Shrinking body size under climate warming is not associated with selection for smaller individuals in a migratory bird.

ABSTRACT: How species are responding to climate change is a key topic in evolutionary ecology. Increasing temperatures are expected to affect phenotypic traits involved in thermoregulation, thus decreasing body size and/or increasing body appendages associated with heat exchange, as predicted by Bergmann's and Allen's rules. Results from long-term studies of variation in morphology over time have generally provided results supporting these predictions. However, two outstanding questions are frequently raised in studies relating changes in phenotypes to increasing temperatures: (1) whether such changes involve a shift in animal shape through the non-proportional variation of different body parts; and (2) whether they result from adaptive evolutionary responses. Relying on capture-recapture histories

SUBMITTER: Romano A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12056357 | biostudies-literature | 2025 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature