Climate change and shrinking salamanders : alternative mechanisms for changes in plethodontid salamander body size
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
| Veröffentlicht in: | Global change biology. - 1999. - 21(2015), 8 vom: 09. Aug., Seite 2834-43 |
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| Format: | Online-Aufsatz |
| Sprache: | English |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2015
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| Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk: | Global change biology |
| Schlagworte: | Journal Article Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. amphibian declines detection probability growth population dynamics sampling bias weather |
| Zusammenfassung: | © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. An increasing number of studies have demonstrated relationships between climate trends and body size change of organisms. In many cases, climate might be expected to influence body size by altering thermoregulation, energetics or food availability. However, observed body size change can result from a variety of ecological processes (e.g. growth, selection, population dynamics) or imperfect observation of biological systems. We used two extensive datasets to evaluate alternative mechanisms for recently reported changes in the observed body size of plethodontid salamanders. We found that mean adult body size of salamanders can be highly sensitive to survey conditions, particularly rainfall. This systematic bias in the detection of larger or smaller individuals could result in a signature of body size change in relation to reported climate trends when it is simply observation error. We also identify considerable variability in body size distributions among years and find that individual growth rates can be strongly influenced by weather. Finally, our study demonstrates that measures of mean adult body size can be highly variable among surveys and that large sample sizes may be required to make reliable inferences. Identifying the effects of climate change is a critical area of research in ecology and conservation. Researchers should be aware that observed changes in certain organisms can result from multiple ecological processes or systematic bias due to nonrandom sampling of populations |
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| Beschreibung: | Date Completed 05.05.2016 Date Revised 22.07.2015 published: Print-Electronic Citation Status MEDLINE |
| ISSN: | 1365-2486 |
| DOI: | 10.1111/gcb.12883 |