Journal of Animal Ecology最新文献

{"title":"Maternal glucocorticoids have persistent effects on offspring social phenotype irrespective of opportunity for social buffering.","authors":"Kirsty J MacLeod, Alix Bouffet-Halle, Erik Wapstra, Tobias Uller, Geoffrey M While","doi":"10.1111/1365-2656.70121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.70121","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Exposure to stressors and associated hormones during development can significantly affect offspring phenotype, including social and philopatric behaviour, but these effects can be mediated by the postnatal social environment ('social buffering'). While the effects of social buffering are well established for complex social behaviours-such as parental provisioning, grooming or cooperative care-the role of social buffering for simpler social interactions-such as parental tolerance of offspring-remains less understood. Here we used the facultatively social viviparous lizard, Liopholis whitii, to test the following: (i) the effects of elevated maternal glucocorticoid levels during gestation on offspring mass, growth, dispersal and social interactions after birth; and (ii) whether these effects are mediated by postnatal mother-offspring association. We conducted a factorial experiment in which pregnant lizards were given thrice-weekly doses of a glucocorticoid hormone (corticosterone) or a control during gestation. Their offspring were then raised either alone or with their mother for 3 weeks. We subsequently released mothers and offspring in large semi-natural enclosures and quantified offspring mass and social/exploratory behaviour. There were persistent negative effects of prenatal glucocorticoid exposure on offspring growth. We also observed lasting effects of prenatal glucocorticoid exposure on social behaviour: offspring from glucocorticoid-treated mothers had stronger social associations with other individuals, including with their mother and siblings, compared to offspring from control mothers. Association with their mother early in life did not mediate the effects of prenatal glucocorticoid exposure on offspring phenotype. These effects demonstrate that maternal stress can be an important mediator of variation in social behaviour in lizards, even overriding the influence of the social environment in the early postnatal period. This has potential implications for understanding how social groups form and are maintained.</p>","PeriodicalId":14934,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Animal Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145069532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Long-distance dispersal is asymmetrical with respect to age, sex and breeding latitude in a long-lived monogamous bird.","authors":"E H J Lisenka de Vries, Michiel P Boom, Bart A Nolet, Eelke Jongejans, Henk P van der Jeugd","doi":"10.1111/1365-2656.70133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.70133","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Although relatively rare, long-distance dispersal significantly impacts population persistence by facilitating range expansion, range shifts and genetic exchange. For individuals dispersing northwards, it may be a suitable adaptation strategy to escape negative effects of climate change on their original breeding sites. In this study, we constructed a joint live encounter-dead recovery model under a Bayesian multistate framework to quantify long-distance dispersal between the Barents Sea, Baltic Sea and North Sea subpopulations of the Russia/Germany and Netherlands flyway population of the barnacle goose (Branta leucopsis), using long-term mark-recapture data of 22,413 individuals ringed between 1995 and 2023. Long-distance dispersal was strongly biased by age, sex and direction. Natal dispersal predominantly occurred in a northward direction, with 23.9% of juvenile males and 8.6% of juvenile females estimated to transition annually from the North Sea to the Barents Sea subpopulation. In contrast, breeding dispersal in the same direction in adults was minimal, estimated at only 0.49% and 0.21% for males and females respectively, and was not always distinguishable from temporary (moult-) migrations. Our model results were validated with data from 14 dispersing individuals, 9 of which were male, for whom the timing of breeding or moult was recorded. In all cases, dispersal was in a northward direction and the timing of breeding or moult of dispersers more closely resembled the timing of the receiving subpopulation than of the original subpopulation, but more so in males than in females. Our results support the notion of strong male-biased natal dispersal in monogamous waterbirds. Interestingly, despite substantial growth in the temperate breeding subpopulations during our study period, natal dispersal occurred predominantly in a northward direction at both individual and population levels. The unidirectional long-distance dispersal observed is expected to result from the unique flyway structure, where subpopulations with large differences in population size mix during wintering. Additionally, we also highlight the adaptability of dispersers, showing that barnacle geese can adaptively switch migration on and off, and that plasticity in the timing of breeding and moult may be larger in males than in females. We argue that this could be an additional explanation for the predominantly male-biased northward dispersal observed in barnacle geese.