Morphological change to birds over 120 years is not explained by thermal adaptation to climate change.

ABSTRACT: Changes in morphology have been postulated as one of the responses of animals to global warming, with increasing ambient temperatures leading to decreasing body size. However, the results of previous studies are inconsistent. Problems related to the analyses of trends in body size may be related to the short-term nature of data sets, to the selection of surrogates for body size, to the appropriate models for data analyses, and to the interpretation as morphology may change in response to ecological drivers other than climate and irrespective of size. Using generalized additive models, we analysed trends in three morphological traits of 4529 specimens of eleven bird species collected between 1889 and 2010 in southern Germany and adjacent areas. Changes and trends in morphology over time wer

SUBMITTER: Salewski V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4096916 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature