🌿 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

Assessing the potential ecological functions, including ecosystem services and disservices, of megaherbivore rewilding in traditional rural wood-pastures.

This study evaluates the ecological potential and socio-economic trade-offs of reintroducing diverse megaherbivore assemblages to Italian wood-pastures, concluding that while such rewilding could significantly enhance functional diversity and mitigate woody encroachment—particularly in Mediterranean regions—it requires context-dependent, participatory governance to balance ecosystem restoration with the management of associated disservices like crop damage and human-wildlife conflict.

Davoli, M., de Benedetto, M., Strani, F., Cipollone, M., Lauta, A., Focardi, S.2026-08-31
🌿 ecology

Southern (California) Sea Otter Population Status and Trends at San Nicolas Island, 2023-Winter 2026

This report documents the 2023–2026 monitoring of the San Nicolas Island southern sea otter population, revealing an 8.1% annual decline to 106 individuals, a reversion to historical west-end habitat usage following the disappearance of an east-end raft, and a diet dominated by sea urchins with an average energy intake of 7.7 kilocalories per minute.

Tomoleoni, J. A., Yee, J. L., Seacord, E., Staedler, M. M., Hatfield, B. B., Carswell, L., Fujii, J., Bentall, G. B., Ko (…)2026-08-31
🌿 ecology

TreeTOP: Plant experimental platforms in canopy space

The paper introduces TreeTOP, a standardized, non-invasive experimental platform that enables manipulative ecological studies with potted plants across different canopy heights in diverse forest settings, successfully replicating natural microclimatic gradients to facilitate research on plant performance and ecosystem processes under realistic conditions.

Baumeister, J., Bakhtiari, M. M., Schreiber, M., Eisenring, M., Gossner, M., Walden, S., Becker, A., Bouffaud, M. L., Ce (…)2026-08-31
🌿 ecology

Functional Robustness of Food Webs: A Dynamic Biomass Framework with Vital Species Sets and Cluster Influence

This paper introduces a dynamic biomass-based framework comprising Dynamic Area-based Robustness (DAR), Minimal Vital Species Sets (MVSS), and Cluster Influence (CI) to assess food-web functional resilience, revealing that biomass retention patterns and non-additive group effects provide critical insights beyond traditional structural and extinction-based metrics.

Qu, X., Guo, C., Fan, T., Lv, L.2026-08-28
🌿 ecology

Beyond establishment: incorporating physiological performance into predictions of invasion risk

By integrating physiological performance data with Species Distribution Models, this study demonstrates that while winter survival limits the northern establishment range of the invasive alga *Rugulopteryx okamurae* to mid-Norway, its highest ecological impacts are projected to remain concentrated in southern Europe where thermal conditions support sustained year-round growth.

Vapillon, L., Delva, S., Bonafont Castelles, M., Assis, J., Strubbe, D., Adriaens, T., De Clerck, O., Vranken, S.2026-08-28
🌿 ecology

The devil in citizen science data: observation processes invalidate the causal inference that photovoltaic policy reduces bird diversity

This paper demonstrates that a previous study's claim that stricter photovoltaic policies reduce bird diversity in China is invalid because it failed to adequately control for confounding sampling effort biases and data quality issues inherent in citizen science records, which, when corrected, render the reported negative effect statistically insignificant.

Chen, Y., Zhang, W., Zou, H.-X., Shi, X., Liu, Y.2026-08-27
🌿 ecology

Projected ecosystem responses to environmental changes associated with offshore wind farms and ocean warming

Using a coupled hydrodynamic-ecosystem model, this study reveals that the ecological impacts of offshore wind farms and ocean warming are highly dependent on local environmental conditions, with deeper offshore sites exhibiting significantly stronger and more complex responses than coastal areas due to altered stratification and nutrient dynamics.

Dye, B., Peck, M. A., van der Molen, J.2026-08-27