefficients reflect statistical artifacts of this coupling rather than a true absence of ecological impact.

Martinez-Lanfranco, J. A.2026-04-15
🌿 ecology

How will climate change affect global amphipod species distributions by the end of the century?

Using MaxEnt modeling under low and high emission scenarios, this study predicts that climate change will significantly reshape global benthic amphipod distributions by 2100, with species-specific responses mediated by feeding ecology and driven by distinct environmental variables, ultimately threatening the functional composition and ecological roles of marine benthic communities.

Momtazi, F., Saeedi, H.2026-04-15
🌿 ecology

Environment and host infection history jointly predict disease risk in a multi-pathogen system

By integrating machine learning and Bayesian modeling on over 41,000 plant observations, this study demonstrates that combining environmental conditions with a host's prior infection history significantly improves the prediction of disease risk and reveals that pathogen-pathogen interactions can be as critical as abiotic factors in driving seasonal epidemics.

Scott, C. B., Cleary, S., Halliday, F. W., Joyner, B., O'Keeffe, K., Stiver, I., Mitchell, C. E.2026-04-15