Publications

☕ from the Yeakel QED group; \({}^\dagger\)contributed equally; PDF

In Review

• Hoover S.H., Satterfield D.R., Gil M.A., Hein A.M., Moses M.E., Yeakel J.D., Fahimipour A.K. 2026. Collective learning and manifold behaviors in predator groups. In Review @ Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Preprint
  
  

2026

• ☕ Yeakel J.D., Fan M., McTavish E.J., de Almeida A.C., Kempes C.P., Bettencourt L.M.A., Kim S., Breed G. 2026. An origin for the allometric scaling of mammalian fat reflects populations living on the edge. Provisionally Accepted @ The American Naturalist.

• ☕ Yeakel J.D., Hutchinson M.C., Kempes C.P., Koch P.L., Ugarte P.D.S., Gill J.L., Pires M.M. 2026. Bioenergetic trophic trade-offs determine mass-dependent extinction thresholds across the Cenozoic. Accepted @ Ecology. Preprint.

• ☕ Birskis-Barros I., Assis A.P.A. , James H.F., Kim S.L., Yeakel J.D. Morphological variability as a buffer against extinction: Insights from Hawaiian honeycreepers. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 293 (2068) 20252594.

• Massing J., Gross T., Yeakel J.D., Fahimipour A.K. Generalized dynamics of cross-feeding bacteria. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 23 (235) 20250437.

• Habermann M., Fahimipour A.K., Yeakel J.D., Gross T. Functional motifs in food webs and networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 123 (5) e2521927123.

2025

• ☕ Yeakel J.D. Distilling food web dynamics: Top-down and bottom-up drivers of extinction and trophic cascades. Oikos 2025:e11449.

• Fannin L.D., Seyoum C.M., Venkataraman V.V., Yeakel J.D., Janis C.M., Cerling T.E., Dominy N.J. Behavior drives morphological change during human evolution. Science 389, 488-493.

• Rosien J., Fannin L., Yeakel J.D., Malaivijitnond S., Dominy N.J., Tan A. Food-washing monkeys recognize the law of diminishing returns.. eLife 13, RP98520.

2024

• ☕ Suswaram M., Bhat U., Yeakel J.D. Rising above the noise: the influence of population dynamics on the evolution of acoustic signaling. Journal of Physics: Complexity 5(3), p.035007.

• ☕ Rallings T., Kempes C.P., Yeakel J.D. On the dynamics of mortality and the ephemeral nature of mammalian megafauna. The American Naturalist 204 (3) 274-288.

• ☕ Ritwika V.P.S., Gopinathan A.J., Yeakel J.D. Beyond the kill: The allometry of predation behaviours among large carnivores Journal of Animal Ecology 93 (5) 554-566.

2023

• Valdovinos F.S., Hale K.R.S., Dritz S., Glaum P.R., Mccann K.S., Simon S.M., Thébault E., Wetzel W.C., Wootton K.L., Yeakel J.D. A bioenergetic framework for aboveground terrestrial food webs Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

2022

• ☕ \({}^\dagger\)Kim S.L., \({}^\dagger\)Yeakel J.D., Balk M.A., Eberle J.J., Zeichner S., Fieman D., Kriwet J. Decoding the dynamics of dental distributions: insights from shark demography and dispersal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

2021

• Fannin, L. Yeakel J.D.,Venkataraman V.V., Seyoum C., Geraads D., Fashing P., Nguyen N., Fox-Dobbs K., Dominy N.J. Carbon and strontium isotope ratios shed new light on the paleobiology and collapse of Theropithecus, a primate experiment in graminivory Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

2020

• ☕ Yeakel J.D., Pires M.M., de Aguiar M.A.M., O’Donnell J.L., Guimarães P.R., Gravel D., Gross T. Diverse interactions and ecosystem engineering can stabilize community assembly Nature Communications.

• Gross T., Allhoff K.T., Blasius B., Brose U., Drossel B., Fahimipour A.K., Guill C., Yeakel J.D., Zeng F. Modern models of trophic meta-communities. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

• ☕ Bhat U., Kempes C.P., Yeakel J.D. Scaling of the risk landscape drives optimal life history strategies and the evolution of grazing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117 (3) 1580-1586.

• ☕Yeakel, J.D., Bhat U., Newsome S.D. Caching in or falling back at the Sevilleta: the effects of body size and seasonal uncertainty on desert rodent foraging. American Naturalist.