</p>","PeriodicalId":14934,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Animal Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145064547","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Life-history trade-offs and environmental variability shape reproductive demography in a mountain ungulate.","authors":"Kevin S White, Taal Levi, Eran Hood, Chris T Darimont","doi":"10.1111/1365-2656.70137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.70137","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Alpine ecosystems are changing rapidly with implications for the demography of alpine organisms. Here, we studied a sentinel species of mountain environments-the mountain goat (Oreamnos americanus)-to examine hypotheses about intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of reproductive demography using long-term data collected from individually marked animals across a broad spatiotemporal extent (n = 180 females, 3 study areas, 17 years) in coastal Alaska. Our analyses revealed the importance of life-history trade-offs and environmental variability on reproductive performance. The cost of reproduction, defined as the impact of reproducing the previous year on the probability of current year parturition, was high, especially for young, largely primiparous females (13%-32% reduction) and old, senescing individuals (27%-43% reduction); parturition of prime-aged individuals was relatively unaffected (2% reduction). Winter snow accumulation, which alters energetic expenditure and forage availability, exerted strong negative effects on reproduction (20%-35% reduction, depending on age). The relationship between temperature during the preceding summer's growing season and reproduction was likewise negative, although weaker and more variable (10%-15% reduction). Demographic modelling indicated that snow exerted stronger effects on population growth than summer temperature in part due to greater variability in snow versus temperature among years. Our analyses further revealed that reproductive performance did not affect subsequent survival of mothers or offspring, suggesting mountain goats employ a 'risk-sensitive', conservative reproductive strategy that prioritizes survival over reproduction. Taken together, these results fill an important knowledge gap by providing novel insights about the interplay between life-history trade-offs and environmental variation, and how they shape the reproductive demography of climate-sensitive wildlife.</p>","PeriodicalId":14934,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Animal Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145040108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Quantifying drivers of biodiversity change through increasing data availability and improved analytical frameworks","authors":"Timothy C. Bonebrake,&nbsp;Eugene Yu Hin Yau","doi":"10.1111/1365-2656.70138","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1365-2656.70138","url":null,"abstract":"<p><b>Research Highlight:</b> Guilbault, E., Sihvonen, P., Suuronen A., Huikkonen, I.-M., Pöyry, J., Laine, A.-L., Roslin, T., Saastamoinen, M., Vanhatalo, J. (2025). Strong context dependence in the relative importance of climate and habitat on nation-wide macro-moth community changes. <i>Journal of Animal Ecology</i>, https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.70107. Distributions of species are linked directly to extinction risk. Different threats can drive range contractions and reshape biodiversity patterns, yet their relative importance is rarely apparent. Additionally, the spatial and temporal distributions of species—and the resulting biodiversity patterns—are often incomplete or biased in existing datasets. Guilbault et al. (2025) present a productive framework to analyse biodiversity-monitoring data with spatiotemporal gaps by combining joint species distribution modelling (jSDM) with variance partitioning. Using a Finnish moth monitoring dataset, they demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach in identifying the dominant drivers of (and potentially, threats to) species' distributions. Their results reveal how these drivers vary across environments (environmental dependency) and between moths with different functional traits (functional dependency). Expanding this analytical framework to additional datasets with broad spatial and/or temporal coverage will further our understanding of how threats to biodiversity vary across time and space. Advances in modelling methods and the growing availability of high-quality data are substantially improving our capability to pinpoint and address threats to biodiversity—we hope that by leveraging results from such efforts, we may increase capacity for managing these threats to slow biodiversity loss.</p>","PeriodicalId":14934,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Animal Ecology","volume":"94 10","pages":"1900-1903"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1365-2656.70138","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145033127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Targeted ‘infectiosome’ for disease ecology: A new tool to answer old questions","authors":"Julien Gasparini","doi":"10.1111/1365-2656.70130","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1365-2656.70130","url":null,"abstract":"<p><b>Research Highlight:</b> Bralet, T., Aaziz, R., Tornos, J., Gamble, A., Clessin, A., Lejeune, M., Galon, C., Michelet, L., Lesage, C., Jeanniard du Dot, T., Desoubeaux, G., Guyard, M., Delannoy, S., Moutailler, S., Laroucau, K. and Boulinier, T. (2025). High-throughput microfluidic real-time PCR as a promising tool in disease ecology. <i>Journal of Animal Ecology</i>, https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.70088. Disease ecology aims to understand the causes and consequences of the maintenance and transmission of pathogenic infectious agents. A crucial step in studying disease ecology is identifying the ‘infectiosome’, which I define as all infectious agents circulating among individuals, populations and the community of a given ecosystem. In a recent study, Bralet et al. (2025) propose a new, cheap and adaptable toolkit for determining a targeted ‘infectiosome’, which appears very useful in disease ecology approaches: high-throughput microfluidic real-time PCR (Htrt PCR). This method is a good alternative to costly metagenomic approaches and consists of running several dozen PCRs from a single tissue sample. This technique enables screening, from a single sample, the presence of dozens of targeted infectious agents: the targeted ‘infectiosome’, allowing one to answer several questions. For example, Bralet et al. (2025) applied this method to 274 seabirds and 80 mammals samples collected from the Southern Ocean islands and detected pathogenic infectious agents in new locations. The results also show that some species are potential ‘reservoirs’ of several infectious agents in this ecosystem. This method is really promising and can be easily adapted and used to test different hypotheses in disease ecology at the scales of the population and the community in other ecosystems, such as the urban ecosystem.</p>","PeriodicalId":14934,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Animal Ecology","volume":"94 10","pages":"1893-1895"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145033139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Relative brain size explains migratory/resident tendency in birds: Partial altitudinal migration in Asian house martins.","authors":"Yu-Wen Yang, Bin-Yan Hsu, Jing-Chia Guo, Chih-Ming Hung","doi":"10.1111/1365-2656.70134","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.70134","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Migration is widespread among animals but varies in its manifestation with differences in direction, distance and obligatory nature. Understanding the evolution of migration requires insight into not only the development of this behaviour but also the loss of it. Partial migration, where some individuals within a population migrate while others stay, provides a unique opportunity to identify the proximate factors determining migratory/resident behaviours. In this study, we tested four hypotheses-the body size, arrival time, dominance and behavioural flexibility hypotheses-regarding phenotypic contributions to the loss or gain of migration in the Taiwan population of Asian house martins Delichon dasypus. This population exhibits partial altitudinal migration, with some martins remaining at mountain breeding grounds year-round and some migrating to lower elevations during winter. Our results most supported the behavioural flexibility hypothesis, which predicts that resident individuals tend to have larger brains than migratory ones, potentially associated with higher levels of foraging innovation. We argue that surviving in the harsh winter conditions in mountainous areas requires large brains, an energetically expensive trait that may further inhibit migration in resident Asian house martins. This creates a potential positive feedback loop where the demands of residency select for increased brain size while larger brains simultaneously facilitate residency. We also found that residents tended to have relatively smaller beaks, which likely help reduce heat loss in mountainous regions during winter. Our findings suggest that partial migration in Taiwan's Asian house martins resulted from the emergence of residency in large-brained individuals in a previously migratory population. We extend the behavioural flexibility hypothesis, traditionally applied to interspecific comparison, to demonstrate its explanatory power for intraspecific variations. Additionally, we integrate this hypothesis with selection imposed by high-elevation hypoxia to elucidate the evolutionary link between brain size and partial altitudinal migration.