Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
Publisher
Royal Society
Source Publication
Proceedings of the Society B: Biological Sciences
Source ISSN
0962-8452
Original Item ID
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2024.2556
Abstract
Recent widespread reductions in body size across species have been linked to increasing temperatures; simultaneous increases in wing length relative to body size have been broadly observed but remain unexplained. Size and shape may change independently of one another, or these morphological shifts may be linked, with body size mediating or directly driving the degree to which shape changes. Using hierarchical Bayesian models and a morphological time series of 27 366 specimens from five North American migratory passerine bird species, we tested the roles that climate and body size have played in shifting wing length allometry over four decades. We found that colder temperatures and reduced precipitation during the first year of life were associated with increases in wing length relative to body size but did not explain long-term increases in wing length. We found no conclusive evidence that the slope of the relationship between body size and wing length changed among adult birds in response to any climatic variable or through time, suggesting that body size does not mediate shifts in relative wing length. Together, these findings suggest that long-term increases in wing length are not a compensatory adaptation mediated by size reductions, but rather are driven by non-climatic factors.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Dias, Tiffany; LeMoine, Nathan P.; Yanco, Scott W.; Zimova, Marketa; Bay, Rachael A.; and Weeks, Brian C., "Long-Term Increases in Wing Length Occur Independently of Changes in Climate and Climate-Driven Shifts in Body Size" (2025). Biological Sciences Faculty Research and Publications. 976.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/bio_fac/976
Comments
Published version. Proceedings of the Society B: Biological Sciences, Vol. 292, No. 2039 (2025). DOI. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.