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Sexual size dimorphism in ground squirrels (Rodentia: Sciuridae: Marmotini) does not correlate with body size and sociality
INTRODUCTION: Sexual size dimorphism (SSD) is a widespread phenomenon in animals including mammals. It has been demonstrated that across species, the direction and magnitude of sexual dimorphism in body size often corresponds to social systems. Moreover, many animal lineages conform to “Rensch’s rul...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2013
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3663772/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23672689 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1742-9994-10-27 |
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author | Matějů, Jan Kratochvíl, Lukáš |
author_facet | Matějů, Jan Kratochvíl, Lukáš |
author_sort | Matějů, Jan |
collection | PubMed |
description | INTRODUCTION: Sexual size dimorphism (SSD) is a widespread phenomenon in animals including mammals. It has been demonstrated that across species, the direction and magnitude of sexual dimorphism in body size often corresponds to social systems. Moreover, many animal lineages conform to “Rensch’s rule”, which states that male-biased SSD increases with body size. We tested whether considerable differences in sociality and large variation in body size were connected with the evolution of SSD in the structural body size of ground squirrels, an otherwise ecologically relatively homogenous group of terrestrial rodents. RESULTS: We found the general trend of male-biased SSD in ground squirrels, however, male size increases nearly perfectly isometrically with female size among species and sociality does not explain departures from this relationship. Species with different sociality grades significantly differ in body size, with the most social species tending to be the largest. CONCLUSIONS: We suggest that lack of conformity with Rensch´s rule in ground squirrels may be attributed to their low variation in SSD, and briefly discuss three potential causes of small magnitude of SSD in the structural size in rodents: low selection on SSD in structural dimensions, ontogenetic and genetic constraints and the existence of ecological/selection factors preventing the evolution of extensive SSD. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3663772 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-36637722013-05-25 Sexual size dimorphism in ground squirrels (Rodentia: Sciuridae: Marmotini) does not correlate with body size and sociality Matějů, Jan Kratochvíl, Lukáš Front Zool Research INTRODUCTION: Sexual size dimorphism (SSD) is a widespread phenomenon in animals including mammals. It has been demonstrated that across species, the direction and magnitude of sexual dimorphism in body size often corresponds to social systems. Moreover, many animal lineages conform to “Rensch’s rule”, which states that male-biased SSD increases with body size. We tested whether considerable differences in sociality and large variation in body size were connected with the evolution of SSD in the structural body size of ground squirrels, an otherwise ecologically relatively homogenous group of terrestrial rodents. RESULTS: We found the general trend of male-biased SSD in ground squirrels, however, male size increases nearly perfectly isometrically with female size among species and sociality does not explain departures from this relationship. Species with different sociality grades significantly differ in body size, with the most social species tending to be the largest. CONCLUSIONS: We suggest that lack of conformity with Rensch´s rule in ground squirrels may be attributed to their low variation in SSD, and briefly discuss three potential causes of small magnitude of SSD in the structural size in rodents: low selection on SSD in structural dimensions, ontogenetic and genetic constraints and the existence of ecological/selection factors preventing the evolution of extensive SSD. BioMed Central 2013-05-14 /pmc/articles/PMC3663772/ /pubmed/23672689 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1742-9994-10-27 Text en Copyright © 2013 Matějů and Kratochvíl; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Matějů, Jan Kratochvíl, Lukáš Sexual size dimorphism in ground squirrels (Rodentia: Sciuridae: Marmotini) does not correlate with body size and sociality |
title | Sexual size dimorphism in ground squirrels (Rodentia: Sciuridae: Marmotini) does not correlate with body size and sociality |
title_full | Sexual size dimorphism in ground squirrels (Rodentia: Sciuridae: Marmotini) does not correlate with body size and sociality |
title_fullStr | Sexual size dimorphism in ground squirrels (Rodentia: Sciuridae: Marmotini) does not correlate with body size and sociality |
title_full_unstemmed | Sexual size dimorphism in ground squirrels (Rodentia: Sciuridae: Marmotini) does not correlate with body size and sociality |
title_short | Sexual size dimorphism in ground squirrels (Rodentia: Sciuridae: Marmotini) does not correlate with body size and sociality |
title_sort | sexual size dimorphism in ground squirrels (rodentia: sciuridae: marmotini) does not correlate with body size and sociality |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3663772/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23672689 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1742-9994-10-27 |
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