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A Reassessment of Bergmann's Rule in Modern Humans

Resource type
Date created
2013
Authors/Contributors
Abstract
It is widely accepted that modern humans conform to Bergmann's rule, which holds that body size in endothermic species will increase as temperature decreases. However, there are reasons to question the reliability of the findings on which this consensus is based. One of these is that the main studies that have reported that modern humans conform to Bergmann's rule have employed samples that contain a disproportionately large number of warm-climate and northern hemisphere groups. With this in mind, we used latitudinally-stratified and hemisphere-specific samples to re-assess the relationship between modern human body size and temperature. We found that when groups from north and south of the equator were analyzed together, Bergmann's rule was supported. However, when groups were separated by hemisphere, Bergmann's rule was only supported in the northern hemisphere. In the course of exploring these results further, we found that the difference between our northern and southern hemisphere subsamples is due to the limited latitudinal and temperature range in the latter subsample. Thus, our study suggests that modern humans do conform to Bergmann's rule but only when there are major differences in latitude and temperature among groups. Specifically, groups must span more than 50 degrees of latitude and/or more than 30°C for it to hold. This finding has important implications for work on regional variation in human body size and its relationship to temperature.
Document
Published as
Foster F, Collard M (2013) A Reassessment of Bergmann's Rule in Modern Humans. PLoS ONE 8(8): e72269. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0072269
Publication title
PLoS ONE
Document title
A Reassessment of Bergmann's Rule in Modern Humans
Date
2013
Volume
8
Issue
8
Publisher DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0072269
Copyright statement
Copyright is held by the author(s).
Scholarly level
Peer reviewed?
Yes
Language
English
Member of collection
Download file Size
journal.pone_.0072269.pdf 2.73 MB

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