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No general relationship between mass and temperature in endothermic species

View ORCID ProfileKristina Riemer, View ORCID ProfileRobert P Guralnick, View ORCID ProfileEthan White
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/113753
Kristina Riemer
1Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, 110 Newins-Ziegler Hall, PO Box 110430, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-0430, USA
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  • For correspondence: kristina.riemer@weecology.org
Robert P Guralnick
2Department of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611
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Ethan White
1Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, 110 Newins-Ziegler Hall, PO Box 110430, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-0430, USA
3Informatics Institute, 432 Newell Drive, PO Box 115585, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-8545
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Abstract

Bergmann’s rule is a widely-accepted biogeographic rule stating that individuals within a species are smaller in warmer environments. While there are many single-species studies and integrative reviews documenting this pattern, a data-intensive approach has not been used yet to determine the generality of this pattern. We assessed the strength and direction of the intraspecific relationship between temperature and individual mass for 952 bird and mammal species. For eighty-seven percent of species, temperature explained less than 10% of variation in mass, and for 79% of species the correlation was not statistically significant. These results suggest that Bergmann’s rule is not general and temperature is not a dominant driver of biogeographic variation in mass. Further understanding of size variation will require integrating multiple processes that influence size. The lack of dominant temperature forcing weakens the justification for the hypothesis that global warming could result in widespread decreases in body size.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted September 13, 2017.
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No general relationship between mass and temperature in endothermic species
Kristina Riemer, Robert P Guralnick, Ethan White
bioRxiv 113753; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/113753
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No general relationship between mass and temperature in endothermic species
Kristina Riemer, Robert P Guralnick, Ethan White
bioRxiv 113753; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/113753

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