Changes in Mammalian Body Length over 175 Years—Adaptations to a Fragmented Landscape?

By Niels M. Schmidt, P. M. Jensen. 2003

120 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The potential consequences of anthropogenic habitat fragmentation on species diversity and extinction have drawn considerable attention in recent decades. In many cases, traditional island biogeography theory has been applied to explain the observed patterns. Here, we propose that habitat fragmentation as a selective force can be traced in mammalian body length changes. By exploring historical sources, we are able to show that the body length of Danish mammals has altered over a period of 175 years, possibly in response to increasing habitat fragmentation. The rate of body length change was generally lowest in medium-sized mammals, and increased with both smaller and larger body mass. Small mammals have generally increased, whereas large mammals have decreased in length. In addition to habitat fragmentation, some species may experience other selective forces, such as traffic, and may be trapped in an evolutionary tug-of-war, where the selective forces pull in opposite directions.

Subfields: Ecology, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c46a0596c8ab7b763f57b93c8734a19ebc60bb89

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

1. Shai Meiri
2. Daniel Simberloff
3. D. Sax
4. T. Dayan
5. James H. Brown
6. B. Riddle
7. Mark V. Lomolino
8. A. Hewison

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

1. James H. Brown
2. Daniel Simberloff
3. D. Sax
4. Shai Meiri
5. Mark V. Lomolino
6. T. Dayan
7. B. Riddle
8. J. Blois

Citations in the corpus

• Landscape fragmentation influences winter body mass of roe deer (2009, background): “…scale (for example, geographical gradients and Bergmann’s rule, Herfindal et al. 2006), there is currently little information on the relationship between fragmentation and indices of phenotypic quality such as body size at a local scale (but see Schmidt and Jensen 2003, Lomolino and Perault 2007).”
• The island rule and a research agenda for studying ecogeographical patterns (2006, background): “In an equally interesting set of studies of responses to fragmentation of terrestrial landscapes in Denmark, Schmidt & Jensen (2003, 2005) report that, while the body size of birds and mammals continues to track (but lag behind) rates of landscape transformation, the trajectories of changes in their”
• Mammalian Response to Cenozoic Climatic Change (2009, background): “…they provide a relevant exemplar system, in that they (a) already exhibit clear effects of anthropogenic climatic change (e.g., Beever et al. 2003, Schmidt & Jensen 2003); (b) fill important ecological roles within communities, such as, for example, predators, herbivores, earth engineers, seed…”
• The generality of the island rule reexamined (2006, methodology): “He uses data in Lomolino (1983), the avian and reptilian data mentioned above, an unpublished manuscript on insular chelonians, Krzanowski’s (1967) data on insular bats, and two studies of continental mammal size decrease through time – Flannery (1994) and Schmidt & Jensen (2003).”
• Body size evolution in insular vertebrates: generality of the island rule (2005, background): “4 & Table 2; Schmidt & Jensen, 2003).”
• Climate change and evolution: disentangling environmental and genetic responses (2008, background): “1995; Schmidt & Jensen 2003; Millien 2004; Yom-Tov & Yom-Tov 2004), and these trends have been interpreted as microevolutionary responses to warming climate.”