Habitat productivity is a poor predictor of body size in rodents.

Autor:	Alhajeri BH; Department of Biological Sciences, Kuwait University, Safat, 13060, Kuwait., Porto LMV; Department of Ecology, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, 91501-970, Brazil., Maestri R; Department of Ecology, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, 91501-970, Brazil.
Jazyk:	angličtina
Zdroj:	Current zoology [Curr Zool] 2020 Apr; Vol. 66 (2), pp. 135-143. Date of Electronic Publication: 2019 Jul 26.
DOI:	10.1093/cz/zoz037
Abstrakt:	The "resource availability hypothesis" predicts occurrence of larger rodents in more productive habitats. This prediction was tested in a dataset of 1,301 rodent species. We used adult body mass as a measure of body size and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) as a measure of habitat productivity. We utilized a cross-species approach to investigate the association between these variables. This was done at both the order level (Rodentia) and at narrower taxonomic scales. We applied phylogenetic generalized least squares (PGLS) to correct for phylogenetic relationships. The relationship between body mas and NDVI was also investigated across rodent assemblages. We controlled for spatial autocorrelation using generalized least squares (GLS) analysis. The cross-species approach found extremely low support for the resource availability hypothesis. This was reflected by a weak positive association between body mass and NDVI at the order level. We find a positive association in only a minority of rodent subtaxa. The best fit GLS model detected no significant association between body mass and NDVI across assemblages. Thus, our results do not support the view that resource availability plays a major role in explaining geographic variation in rodent body size. (© The Author(s) (2019). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Editorial Office, Current Zoology.)
Databáze:	MEDLINE
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