ArticlePloS one2016
Gigantism and Its Implications for the History of Life.
Article in PloS one, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 122 citations in OpenAlex.
- When giant amphibians rule the river: Community trophic structure of Japanese giant salamander ecosystems.Ecology · 2026Article
- Adaptive metabolic reprogramming conserves energy status in Antarctic giants.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Oxygen supply through the tracheolar-muscle system does not constrain insect gigantism.Nature · 2026Article
- Expanded phylogeny elucidates Deinosuchus relationships, crocodylian osmoregulation and body-size evolution.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors regulate growth hormone in pituitary somatotrophs of tigers.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Heterochrony and Oophagy Underlie the Evolution of Giant Filter-Feeding Lamniform Sharks.Evolution & development · 2025Article
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- Extreme multisegmentation in a giant bivalved arthropod from the Cambrian Burgess Shale.iScience · 2022Article
- Genome of a giant isopod, Bathynomus jamesi, provides insights into body size evolution and adaptation to deep-sea environment.BMC biology · 2022Article
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- The evolutionary biomechanics of locomotor function in giant land animals.The Journal of experimental biology · 2021Article
- The anatomy, paleobiology, and evolutionary relationships of the largest extinct side-necked turtle.Science advances · 2020Article
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- The multi-peak adaptive landscape of crocodylomorph body size evolution.BMC evolutionary biology · 2019Article
- Return to the Sea, Get Huge, Beat Cancer: An Analysis of Cetacean Genomes Including an Assembly for the Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae).Molecular biology and evolution · 2019Article
- Reappraising the exteriorization of the mammalian testes through evolutionary physiology.Communicative & integrative biology · 2019Review
- Cryptic niche switching in a chemosymbiotic gastropod.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Gigantism-very large body size-is an ecologically important trait associated with competitive superiority. Although it has been studied in particular cases, the general conditions for the evolution and maintenance of gigantism remain obscure. I compiled sizes and dates for the largest species in 3 terrestrial and 7 marine trophic and habitat categories of animals from throughout the Phanerozoic. The largest species (global giants) in all categories are of post-Paleozoic age. Gigantism at this level appeared tens to hundreds of millions of years after mass extinctions and long after the origins of clades in which it evolved. Marine gigantism correlates with high planktic or seafloor productivity, but on land the correspondence between productivity and gigantism is weak at best. All global giants are aerobically active animals, not gentle giants with low metabolic demands. Oxygen concentration in the atmosphere correlates with gigantism in the Paleozoic but not thereafter, likely because of the elaboration of efficient gas-exchange systems in clades containing giants. Although temperature and habitat size are important in the evolution of very large size in some cases, the most important (and rare) enabling circumstance is a highly developed ecological infrastructure in which essential resources are abundant and effectively recycled and reused, permitting activity levels to increase and setting the stage for gigantic animals to evolve. Gigantism as a hallmark of competitive superiority appears to have lost its luster on land after the Mesozoic in favor of alternative means of achieving dominance, especially including social organization and coordinated food-gathering.
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