human impacts

Body size drives global species packing of reef fishes across spatial scales

Our findings suggest that body size distribution, reef area, and temperature are major predictors of species richness and accumulation across scales, consistent with recent theories linking home range to species-area relationships as well as metabolic effects on speciation rates. Based on our results, we hypothesise that in less diverse areas, species are larger and likely more dispersive, leading to larger range sizes and less turnover between sites...

Is oxygen limitation in warming waters a valid mechanism to explain decreased body sizes in aquatic ectotherms?

Despite decades of research, we remain uncertain whether the TSR is an adaptive response to temperature‐related physiological (enzyme activity) or ecological changes (food, predation and other mortality), or a response to constraints operating at a cellular level (oxygen supply and associated costs). To make progress, ecologists, physiologists, modellers and geneticists should work together to develop a cross‐disciplinary...