• Pires M.M., O’Donnell J.L., Burkle L.A., Diaz-Castelazo C., Hembry D.H., Yeakel J.D., Newman E.A., Medeiros L.P., de Aguiar M.A.M., Guimarães Jr. P.R. The indirect paths to cascading effects of extinctions in mutualistic networks. Ecology.

2019

• de Aguiar M.A.M., Newman E.A., Pires M.M., Yeakel J.D., Boettiger C., Burkle L.A., Gravel D., Guimarães P.R., O’Donnell J.L., Poisot T., Fortin M.J., Hembry D. Revealing biases in the sampling of ecological interaction networks. PeerJ doi.10.7717/peerj.7566.

• Baiser B., Gravel D., Cirtwill A., Dunne J.A., Fahimpour A.K., Gilarranz L.J., Grochow J.A., Li D., Martinez N.D., McGrew A., Poisot T., Romnuk T.N., Stouffer D.B., Trotta1 L.B.,Valdovinos F.S., Williams R.J., Wood S.A., Yeakel J.D. Ecogeographical Rules and the Macroecology of Food Webs. Global Ecology and Biogeography doi.10.1111/geb.12925.

• ☕ Gibert J.P., Yeakel, J. D. Eco-evolutionary origins of diverse abundance, biomass, and trophic structures in food webs. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 7, 1-15. doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2019.00015.

• ☕ Gibert, J. P., & Yeakel, J. D. Laplacian matrices and Turing bifurcations: revisiting Levin 1974 and the consequences of spatial structure and movement for ecological dynamics. Theoretical Ecology. 169(2), 1–17. doi.org/10.1007/s12080-018-0403-2

2018

• ☕ \({}^\dagger\)Yeakel J.D., \({}^\dagger\)Kempes C.P., \({}^\dagger\)Redner S. Dynamics of starvation and recovery predict extinction risk and both Damuth’s law and Cope’s rule. Nature Communications. doi:0.1038/s41467-018-02822-y

• ☕ Yeakel J.D., Gibert J.P., Gross T., Westley P.A.H., Moore J.W. Eco-evolutionary dynamics and collective dispersal: implications for salmon metapopulation robustness. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. doi:10.1098/rstb.2017.0018

• Delmas E., Besson M., Brice M.-H., Burkle L., Dalla Riva G. V., Fortin M.-J., Gravel D., Guimarães P.R., Hembry D., Newman E., Olesen J.M., Pires M., Yeakel J.D., Poisot T. Analyzing ecological networks of species interactions. Biological Reviews, 94, 16-36.

2017

• ☕ Dominy N.J. & Yeakel J.D.. Frankenstein and the horrors of competitive exclusion. Bioscience. doi:10.1093/biosci/biw133.

2016

• Novak M., Yeakel J.D., Noble A.E., Doak D.F., Emmerson M., Estes J.A., Jacob U., Tinker M.T., Wootton J.T. Characterizing species interactions: What is the community matrix? Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 47.

• Dominy N.J., Yeakel J.D., Bhat U., Ramsden L., Wrangham R.W., Lucas P.W. How chimpanzees integrate sensory information to select figs. Journal of the Royal Society Interface Focus, 6, 20160001.

• ☕ Yeakel J.D., Bhat U., Elliott Smith E.A., Newsome S.D. Exploring the isotopic niche: isotopic variance, physiological incorporation, and the temporal dynamics of foraging. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 4, 2188.

2015

• Crowley B, Melin A.D., Yeakel J.D., Dominy N.J. Oxygen isotope values reflect the ecology and physiology of Neotropical mammals. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 3, 1-8.

• Galetti M., Guevara R., Neves C. L., Rodarte R. R., Bovendorp, R. S. Moreira M., Hopkins III, J. B., Yeakel, J. D. Defaunation affects the populations and diets of rodents in Neotropical rainforests. Biological Conservation, 190, 2-7.

• Yeakel, J. D., Dunne, J. A. Modern lessons from ancient food webs. American Scientist, 103, 188-195.

