# Study 000M Manuscript

## Title

`Ecological Narrowing As Compensation: A Longitudinal Altered-Biomechanics N=1 Study`

## Background

The existing archive already supports adaptation under structural constraint, selective expression, operating-envelope behavior, support-dependent low-burden expression, and more than one successful low-burden route.

What remained unresolved was whether the ecology itself changed as part of that adaptation process.

This question matters because the archive increasingly suggested that successful expression did not simply become mechanically specialized.

It also became ecologically concentrated.

## Objective

To test whether ecological narrowing is better interpreted as part of the compensation phenotype than as incidental drift in activity preference.

## Methods

This study synthesized corrected archive outputs from `000C`, `000D`, `000AB`, `000H`, and `000K`.

The study evaluated four evidence families:

1. running ecology compression
2. flagship window ecology contrast after hybrid correction
3. support-dependent boundary consequence
4. conditioning ecology reorganization

The strongest answer was determined by whether ecological reorganization added explanatory power beyond already-established adaptation and burden findings.

## Results

### Running ecology compressed rather than broadening

Running share of structured hours rose from `21.00%` in `2025` to `84.18%` in `2026`, while treadmill share of running miles rose from `92.78%` to `98.74%` and outdoor running share fell from `7.219%` to `1.264%`.

This pattern supports concentration of successful running expression rather than broader environmental normalization.

### The late running state remained distinct after ecology correction

The early flagship window contained `7` GPS-bearing hybrid-cardio sessions totaling `9.45` miles and `4.99` hours, while the late flagship window contained `0`.

Even after this correction, the late running state remained more concentrated:

- treadmill share `90.0%` to `100.0%`
- running share of 28-day activity `12.752%` to `55.398%`

So the narrowing result survived full correction.

### Boundary expression depended on ecological support

The October 2025 outside-context cluster remained high burden under thin support:

- running-share context `5.1299%`
- treadmill neighbors `1.75`
- HR residual burden `13.8844 bpm`

The April 2026 boundary probe remained low burden under dense support:

- running-share context `91.0839%`
- treadmill neighbors `32.0`
- HR residual burden `0.6887 bpm`

This supports the idea that successful outside expression remained ecologically conditional rather than broadly re-normalized.

### Multiple successful modes refined but did not overturn narrowing

`000K` showed that two low-burden modes existed:

- a long-settled low-embedding mode
- a high-embedding boundary mode

This did not eliminate narrowing.

It instead suggested that the ecology narrowed toward a small set of successful routes rather than broad successful tolerance.

### Narrowing was selective, not total

The archive did not show total ecological simplification.

`2026` retained proportionally more hybrid-cardio share inside the much smaller indoor-conditioning layer (`26.34%` versus `4.20%` in `2025`).

So the best interpretation is selective ecological reorganization, not simple elimination of support ecology.

## Conclusion

The archive is better explained by `selective ecological narrowing as part of the compensation phenotype` than by incidental ecological drift alone.

The constrained system appears to have adapted partly by reorganizing its ecology around what it could successfully express at lower burden.

This does not mean ecology alone explains the program.

It means ecology was not merely the setting of adaptation.

It was one of the things adaptation changed.