</p>","PeriodicalId":14934,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Animal Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145033209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Habitat structure and predator diversity jointly shape the arrangement of predator-prey networks.","authors":"Radek Michalko","doi":"10.1111/1365-2656.70129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.70129","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research Highlight: Chen, J., Wang, M. Q., Luo, A., Zhang, F., Chesters, D., Liu, S., Li, Y., von Oheimb, G., Kunz, M., Zhou, Q. S., Bruelheide, H., Liu, X., Ma, K., Schuldt, A., & Zhu, C. D. (2025). Bottom-up and top-down effects combine to drive predator-prey interactions in a forest biodiversity experiment. Journal of Animal Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.70103. Habitat structure influences predator-prey and predator-predator interactions and may interact with predator diversity to determine food-web dynamics. However, only a limited number of studies have investigated how habitat structure and predator diversity jointly shape the predator-prey network. Using molecular analysis of spider gut content, Chen et al. (2025) investigated how various measures of tree diversity and spider phylogenetic diversity shaped the spider-prey network. The spider-prey network was characterized by prey richness, generality, vulnerability and niche overlap in young forest canopies. When considering all spiders together, both tree and spider diversity led to increased prey richness, prey vulnerability and niche overlap, but generality was consistent. However, when spiders were divided into two foraging guilds, web-builders and hunters, the factors driving the food-web structure varied between them. Although both spider diversity and habitat structure affected the spider-prey network, their relative importance differed between the two guilds. For web-builders, phylogenetic diversity was the main driver and high phylogenetic diversity of spiders led to an increase in prey richness, generality, prey vulnerability and niche overlap. For hunting spiders, the tree vertical diversity was an important factor shaping the network structure and higher vertical diversity led to a reduction in prey richness and diet breadth. Overall, the results show that the bottom-up effect of tree diversity and the top-down effect of spider diversity combined to jointly determine the structure of the spider-prey network. However, the impact of tree diversity and phylogenetic diversity of spiders on the structure of the spider-prey network was conditioned by a measure of tree diversity and spider foraging guilds. The results have important implications for forest management, and foresters should aim to maintain heterogeneous forests rather than simple monocultures to enhance predation pressure by spiders on pests and to ensure ecosystem resilience.</p>","PeriodicalId":14934,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Animal Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145023355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Habitat and land-use intensity shape moth community structure across temperate forest and grassland.","authors":"Rafael Achury, Michael Staab, Sebastian Seibold, Jörg Müller, Lea Heidrich, Marcel Püls, Hermann Hacker, Carlos Roberto Fonseca, Markus Fischer, Nico Blüthgen, Wolfgang Weisser","doi":"10.1111/1365-2656.70132","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.70132","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Land-use change and intensification are major drivers of biodiversity loss, yet their effects on diversity have usually been studied within a single habitat type or land-use category, limiting our understanding of cross-habitat patterns. Moths, a species-rich taxon worldwide, represent a significant portion of the biodiversity in both temperate forests and grasslands, functioning as pollinators and herbivores. While increasing land-use intensity (LUI) in both habitats is expected to negatively impact moth assemblages, the strength of this effect remains uncertain. Moreover, land-use intensification interacts with broader environmental factors, such as weather conditions and the spread of artificial light at night (ALAN), but their combined effects on moth community diversity and turnover across habitats remain poorly understood. We sampled moth communities across 150 grassland and 150 forest plots along land-use gradients in Germany. We quantified plot- and landscape-scale LUI and tested the role of plant diversity, temperature and precipitation during the night of sampling and the preceding season, and ALAN in shaping moth diversity (standardized by coverage) along Hill numbers. Forests supported significantly higher moth abundance, biomass and diversity than grasslands, with habitat type being the main driver of moth community composition. LUI at the plot scale had contrasting effects on moth abundance, increasing it in forests but reducing it in grasslands. Impacts of LUI were more pronounced at the landscape level, reducing moth diversity particularly in areas dominated by grasslands. Plant diversity and temperature were key determinants for moth communities, increasing alpha diversity across diversity metrics, that is Hill numbers. ALAN had no significant influence on moth abundance or biomass but significantly decreased Simpson diversity. Beta diversity increased with geographic distance, habitat change and LUI but decreased with weather differences among plots. Our results highlight the interplay between LUI, habitat type and abiotic factors in shaping moth communities across large spatial scales. Effective conservation strategies should consider maintaining habitat heterogeneity and promoting plant diversity, particularly in temperate habitats exposed to high land-use intensification.