Geographic gradients in a functional trait: Drivers of body size and size diversity of ground invertebrate communities

Body size is a key functional trait governing how an animal community transforms resources and conditions into performance, abundance, and fitness. Here we use the National Ecological Observatory Network of pitfall traps to explore how an ecosystem's plant productivity, temperature, and growing...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecosphere (Washington, D.C) D.C), 2024-03, Vol.15 (3), p.n/a
Main Authors: Kaspari, Michael, Marshall, Katie E., Weiser, Michael D., Siler, Cameron D., Theriot, Miranda K., Beurs, Kirsten
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
abundance
Body size
Carbohydrates
development
fasting tolerance
Forests
freeze tolerance
functional traits
Grasslands
gross primary production (GPP)
Growing season
Invertebrates
Observatories
Pitfall traps
Productivity
Seasons
Temperature
Wetlands
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Summary:Body size is a key functional trait governing how an animal community transforms resources and conditions into performance, abundance, and fitness. Here we use the National Ecological Observatory Network of pitfall traps to explore how an ecosystem's plant productivity, temperature, and growing season length accounts for the range of body size across 99 ground invertebrate communities. The 19‐fold continental variation in mean body size failed to covary with latitude, while common ordinal subtaxa grew smaller (e.g., myriapods) to larger (e.g., acari) from Puerto Rico to Alaska. Communities with a larger mean size arose when winters were longer and gross primary productivity was high. The diversity of body sizes in a community (measured as the CV) varied ninefold and decreased with latitude (r2 = 0.24) consistently across common orders. Size‐diverse communities were less likely in ecosystems with long winters (suggesting constraints on the time to build, r2 = 0.34) and those with high invertebrate activity (and hence trap catch, r2 = 0.12). Body size distributions thus appeared to arise from conflicting combinations of constraint (i.e., the ability to build large bodies) and performance (utility of large size in surviving long winters). As warming promotes growing season length, populations of larger, rarer individuals may benefit.
ISSN:2150-8925
2150-8925
DOI:10.1002/ecs2.4785