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Do New World pitvipers “scale‐down” at high elevations? Macroecological patterns of scale characters and body size

Bergmann's rule describes the macroecological pattern of increasing body size in response to higher latitudes and elevations. This pattern is extensively documented in endothermic vertebrates, within and among species; however, studies involving ectotherms are less common and suggest no consist...

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Autores principales: Jadin, Robert C., Mihaljevic, Joseph R., Orlofske, Sarah A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6706185/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31463027
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5486
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author Jadin, Robert C.
Mihaljevic, Joseph R.
Orlofske, Sarah A.
author_facet Jadin, Robert C.
Mihaljevic, Joseph R.
Orlofske, Sarah A.
author_sort Jadin, Robert C.
collection PubMed
description Bergmann's rule describes the macroecological pattern of increasing body size in response to higher latitudes and elevations. This pattern is extensively documented in endothermic vertebrates, within and among species; however, studies involving ectotherms are less common and suggest no consistent pattern for amphibians and reptiles. Moreover, adaptive traits, such as epidermal features like scales, have not been widely examined in conjunction with Bergmann's rule, even though these traits affect physiological processes, such as thermoregulation, which are hypothesized as underlying mechanisms for the pattern. Here, we investigate how scale characters correlate with elevation among 122 New World pitviper species, representing 15 genera. We found a contra‐Bergmann's pattern, where body size is smaller at higher elevations. This pattern was mainly driven by the presence of small‐bodied clades at high elevations and large‐bodied clades at low elevations, emphasizing the importance of taxonomic scope in studying macroecological patterns. Within a subset of speciose clades, we found that only Crotalus demonstrated a significant negative relationship between body size and elevation, perhaps because of its wide elevational range. In addition, we found a positive correlation between scale counts and body size but no independent effect of elevation on scale numbers. Our study increases our knowledge of Bergmann's rule in reptiles by specifically examining characters of squamation and suggests a need to reexamine macroecological patterns for this group.
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spelling pubmed-67061852019-08-28 Do New World pitvipers “scale‐down” at high elevations? Macroecological patterns of scale characters and body size Jadin, Robert C. Mihaljevic, Joseph R. Orlofske, Sarah A. Ecol Evol Original Research Bergmann's rule describes the macroecological pattern of increasing body size in response to higher latitudes and elevations. This pattern is extensively documented in endothermic vertebrates, within and among species; however, studies involving ectotherms are less common and suggest no consistent pattern for amphibians and reptiles. Moreover, adaptive traits, such as epidermal features like scales, have not been widely examined in conjunction with Bergmann's rule, even though these traits affect physiological processes, such as thermoregulation, which are hypothesized as underlying mechanisms for the pattern. Here, we investigate how scale characters correlate with elevation among 122 New World pitviper species, representing 15 genera. We found a contra‐Bergmann's pattern, where body size is smaller at higher elevations. This pattern was mainly driven by the presence of small‐bodied clades at high elevations and large‐bodied clades at low elevations, emphasizing the importance of taxonomic scope in studying macroecological patterns. Within a subset of speciose clades, we found that only Crotalus demonstrated a significant negative relationship between body size and elevation, perhaps because of its wide elevational range. In addition, we found a positive correlation between scale counts and body size but no independent effect of elevation on scale numbers. Our study increases our knowledge of Bergmann's rule in reptiles by specifically examining characters of squamation and suggests a need to reexamine macroecological patterns for this group. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019-07-31 /pmc/articles/PMC6706185/ /pubmed/31463027 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5486 Text en © 2019 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Research
Jadin, Robert C.
Mihaljevic, Joseph R.
Orlofske, Sarah A.
Do New World pitvipers “scale‐down” at high elevations? Macroecological patterns of scale characters and body size
title Do New World pitvipers “scale‐down” at high elevations? Macroecological patterns of scale characters and body size
title_full Do New World pitvipers “scale‐down” at high elevations? Macroecological patterns of scale characters and body size
title_fullStr Do New World pitvipers “scale‐down” at high elevations? Macroecological patterns of scale characters and body size
title_full_unstemmed Do New World pitvipers “scale‐down” at high elevations? Macroecological patterns of scale characters and body size
title_short Do New World pitvipers “scale‐down” at high elevations? Macroecological patterns of scale characters and body size
title_sort do new world pitvipers “scale‐down” at high elevations? macroecological patterns of scale characters and body size
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6706185/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31463027
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5486
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