The relationship between morphology, density, and location in the cosmic web from massive to dwarf galaxies

We study how morphology relates to environment from massive to dwarf galaxies using, for the first time, a mass-complete sample of 13 000 galaxies, in the stellar-mass and redshift ranges 10 M < < 10 M and ⁠, respectively. By combining Hubble Space Telescope–derived visual morphological classifications with local density and galaxy distances from nodes and filaments, we quantify how early-type galaxies (ETGs) and late-type galaxies (LTGs) differ with respect to environment. The overall ETG fraction decreases from 65 per cent at 10 M to 20 per cent at 10 M⁠. Regardless of morphology, lower stellar mass galaxies lie further away from nodes and filaments than their more massive counterparts. While, at 10 M⁠, ETGs reside further away from nodes and filaments than LTGs, this segregation weakens as stellar mass decreases, with ETGs and LTGs exhibiting similar locations at 10 M⁠. This diminishing difference at lower stellar mass is likely driven by the fact that filaments have a finite extent and lower mass galaxies, of all morphologies, lie further away from filament cores and are therefore confined to a smaller region of the filament itself. For high-mass galaxies (where ETGs and LTGs show strong environmental segregation), greater proximity to nodes likely inhibits coherent angular momentum acquisition, while residing closer to filament cores increases the likelihood of interactions and mergers. Both make it easier to create dispersion-dominated systems, driving the sharp rise of the ETG fraction in the high-mass regime close to nodes and, to a lesser extent, filaments. Our results show that galaxy evolution is increasingly driven by internal processes as stellar mass decreases.