Climate change and body size trends in aquatic and terrestrial endotherms: Does habitat matter?

Several studies have claimed that reduction in body size comprises a nearly universal response to global warming; however, doubts about the validity of this pattern for endothermic species have been raised recently. Accordingly, we assessed temporal changes in body mass for 27 bird and 17 mammal spe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2017-08, Vol.12 (8), p.e0183051-e0183051
Main Authors: Naya, Daniel E, Naya, Hugo, Cook, Joseph
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal behavior
Animals
Aquatic mammals
Biology and Life Sciences
Birds
Body mass
Body Size
Body weights and measures
Climate Change
Computer and Information Sciences
Databases, Factual
Earth Sciences
Ecosystem
Endothermic reactions
Environmental aspects
Global warming
Influence
Mammals
Medicine and Health Sciences
Physiological adaptation
Reduction
Spatio-Temporal Analysis
Species
Terrestrial environments
Trends
Vertebrates
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Summary:Several studies have claimed that reduction in body size comprises a nearly universal response to global warming; however, doubts about the validity of this pattern for endothermic species have been raised recently. Accordingly, we assessed temporal changes in body mass for 27 bird and 17 mammal species, to evaluate if a reduction in body size during the 20th century is a widespread phenomenon among endothermic vertebrates. In addition, we tested if there are differences in the temporal change in size between birds and mammals, aquatic and terrestrial species, and the first and second half of the 20th century. Overall, six species increased their body mass, 21 species showed no significant changes in size, and 17 species decreased their body mass during the 20th century. Temporal changes in body mass were similar for birds and mammals, but strongly differ between aquatic and terrestrial species: while most of the aquatic species increased or did not change in body mass, most terrestrial species decreased in size. In addition, we found that, at least in terrestrial birds, the mean value of the correlation between body mass and year of collection differs between the first half and the second half of the 20th century, being close to zero for the former period but negative for the later one. To our knowledge, this is the first study showing that temporal changes in body mass differ between aquatic and terrestrial species in both mammals and birds.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0183051