Increase in body size is correlated to warmer winters in a passerine bird as inferred from time series data

Ecology and Evolution

Mats Björklund²  Antoni Borras¹  Josep Cabrera¹ 

[1] Evolutionary and Behavioural Ecology Associate Research Unit, CSIC, Natural History Museum of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain;Department of Animal Ecology, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

关键词: Citril finch;    climate change;    phenotypic evolution;    plasticity;    selection;    time series;   

DOI  :  10.1002/ece3.1323

来源: Wiley

【 摘 要 】

Abstract

Climate change is expected to affect natural populations in many ways. One way of getting an understanding of the effects of a changing climate is to analyze time series of natural populations. Therefore, we analyzed time series of 25 and 20 years, respectively, in two populations of the citril finch (Carduelis citrinella) to understand the background of a dramatic increase in wing length in this species over this period, ranging between 1.3 and 2.9 phenotypic standard deviations. We found that the increase in wing length is closely correlated to warmer winters and in one case to rain in relation to temperature in the summer. In order to understand the process of change, we implemented seven simulation models, ranging from two nonadaptive models (drift and sampling), and five adaptive models with selection and/or phenotypic plasticity involved and tested these models against the time series of males and females from the two population separately. The nonadaptive models were rejected in each case, but the results were mixed when it comes to the adaptive models. The difference in fit of the models was sometimes not significant indicating that the models were not different enough. In conclusion, the dramatic change in mean wing length can best be explained as an adaptive response to a changing climate.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.