ArticleeLife2018
No general relationship between mass and temperature in endothermic species.
Article in eLife, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Drivers of body condition in South American sea lion pups along a latitudinal gradient.Conservation physiology · 2026Article
- Genetic and morphological shifts associated with climate change in a migratory bird.BMC biology · 2025Article
- Latitudinal gradients and sex differences in morphology of the Black Oystercatcher (Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- The influence of sample size and sampling design on estimating population-level intra specific trait variation (ITV) along environmental gradients.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Climatic temperature and precipitation jointly influence body size in species of western rattlesnakes.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- A long-term study of size variation in Northern GoshawkEcology and evolution · 2023Article
- A practical guide to collections-based research on ecogeographic rules.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Evolutionary scaling of maximum growth rate with organism size.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Abiotic conditions shape spatial and temporal morphological variation in North American birds.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Article
- Colour scales with climate in North American ratsnakes: a test of the thermal melanism hypothesis using community science images.Biology letters · 2022Article
- Thermal adaptation best explains Bergmann's and Allen's Rules across ecologically diverse shorebirds.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Energetic constraints on body-size niches in a resource-limited marine environment.Biology letters · 2022Article
- Different increase rate in body mass of two marten species due to climate warming potentially reinforces interspecific competition.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Rapid phenotypic change in a polymorphic salamander over 43 years.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Morphological variations in a widely distributed Eastern Asian passerine cannot be consistently explained by ecogeographic rules.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Mammalian body size is determined by interactions between climate, urbanization, and ecological traits.Communications biology · 2021Article
- Different environmental variables predict body and brain size evolution in Homo.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Body size trends in response to climate and urbanization in the widespread North American deer mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Habitat productivity is a poor predictor of body size in rodents.Current zoology · 2020Article
- Cooling requirements fueled the collapse of a desert bird community from climate change.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Bergmann's rule is a widely-accepted biogeographic rule stating that individuals within a species are smaller in warmer environments. While there are many single-species studies and integrative reviews documenting this pattern, a data-intensive approach has not been used yet to determine the generality of this pattern. We assessed the strength and direction of the intraspecific relationship between temperature and individual mass for 952 bird and mammal species. For eighty-seven percent of species, temperature explained less than 10% of variation in mass, and for 79% of species the correlation was not statistically significant. These results suggest that Bergmann's rule is not general and temperature is not a dominant driver of biogeographic variation in mass. Further understanding of size variation will require integrating multiple processes that influence size. The lack of dominant temperature forcing weakens the justification for the hypothesis that global warming could result in widespread decreases in body size.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.