The incredible shrinking puffin: Decreasing size and increasing proportional bill size of Atlantic puffins nesting at Machias Seal Island.

ABSTRACT: Climate change imposes physiological constraints on organisms particularly through changing thermoregulatory requirements. Bergmann's and Allen's rules suggest that body size and the size of thermoregulatory structures differ between warm and cold locations, where body size decreases with temperature and thermoregulatory structures increase. However, phenotypic plastic responses to malnutrition during development can result in the same patterns while lacking fitness benefits. The Gulf of Maine (GOM), located at the southern end of the Labrador current, is warming faster than most of the world's oceans, and many of the marine species that occupy these waters exist at the southern edge of their distributions including Atlantic puffins (Fratercula arctica; hereafter "puffin"). Monitoring of p

SUBMITTER: Major HL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10793900 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature