ArticleNature ecology & evolution2022
Abiotic conditions shape spatial and temporal morphological variation in North American birds.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed.
- Nest Monitoring of Tropical Bird Species Offers a Window Into the Mechanisms of Anthropogenic Change.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Ecological barrier crossing strategies in small migratory birds depend on wing morphology and plumage color.iScience · 2026Article
- Divergent climate impacts despite similar response to temperature in a widespread aerial insectivore.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Geography, Environmental Conditions and Life History Shape Patterns of Within-Population Phenotypic Variation in North American Birds.Ecology letters · 2025Review
- Body size as a mediator of climatic effects: Insights from a long-term study of social Iberian magpies.Ecology · 2025Article
- Limited evidence that body size shrinking and shape-shifting alleviate thermoregulatory pressures in a warmer world.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Climate-Driven Body Size Changes in Birds and Mammals Reveal Environmental Tolerance Limits.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Shrinking body size under climate warming is not associated with selection for smaller individuals in a migratory bird.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Climate underpins continent-wide patterns of carotenoid-based feather colour consistent with Gloger's observations.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Demand-Resource Mismatch Explains Body Shrinkage in a Migratory Shorebird.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Eye catching light: Anthropogenic light at night and its evolutionary influence on the avian eye.iScience · 2025Article
- Environmental Variability Shapes Life History of the World's Birds.Ecology letters · 2025Review
- Genetic and morphological shifts associated with climate change in a migratory bird.BMC biology · 2025Article
- Long-term increases in wing length occur independently of changes in climate and climate-driven shifts in body size.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Advances in breeding phenology outpace latitudinal and elevational shifts for North American birds tracking temperature.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Differential changes in the morphology and fuel loads of obligatory and partial migrant passerines over half a century in Britain.Movement ecology · 2024Article
- Latitudinal gradients and sex differences in morphology of the Black Oystercatcher (Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Selective effect of winter weather on a songbird's morphology depends on individual sex and winter condition.Oecologia · 2024Article
- Climate change and its effects on body size and shape: the role of endocrine mechanisms.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Endocrine flexibility can facilitate or constrain the ability to cope with global change.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Quantifying environment-morphology relationships is important not only for understanding the fundamental processes driving phenotypic diversity within and among species but also for predicting how species will respond to ongoing global change. Despite a clear set of expectations motivated by ecological theory, broad evidence in support of generalizable effects of abiotic conditions on spatial and temporal intraspecific morphological variation has been limited. Using standardized data from >250,000 captures of 105 landbird species, we assessed intraspecific shifts in the morphology of adult male birds since 1989 while simultaneously measuring spatial morphological gradients across the North American continent. We found strong spatial and temporal trends in average body size, with warmer temperatures associated with smaller body sizes both at more equatorial latitudes and in more recent years. The magnitude of these thermal effects varied both across and within species, with results suggesting it is the warmest, rather than the coldest, temperatures that drive both spatial and temporal trends. Stronger responses to spatial-rather than temporal-variation in temperature suggest that morphological change may not be keeping up with the pace of climate change. Additionally, as elevation increases, we found that body size declines as relative wing length increases, probably due to the benefits that longer wings confer for flight in thin air environments. Our results provide support for both existing and new large-scale ecomorphological 'rules' and highlight how the response of functional trade-offs to abiotic variation drives morphological change.
Indexed as
Identifiers
36302998What OpenQuestion holds
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.