Hierarchical effects on body size evolution and the macroecology of South American rainforest mammals
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1998-10
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Resumo
The relationship between geographic range size and body size analyzed at the continental
scale for many species has been described recently by an envelope region defined in bivariate space
and limited by ecological and physical constraints. These constraints can be explained by stochastic
extinction related to m inimum population density and energetic theories for an optimal body size.
However, since data are obtained for different species in a large taxonomic group, it is possible that
these variables may be strongly affected by phylogenetic autocorrelation. In this paper, we analyzed
data on geographic range size and body size for 87 species of Neotropical rainforest mammals from
South America, searching for phylogenetic effects changing the shape of constraint space. We used
a nested ANOVA design to evaluate and remove large scale hierarchical (phylogenetic) trends in
the two variables. Body size was more affected by phylogenetic effects than geographic range size.
After removing these effects, we noted that the two macroecological variables analyzed support the
shape of constraint space previously observed in North American species. The most important aspect
of our analyses is that a model for optimal body size related to life-history variations provides an
useful theoretical framework to understand how processes of species dynamics can lead to the
observed macroecological patterns.
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South american rain forestmammals, Body size evolution
Citação
DINIZ FILHO, José A. F.; BALESTRA, Rackel. Hierarchical effects on body size evolution and the macroecology of South American rainforest mammals. Ecologia Austral, Buenos Aires, v. 8, p. 23-30, 1998.