Widespread recent changes in morphology of Old World birds, global warming the immediate suspect

Dubiner, Shahar; Meiri, Shai; Pigot, Alex L.

doi:10.1111/geb.13474

Cited by 22 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 96 publications

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“…Climate change could potentially affect organism size (Dubiner & Meiri, 2022), and reptiles such as lizards are expected to be the most affected by climate change, as they have poor dispersal ability, and lizards in different altitudes may have different climate/environmental preferences (Fischer & Lindenmayer, 2005). Our study suggests that species in different altitude stages may exhibit different responses to climate change.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altitudinal gradients and body size variation among Chinese lizards in different terrains

et al. 2023

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Spatial patterns of body size are associated with environmental factors like temperature, seasonality, precipitation, resources, and altitude, among the most relevant. Latitudinal size patterns have been extensively studied. Studies on altitudinal gradients of body size, however, are relatively few. Besides, it is still unclear whether there is variation in the relationship between environmental factors and body size of species, or correlations within different altitudes. China provides a good opportunity to assess the altitudinal gradients of body size, because the entire terrain of China changes from high altitude in the west to low altitude in the east, with three natural terrain stages (low: less than 660 m.a.s.l.; medium: 660–2600 m.a.s.l.; and high: more than 2600 m.a.s.l.). Similarly, lizards are distributed across a wide altitudinal range (from −154.31 m to ~6000 m above sea level). We examined 211 lizard species in China and assessed the altitudinal gradients of Chinese lizard body sizes at assemblage and interspecific levels. Piecewise structural equation models (pSEM) were used to investigate the direct and indirect relationships between body size and environmental factors within different terrains (low, medium, and high altitudes). Overall, we found that body size in Chinese lizards decreases with increasing altitude. However, there were variations in the altitudinal gradients and drivers within the three terrain stages. Altitude has both direct (medium and low stages) and indirect (high stages) effects in shaping lizard size. We established that body size increased with increasing altitudes in the low and medium terrain stages. Seasonality had different effects on body size in medium (positively) and low (negatively) stages. However, among the three terrain stages, temperature was consistently negatively correlated with lizard size. Overall, we identified complex patterns and drivers of altitudinal gradients of body size within the three terrain stages, probably due to the different environmental conditions across altitudes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altitudinal gradients and body size variation among Chinese lizards in different terrains

et al. 2023

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“…Bergmann’s-style body size changes in mass are a commonly identified morphological response to climate change, having been primarily documented in birds 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 . Body mass decreases are consistent across birds with different diets 25, 26 , migratory behaviours 24 , and degrees of human commensalism 26 , thus supporting body size decreases as a generalizable response to climate change in birds 33 . While long-term responses of body mass to climate change seem consistent, some studies find that body mass can increase in the short-term (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the response of absolute wing length to climate change is not consistent (e.g. 26 ). Different multi-species comparisons have identified decreases 24, 37 , increases 23, 25, 36 , or no changes 26, 28, 32 in absolute wing length through time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pervasive morphological responses to climate change in bird body and appendage size

Ryding,

McQueen,

Klaassen

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Changes to body size and shape have been identified as potential adaptive responses to climate change, but the pervasiveness of these responses is questioned. To address this, we measured body and appendage size from 5013 museum bird skins of ecologically and evolutionary diverse species. We found that morphological change is a shared response to climate change across birds. Birds increased bill surface area, tarsus length, and relative wing length through time, consistent with expectations of increasing appendage size in warmer climates. Furthermore, birds decreased in absolute wing length, consistent with the expectation of decreasing body size in warmer climates. Interestingly, these trends were generally consistent across different diets, foraging habitats, and migratory and thermoregulatory behaviours. Shorter-term responses to hot weather were contrary to long-term effects for appendages. Overall, our findings support that morphological adaptation is a widespread response to climate change in birds that is independent of other ecological traits.

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“…This spatial pattern-an intraspecific derivative of Bergmann's rule [1][2][3]-has led to predictions of similarly general reductions in size as the world warms [4,5]. Despite some variation in temperature responses among species [5], evidence of warming-driven size reductions is accumulating both across distantly related taxonomic groups [4,6], and within groups of both endotherms [7][8][9][10] and ectotherms [6,11,12]. Body size influences nearly all aspects of an organism's life history [13,14], including physiological tolerances, reproductive capacity and interspecific interactions, and is a key determinant of the contributions of individuals to ecosystem functioning (the stocks, or fluxes, of energy and materials in a natural system; [15,16]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temperature, size and developmental plasticity in birds

et al. 2022

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As temperatures increase, there is growing evidence that species across much of the tree of life are getting smaller. These climate change-driven size reductions are often interpreted as a temporal analogue of the observation that individuals within a species tend to be smaller in the warmer parts of the species' range. For ectotherms, there has been a broad effort to understand the role of developmental plasticity in temperature–size relationships, but in endotherms, this mechanism has received relatively little attention in favour of selection-based explanations. We review the evidence for a role of developmental plasticity in warming-driven size reductions in birds and highlight insulin-like growth factors as a potential mechanism underlying plastic responses to temperature in endotherms. We find that, as with ectotherms, changes in temperature during development can result in shifts in body size in birds, with size reductions associated with warmer temperatures being the most frequent association. This suggests developmental plasticity may be an important, but largely overlooked, mechanism underlying warming-driven size reductions in endotherms. Plasticity and natural selection have very different constraining forces, thus understanding the mechanism linking temperature and body size in endotherms has broad implications for predicting future impacts of climate change on biodiversity.

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Widespread recent changes in morphology of Old World birds, global warming the immediate suspect

Cited by 22 publications

References 96 publications

Altitudinal gradients and body size variation among Chinese lizards in different terrains

Altitudinal gradients and body size variation among Chinese lizards in different terrains

Pervasive morphological responses to climate change in bird body and appendage size

Temperature, size and developmental plasticity in birds

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