New Paper: Body size predicts the rate of contemporary morphological change in birds

Figure 3. from ‘Body size predicts the rate of contemporary morphological change in birds’ showing the effect of body size on rate of morphological change (wing length) in two independent datasets from North American and Amazonia.

Super excited to share the results of a recent collaboration with Marketa Zimova et al. on their analysis of long-term data on morphological shifts in birds. Essentially, we show that small bird species are changing faster that larger ones. Interestingly, the effects of body size appear independent of generation length suggesting that body size itself is important for determining the strength of selection or the response to it. Either way, these data provide new insights into an explosion of research showing contemporary shifts in body size and morphology is wild vertebrates.

Zimova, M., B.C. Weeks, D.E. Willard, S.T. Giery, V. Jirinec, R.C. Burner, and B.M. Winger. 2023. Body size predicts the rate of contemporary morphological change in birds. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.120(20):e2206971120. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2206971120.

Press Release: https://news.umich.edu/smallest-shifting-fastest-bird-species-body-size-predicts-rate-of-change-in-a-warming-world/