• Moore J. W., Beakes M., Nesbitt H. K., Yeakel, J. D., Patterson D., Thompson L., Phillis C., Braun D., Favaro C., Scott D., Carr-Harris C., Atlas W. Emergent stability in a large free-flowing watershed. Ecology, 96(2), 340-347. doi:10.1890/14-0326.1

• Yeakel, J. D., Pires, M. M., Rudolf, L., Dominy, N. J., Koch, P. L., Guimarães, P. R., Jr, & Gross, T. Recovering ecological pattern and process in Ancient Egypt Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, pg 201422546. doi:10.1073/pnas.1422646112.

2014

• \({}^\dagger\)Yeakel, J. D., \({}^\dagger\)Pires, M. M., \({}^\dagger\)Rudolf, L., Dominy, N. J., Koch, P. L., Guimarães, P. R., Jr, & Gross, T. Collapse of an ecological network in Ancient Egypt. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(40), 14472–14477. doi:10.1073/pnas.1408471111

• Moore, J. W., Yeakel, J. D., Peard, D., Lough, J., & Beere, M. Life-history diversity and its importance to population stability and persistence of a migratory fish: steelhead in two large North American watersheds. Journal of Animal Ecology doi:10.1111/1365-2656.12212

• Yeakel, J. D., Moore, J. W., Guimarães, P. R., Jr, & de Aguiar, M. A. M. (2014). Synchronisation and stability in river metapopulation networks. Ecology Letters 17(3), 273–283. doi:10.1111/ele.12228 Note: For some reason the Appendices were not included in the online Supplemental Materials. Please find them here

• Yeakel, J. D., & Mangel, M. A generalized perturbation approach for exploring stock recruitment relationships. Theoretical Ecology 1–13. doi:10.1007/s12080-014-0230-z

• Yeakel, J. D., Dominy, N. J., Koch, P. L., & Mangel, M. Functional morphology, stable isotopes, and human evolution: a model of consilience. Evolution 68, 190–203. doi:10.1111/evo.12240

2013

• Yeakel, J. D., Guimarães, P. R., Jr, Bocherens, H., & Koch, P. L. The impact of climate change on the structure of Pleistocene food webs across the mammoth steppe. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B-Biological Sciences 280(1762), 20130239–20130239. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2007.09.059

2012

• Yeakel, J. D., Guimarães, P. R., Jr, Novak, M., Fox-Dobbs, K., & Koch, P. L. Probabilistic patterns of interaction: the effects of link-strength variability on food web structure. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 9(77), 3219–3228. doi:10.1073/pnas.192407699

• Moritz, G. L., Fourie, N., Yeakel, J. D., Phillips-Conroy, J. E., Jolly, C. J., Koch, P. L., & Dominy, N. J. Baboons, Water, and the Ecology of Oxygen Stable Isotopes in an Arid Hybrid Zone. Physiological and Biochemical Zoology 85(5), 421–430. doi:10.1086/667533

• \({}^\dagger\)Newsome, S. D., \({}^\dagger\)Yeakel, J. D., Wheatley, P. V., & Tinker, M. T. Tools for quantifying isotopic niche space and dietary variation at the individual and population level. Journal of Mammalogy 93(2), 329–341.

2011

• Yeakel, J. D., Novak, M., Guimarães, P. R., Jr, Dominy, N. J., Koch, P. L., Ward, E. J., et al. Merging resource availability with isotope mixing models: the role of neutral interaction assumptions. PLoS ONE 6(7), e22015. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0022015.t002

• Yeakel, J. D., Stiefs, D., Novak, M., & Gross, T. Generalized modeling of ecological population dynamics. Theoretical Ecology 4(2), 179–194. doi:10.1007/s12080-011-0112-6

pre-2011

• Yeakel, J. D., Patterson, B. D., Fox-Dobbs, K., Okumura, M., Cerling, T., Moore, J., et al. Cooperation and individuality among man-eating lions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 106, 19040–19043. doi:10.1073/pnas.0905309106

• Dominy, N. J., Vogel, E. R., Yeakel, J. D., Constantino, P. J., & Lucas, P. W. Mechanical properties of plant underground storage organs and implications for dietary models of early hominins. Evolutionary Biology 35(3), 159–175. doi:10.1007/s11692-008-9026-7

• Yeakel, J. D., Bennett, N. C., Koch, P. L., & Dominy, N. J. The isotopic ecology of African mole rats informs hypotheses on the evolution of human diet. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B-Biological Sciences 274(1619), 1723–1730. doi:10.1098/rspb.2007.0330