Global temperatures have risen an average of 0.6 degrees Celsius in the last century. What effect that may have on the planet’s species is hard to predict, but a recent paper evaluating data from more than 100 different bird species over the past 5 decades found that many of them have shrunk in size. F1000 Faculty Member and evolutionary biologist at the University of Melbourne, Ary Hoffmann, talked about what this may mean in the long run (Oikos, 119:1047–55, 2010).
TS: Naturalists have long observed that species tend to get smaller if they live in warmer areas. Robert Leberman and colleagues from the University of Zürich used this observation to hypothesize that as the Earth warms up, birds that either resided in or made pit stops at a bird-banding station in Pennsylvania will get smaller over time. Does their study give strong evidence to both of these theories?
AH: Organisms ...
