True seals achieved global distribution by breaking Bergmann's rule.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Rule JP
PROVIDER: S-EPMC9321958 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
True seals achieved global distribution by breaking Bergmann's rule.
Rule James P JP Marx Felix G FG Evans Alistair R AR Fitzgerald Erich M G EMG Adams Justin W JW
Evolution; international journal of organic evolution 20220426 6
True seals (phocids) have achieved a global distribution by crossing the equator multiple times in their evolutionary history. This is remarkable, as warm tropical waters are regarded as a barrier to marine mammal dispersal and-following Bergmann's rule-may have limited crossings to small-bodied species only. Here, we show that ancestral phocids were medium sized and did not obviously follow Bergmann's rule. Instead, they ranged across a broad spectrum of environmental temperatures, without unde ...[more]
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