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42 results for “Bergmann's rule”
The contribution of genetic and environmental effects to Bergmann's rule and Allen's rule in house mice
<p>Data associated with the manuscript, "The contribution of genetic and environmental effects to Bergmann's rule and Allen's rule in house mice".</p> <p><strong>Abstract</strong>: Distinguishing between genetic, environmental, and genotype-by-environment effects is central to understanding geographic variation in phenotypic clines. Two of the best-documented phenotypic clines are Bergmann's rule and Allen's rule, which describe larger body sizes and shortened extremities in colder climates, respectively. Although numerous studies have found inter- and intraspecific evidence for both ecogeographic patterns, we still have a poor understanding of the extent to which these patterns are driven by genetics, environment, or both. Here, we measured the genetic and environmental contributions to Bergmann's rule and Allen's rule across introduced populations of house mice (<em>Mus musculus domesticus</em>) in the Americas. First, we documented clines for body mass, tail length, and ear length in natural populations, and found that these conform to both Bergmann's rule and Allen's rule. We then raised descendants of wild-caught mice in the lab and showed that these differences persisted in a common environment and are heritable, indicating that they have a genetic basis. Finally, using a full-sib design, we reared mice under warm and cold conditions. We found very little plasticity associated with body size, suggesting that Bergmann's rule has been shaped by strong directional selection in house mice. However, extremities showed considerable plasticity, as both tails and ears grew shorter in cold environments. These results indicate that adaptive phenotypic plasticity as well as genetic changes underlie major patterns of clinal variation in house mice and likely facilitated their rapid expansion into new environments across the Americas.</p> <p>Supplemental data files are provided below.</p> <p>Code associated with the analysis of these data can be found on GitHub at <a href="https://github.com/malballinger/Ballinger_allenbergmann_AmNat_2021">https://github.com/malballinger/Ballinger_allenbergmann_AmNat_2021</a>.</p>
Data and Code: Complementarity in Allen's and Bergmann's rules among birds
<p>This document shows the R code and analyses for the paper ‘Complementarity in Allen’s and<br> Bergmann’s rules among birds’, by Justin Baldwin, Joan Garcia Porta (shared first authorship) and<br> Carlos Botero, at Nature Communications.</p>
Female lizards (Eremias argus) reverse Bergmann's rule across altitude
<p><span>The evolution of body size within and among species is predicted to be influenced by multifarious environmental factors. However, the specific drivers of body size variation have remained difficult to understand because of the wide range of proximate factors that covary with ectotherm body sizes across populations with varying local environmental conditions. Here, </span><span>we used female </span><span><em>Eremias</em> <em>argus</em></span> <span>lizards collected from different populations across their wide range in China and </span><span>constructed linear mixed models to assess how climatic conditions and/or available resources at different altitudes shape the geographical patterns of lizard body size across </span><span>altitude. Lizard populations showed significant differences in body size across altitudes. Furthermore, w</span><span>e found that climatic and seasonal changes along the altitudinal gradient also explained variations in body size among populations. Specifically, body size decreased with colder and drier environmental conditions at high altitudes, reversing Bergmann's rule. Limited resources at high altitudes, measured by the low vegetative index, may also constrain body size.</span><span> </span><span>Therefore, our study demonstrates that </span><span>multifarious</span><span> environmental factors could strongly influence the intraspecific variation in organisms' body size.</span></p>
Female lizards (Eremias argus) reverse Bergmann’s rule across altitude
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Data from: Thermal adaptation best explains Bergmann's and Allen's rule across ecologically diverse shorebirds
<p>Bergmann's and Allen's rules state that endotherms should be larger and have shorter appendages in cooler climates. However, the drivers of these rules are not clear. Both rules could be explained by adaptation for improved thermoregulation, including plastic responses to temperature in early life. Non-thermal explanations are also plausible as climate impacts other factors that influence size and shape, including starvation risk, predation risk, and foraging ecology. We assess the potential drivers of Bergmann's and Allen's rules in 30 shorebird species using extensive field data (>200,000 observations). We show birds in hot, tropical northern Australia have longer bills and smaller bodies than conspecifics in temperate, southern Australia, conforming with both ecogeographical rules. This pattern is consistent across ecologically diverse species, including migratory birds that spend early life in the Arctic. Our findings best support the hypothesis that thermoregulatory adaptation to warm climates drives latitudinal patterns in shorebird size and shape. </p>
A test of Bergmann's rule in the Early Triassic: Latitude, body size, and sampling in Lystrosaurus
<p>The ecogeographical rule known as Bergmann's rule suggests that there is a positive relationship between body size and latitude when comparing closely related taxa. The underlying mechanism, or mechanisms, to explain this pattern vary as widely as the taxa that seem to follow it, which has led to skepticism over whether Bergmann's rule should be considered a rule at all. Despite this, Bergmann's rule is widespread among modern birds, mammals, beetles, and some amphibians, but far fewer extinct taxa have been subjected to tests of Bergmann's rule. To test whether Bergmann's rule is detected in extinct taxa, we compared body size proxies in <em>Lystrosaurus</em> recovered from Early Triassic-aged strata in Antarctica, South Africa, India, and China. Our results reveal that average body size is largest at mid-northern paleolatitudes (~45°N) instead of the highest southern paleolatitudes (~70°S). Additionally, maximum body size is consistent across northern and southern hemispheres, indicating that Bergmann's rule did not apply for <em>Lystrosaurus</em> during the Early Triassic. To test potential sample size biases in our results, we used rarefaction and subsampling to show that only the Karoo Basin is well sampled, and that large individuals are exceedingly rare except in the Turpan-Junggar Basin of Xinjiang, China. Taken together, our results suggest that <em>Lystrosaurus</em> had the potential to reach large body sizes in each of the latitudinally widespread tectonic basins studied here, but that local conditions may have allowed individuals at mid-northern paleolatitudes a greater chance of reaching large size compared to southern congeners that suffered increased mortality at young/small sizes.</p>
Conformity to Bergmann's rule in birds depends on nest design and migration
<p>Ecogeographical rules attempt to explain large-scale spatial patterns in biological traits. One of the most enduring examples is Bergmann's rule, which states that species should be larger in colder climates due to the thermoregulatory advantages of larger body size. Support for Bergmann's rule, however, is not consistent across taxonomic groups, raising questions about what factors may moderate its effect. Behaviour may play a crucial, yet so far underexplored, role in mediating the extent to which species are subject to environmental selection pressures in colder climates. Here, we tested the hypothesis that nest design and migration influence conformity to Bergmann's rule in a phylogenetic comparative analysis of the birds of the Western Palearctic, a group encompassing dramatic variation in both climate and body mass. We predicted that migratory species and those with more protected nest designs would conform less to the rule than sedentary species and those with more exposed nests. We find that sedentary, but not short- or long-distance migrating species, are larger in colder climates. Among sedentary species, conformity to Bergmann's rule depends, further, on nest design: species with open nests, in which parents and offspring are most exposed to adverse climatic conditions during breeding, conform most strongly to the rule. Our findings suggest that enclosed nests and migration enable small birds to breed in colder environments than their body size would otherwise allow. Therefore, we conclude that behaviour can substantially modify species' responses to environmental selection pressures.</p>
Dataset for: Do marine planktonic ciliates follow Bergmann's rule?
<p>This is a dataset used for the paper entitled "Do marine planktonic ciliates follow Bergmann's rule?" by Liu et al. This dataset includes the mean cell-size of ciliate community obtained from 282 samples from 154 stations covered from 20°S to 65°N. It also contains the biomass of ciliate community, the corresponding environmental parameters including seawater temperature and Chlorophyll <em>a</em> concentration (Chla), and the proxy for phytoplankton (prey) size estimated by two methods (see paper for details). </p>
Data for: Allometry reveals trade-offs between Bergmann's and Allen's rules, and different avian adaptive strategies for thermoregulation
<p>Animals tend to decrease in body size (Bergmann's rule) and elongate appendages (Allen's rule) in warm climates. However, it is unknown whether these patterns depend on each other or constitute independent responses to thermal environment. Here, based on a global phylogenetic comparative analysis across 99.7% of the world's bird species, we show that the way in which the relative length of unfeathered appendages co-varies with temperature depends on body size and vice versa. First, the larger the body, the greater the increase in beak length with temperature. Second, the temperature-based increase in tarsus length is apparent only in larger birds, whereas in smaller birds, tarsus length decreases with temperature. Third, body size and the length of beak and tarsus interact each other to predict the species' temperature preferences. These findings suggest that the animals' body size and shape are products of an evolutionary compromise that reflects distinct alternative thermoregulatory adaptations.</p>
Data from: A global assessment of Bergmann's rule in mammals and birds
<p><span>Bergmann's rule states that endotherms have a large body size in high latitudes and cold climates. However, previous empirical studies have reported mixed evidence on the relationships between body size and latitude, raising the question of why some clades of endotherms follow Bergmann's rule whereas others do not. Here, we synthesized the interspecific relationships between body size and latitude among 16,187 endothermic species (5,422 mammals and 10,765 birds) using Bayesian phylogenetic generalized linear mixed models to examine the strength and magnitude of Bergmann's rule. We further assessed the effect of biological and ecological factors (i.e., body mass categories, dietary guild, winter activity, habitat openness, and climate zone) on the variations in the body mass–latitude relationships by adding an interaction term in the models. Our results revealed a generally weak but significant adherence to Bergmann's rule among all endotherms at the global scale. Despite taxonomic variation in the strength of Bergmann's rule, the body mass of species within most animal orders showed an increasing trend toward high latitudes. Generally, large-bodied, temperate species, non-hibernating mammals, and migratory and open-habitat birds tend to conform to Bergmann's rule more than their relatives do. Our results suggest that whether Bergmann's rule applies to a particular taxon is mediated by not only geographical and biological features but also potential alternate strategies that species might have for thermoregulation. Future studies could explore the potential of integrating comprehensive trait data into phylogenetic comparative analysis to re-assess the classic ecogeographical rules on a global scale.</span></p>
Conformity to Bergmann’s rule in birds depends on nest design and migration
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Data for: Allometry reveals trade-offs between Bergmann’s and Allen’s rules, and different avian adaptive strategies for thermoregulation
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Data from: A global assessment of Bergmann’s rule in mammals and birds
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Dataset for: Do marine planktonic ciliates follow Bergmann’s rule?
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A test of Bergmann’s rule in the Early Triassic: Latitude, body size, and sampling in Lystrosaurus
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Data from: Thermal adaptation best explains Bergmann's and Allen's rule across ecologically diverse shorebirds
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Data from: Amphibians do not follow Bergmann's rule
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CPR dataset for: Testing Bergmann's Rule in Marine Copepods
<p>This is the global dataset used for the Campbell et al. (2021) paper "Testing Bergmann's Rule in marine copepods". The dataset includes the mean length of copepods weighted by abundance found in 97,830 continuous plankton recorder (CPR) samples. Further, it contains satellite observations for sea surface temperature, chlorophyll-a, and dissolved oxygen (see paper for details). It was a massive collaborative effort to get this dataset assembled by the Global Alliance of CPR Surveys (GACS 2011, Batten et al. 2019).</p>
Data from: Temperature-dependent oxygen limitation and the rise of Bergmann's Rule in species with aquatic respiration
Bergmann's Rule is the propensity for species-mean body size to decrease with increasing temperature. Temperature-dependent oxygen limitation has been hypothesized to help drive temperature–size relationships among ectotherms, including Bergmann's Rule, where organisms reduce body size under warm oxygen-limited conditions, thereby maintaining aerobic scope. Temperature-dependent oxygen limitation should be most pronounced among aquatic ectotherms that cannot breathe aerially, as oxygen solubility in water decreases with increasing temperature. We use phylogenetically-explicit analyses to show that species-mean adult size of aquatic salamanders with branchial or cutaneous oxygen uptake becomes small in warm environments and large in cool environments, whereas body size of aquatic species with lungs (i.e., that respire aerially), as well as size of semi aquatic and terrestrial species do not decrease with temperature. We argue that oxygen limitation drives the evolution of small size in warm aquatic environments for species with aquatic respiration. More broadly, the stronger decline in size with temperature observed in aquatic vs terrestrial salamander species mirrors the relatively strong plastic declines in size observed previously among aquatic vs terrestrial invertebrates, suggesting that temperature-dependent oxygen availability can help drive patterns of plasticity, micro- and macroevolution.
Data from: Migratory shorebird adheres to Bergmann's Rule by responding to environmental conditions through the annual lifecycle
The inverse relationship between body size and environmental temperature is a widespread ecogeographic pattern. However, the underlying forces that produce this pattern are unclear in many taxa. Expectations are particularly unclear for migratory species, as individuals may escape environmental extremes and reorient themselves along the environmental gradient. In addition, some aspects of body size are largely fixed while others are environmentally flexible and may vary seasonally. Here, we used a long‐term dataset that tracked multiple populations of the migratory piping plover Charadrius melodus across their breeding and non‐breeding ranges to investigate ecogeographic patterns of phenotypically flexible (body mass) and fixed (wing length) size traits in relation to latitude (Bergmann's Rule), environmental temperature (heat conservation hypothesis), and migratory distance. We found that body mass was correlated with both latitude and temperature across the breeding and non‐breeding ranges, which is consistent with predictions of Bergmann's Rule and heat conservation. However, wing length was correlated with latitude and temperature only on the breeding range. This discrepancy resulted from low migratory connectivity across seasons and the tendency for individuals with longer wings to migrate farther than those with shorter wings. Ultimately, these results suggest that wing length may be driven more by conditions experienced during the breeding season or trade‐offs related to migration, whereas body mass is modified by environmental conditions experienced throughout the annual lifecycle.
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