ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2021
Clarifying the relationship between body size and extinction risk in amphibians by complete mapping of model space.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Global patterns and drivers of extinction risk in island endemic terrestrial vertebrates.Science advances · 2026Article
- Phenotypic and Ecological Correlates of Population Decline in the World's Anurans.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Using comparative extinction risk analysis to prioritize the IUCN Red List reassessments of amphibians.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2024Article
- Convergent evolution of giant size in eurypterids.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Explaining the primate extinction crisis: predictors of extinction risk and active threats.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Deep time extinction of largest insular ant predators and the first fossil Neoponera (Formicidae: Ponerinae) from Miocene age Dominican amber.BMC biology · 2023Article
- Critical review of the phytohemagglutinin assay for assessing amphibian immunity.Conservation physiology · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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Abstract
In vertebrates, large body size is often a key diagnostic feature of species threatened with extinction. However, in amphibians the link between body size and extinction risk is highly uncertain, with previous studies suggesting positive, negative, u-shaped, or no relationship. Part of the reason for this uncertainty is 'researcher degrees of freedom': the subjectivity and selectivity in choices associated with specifying and fitting models. Here, I clarify the size-threat association in amphibians using Specification Curve Analysis, an analytical approach from the social sciences that attempts to minimize this problem by complete mapping of model space. I find strong support for prevailing negative associations between body size and threat status, the opposite of patterns typical in other vertebrates. This pattern is largely explained by smaller species having smaller geographic ranges, but smaller amphibian species also appear to lack some of the life-history advantages (e.g. higher reproductive output) that are often assumed to 'protect' small species in other taxa. These results highlight the need for a renewed conservation focus on the smallest species of the world's most threatened class of vertebrates, as aquatic habitats become increasingly degraded by human activity.
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