Climate-Driven Body Size Changes in Birds and Mammals Reveal Environmental Tolerance Limits

Abstract

Climate change contributes to widespread shifts in body size across taxa which can impact population and community dynamics. However, the reasons for variability in the direction and intensity of responses remain uncertain. Smaller body size improves thermoregulatory efficiency but can increase dehydration risk. Changes in species' body size is likely to balance the tradeoffs of thermoregulation and osmotic balance when responding to shifts in thermal and aridity regimes associated with climate change. Using 119,183 bird and 183,087 mammal body mass, and 15,562 bird and 239,600 mammal body length records, along with species' thermal and aridity limits based on their range geographies, we tested for associations between body size and climatic conditions. We also assessed the impacts of human land use extent and interactions with species thermal environments. We found that smaller body mass measurements across taxa are associated with conditions closer to species' upper thermal (hot) and lower aridity (dry) tolerance limits. Agricultural land use extent was found to be positively associated with body mass measurements for both bird and mammal species. Shorter body lengths were observed for both birds and mammals the closer species were to their upper thermal limits. Further we found that thermal and aridity conditions interacted resulting in stronger negative associations between body mass and hotter temperatures the closer species were to their dry tolerance limits. Our results are consistent with predictions that differences in body size within bird and mammal species are driven by thermoregulatory pressures associated with thermal and aridity regimes. While species' range geographies and phenology are widely known to respond to anthropogenic climate change, the shifts in species' body sizes detected here are a third biotic response that exerts similarly profound ecological, evolutionary, and conservation effects.