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Body size latitudinal clines have been widley explained by the Bergmann's rule in homeothermic vertebrates. However, there is no general consensus in poikilotherms organisms in particular in insects that represent the large majority of wildlife. Among them, bees are a highly diverse pollinators group with high economic and ecological value. Nevertheless, no comprehensive studies of species assemblages...
We measured the elemental content (%C, N and P) and ratios (C:N, C:P, N:P) of a diverse assemblage of parasitic helminths to ask whether taxonomy or traits were related to stoichiometric variation among species. We sampled 27 macroparasite taxa, spanning four phyla, infecting vertebrate and invertebrate hosts from freshwater ecosystems in New Jersey. Macroparasites varied widely in elemental content,...
Size at maturity in ectotherms commonly declines with warming. This near‐universal phenomenon, formalised as the temperature–size rule, has been observed in over 80% of tested species, from bacteria to fish. The proximate cause has been attributed to the greater temperature dependence of development rate than growth rate, causing individuals to develop earlier but mature smaller in the warm. However,...
Anthropogenic change in the abundance or identity of dominant top predators may induce reorganizations in whole food webs. Predicting these reorganizations requires identifying the biological rules that govern trophic niches. However, we still lack a detailed understanding of the respective contributions of body size, behaviour (e.g. match between predator hunting mode and prey antipredator strategy),...
Changes in the number of generations per year (voltinism) have been among the most common phenological responses to climate warming in insects inhabiting seasonal environments. Nevertheless, numerous species have maintained univoltine (one generation per year) phenology with increasing temperatures, indicating the involvement of phylogenetic, ecological or some other constraints on phenological change...
Ample variation in body size is common in vertebrates over extensive geographical distances, or in isolated populations, where effective geographical barriers may cause dwarfism or gigantism. Here we study potential causes of extreme size reduction in continental populations of amphibians within a short geographical distance and in the absence of geographical barriers. Natterjack toads Epidalea calamita...
Loss of resilience in population numbers in response to environmental perturbations may be predicted with statistical metrics called early warning signals (EWS) that are derived from abundance time series. These signals, however, have been shown to have limited success, leading to the development of trait‐based EWS that are based on information collected from phenotypic traits such as body size. Experimental...
It is predicted that warmer conditions should lead to a loss of trophic levels, as larger bodied consumers, which occupy higher trophic levels, experience higher metabolic costs at high temperature. Yet, it is unclear whether this prediction is consistent with the effect of warming on the trophic structure of natural systems. Furthermore, effects of temperature at the species level, which arise through...
Harvesting may drive body downsizing along with population declines and decreased harvesting yields. These changes are commonly construed as consequences of direct harvest selection, where small‐bodied, early‐reproducing individuals are immediately favoured. However, together with directly selecting against a large body size, harvesting and body downsizing alter many ecological features, such as competitive...
Island rule describes the graded trend of gigantism in small‐bodied species to dwarfism in large‐bodied species inhabiting islands, but causal explanations remain unresolved. We used geometric morphometrics to quantify cranial morphology of 544 meadow vole Microtus pennsylvanicus samples across 11 island and 3 mainland populations from the Outer Lands of New England (Atlantic) and the Alexander Archipelago...
The seasonal onset of reproduction is constrained in many systems by a need to first accumulate energetic reserves. Consequently, the observation that larger individuals reproduce earlier may be due to a negative relationship between size and mass‐specific basal metabolic rate that is shared across diverse taxa. However, an untested prediction of this hypothesis is that individuals should be metabolically...
Extreme heat events lower the fitness of organisms by inducing physiological stress and increasing metabolic costs. Yet, little is known about the role of life‐history traits in elucidating population responses to extreme heat events. Here, we used a trait‐based approach to understand population resistance and recovery using four closely related species of soil‐dwelling Collembola. We measured thermal...
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