ArticleScientific reports2018
Patterns of sexual size dimorphism in horseshoe bats: Testing Rensch's rule and potential causes.
Article in Scientific reports, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sexual Dimorphism as a Potential Driver of Trophic Specialisation in a Sedentary Synanthropic Bat Species.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Decoding the functional adaptation of animal echolocation: a global macroevolutionary analysis.Science China. Life sciences · 2026Article
- Intraspecific and Geographical Variation of GIntegrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2026Article
- Article
- Sex on the Beach: Sexual Size Dimorphism Among Aquatic Bugs (Nepomorpha) Inhabiting Different Habitats.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Article
- The macroevolutionary dynamics of mammalian sexual size dimorphism.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Sex differences in gene expression and alternative splicing in the Chinese horseshoe bat.PeerJ · 2023Article
- Ecological and evolutionary trends of body size in Pristimantis frogs, the world's most diverse vertebrate genus.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Solitary meat-eaters: solitary, carnivorous carnivorans exhibit the highest degree of sexual size dimorphism.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Female-biased gape and body-size dimorphism in the New World watersnakes (tribe: Thamnophiini) oppose predictions from Rensch's rule.Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Coexistence of two sympatric cryptic bat species in French Guiana: insights from genetic, acoustic and ecological data.BMC evolutionary biology · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Rensch's rule, stating that sexual size dimorphism (SSD) becomes more evident and male-biased with increasing body size, has been well supported for taxa that exhibit male-biased SSD. Bats, primarily having female-biased SSD, have so far been tested for whether SSD allometry conforms to Rensch's rule in only three studies. However, these studies did not consider phylogeny, and thus the mechanisms underlying SSD variations in bats remain unclear. Thus, the present study reviewed published and original data, including body size, baculum size, and habitat types in 45 bats of the family Rhinolophidae to determine whether horseshoe bats follow Rensch's rule using a phylogenetic comparative framework. We also investigated the potential effect of postcopulatory sexual selection and habitat type on SSD. Our findings indicated that Rensch's rule did not apply to Rhinolophidae, suggesting that SSD did not significantly vary with increasing size. This pattern may be attributable interactions between weak sexual selection to male body size and strong fecundity selection for on female body size. The degree of SSD among horseshoe bats may be attributed to a phylogenetic effect rather than to the intersexual competition for food or to baculum length. Interestingly, we observed that species in open habitats exhibited greater SSD than those in dense forests, suggesting that habitat types may be associated with variations in SSD in horseshoe bats.
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