</p>","PeriodicalId":14934,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Animal Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145029883","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Social network dynamics under experimental manipulations of predation risk and food abundance in wild rock hyraxes.","authors":"Camille N M Bordes, Marine Ammeter, Chuchu Lu, Rosanne Beukeboom, Yael Goll, Julien Bourdiol, Amiyaal Ilany","doi":"10.1111/1365-2656.70122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.70122","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Understanding how animals respond to ecological constraints is crucial for interpreting the dynamics of social networks in the wild. We investigated how experimentally induced changes in perceived predation risk and food abundance influence the social behaviour of wild rock hyraxes (Procavia capensis), using experimental manipulations and a meta-analytical framework. We used proximity sensors, trail cameras and observations to record multiple aspects of social interactions. Elevated predation risk caused hyraxes to prioritize spatial adjustments over social rewiring, leading to a slight decrease in sociality and increased social stability within groups. Bachelor males and adult females exhibited greater behavioural adjustments, with solitary individuals interacting more with social groups to mitigate predation risk. In contrast, increased food abundance led to forced proximity at feeding patches, promoting social interactions and clustering within groups. Bachelor males connected social units without increasing network transitivity. Both manipulations highlighted that hyraxes preserve group structure and individual social bonds while exhibiting compensatory social behaviours. Our findings emphasize the possible role of space use in shaping short-term social network dynamics and underscore the stability of animal social structures under mild environmental perturbations. This study also demonstrates the utility of a meta-analytical approach for disentangling context-dependent social responses in complex ecological systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":14934,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Animal Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145000687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Harnessing 50 years of tick population genetics: Choosing the right molecular tool for contemporary research.","authors":"Xavier Barton, Joseph B Fontaine, Shanan S Tobe, Charlotte L Oskam","doi":"10.1111/1365-2656.70127","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1365-2656.70127","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Ticks are ectoparasites of major medical, veterinary and ecological importance, transmitting a wide range of pathogens to humans, companion animals and livestock. Understanding the population structure of ticks is essential for uncovering patterns of pathogen transmission, and population genetics provides a powerful method for this purpose. Tick population studies are uniquely challenging as their biology is shaped by complex interactions between hosts, microbiome and environmental factors. The choice of population genetic tools is crucial, as different methods offer varying levels of cost, throughput, resolution and accessibility, which can significantly influence the quality and scope of results. This review traces the evolution of molecular tools in tick population genetics, from early allozyme electrophoresis in the 1970s to advanced whole genome sequencing (WGS) technologies. It critically evaluates key methodologies, including allozyme electrophoresis, random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), microsatellites (STRs), amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLP), sequence typing, restriction-site associated DNA sequencing (RADseq) and WGS, highlighting their strengths, limitations and applications. By offering a practical guide to these tools, this review helps researchers select the most appropriate methods for their studies and allows interpretation of results from older tools in the context of modern research. Sequence typing and RADseq currently provide the best balance of cost and practicality, while WGS has great potential once sequencing costs decline. This resource empowers researchers to make informed decisions, maximise the impact of their work and gain deeper insights into disease vector population structure.</p>","PeriodicalId":14934,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Animal Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144955024","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}