Body mass as a supertrait linked to abundance and behavioural dominance in hummingbirds: a phylogenetic approach

Body mass has been considered one of the most critical organismal traits, and its role in many ecological processes has been widely studied. In hummingbirds body mass has been linked to ecological features like foraging performance, metabolic rates, and cost of flying, among others. We used an evolutionary approach to test if body mass is a good predictor of two of the main ecological features of hummingbirds: their abundances and behavioural dominance. To determine whether a species was abundant and/or behaviourally dominant, we used information from the literature on 249 hummingbird species. For abundance we classified a species as “plentiful” if it was described as the most abundant species in at least part of its geographic distribution, while we deemed a species to be “behaviourally dominant” when it was described as pugnacious (notably aggressive). We found that plentiful hummingbird species had intermediate body masses and were more phylogenetically related to each other than exp...

体重被视为生物体最关键的性状之一，其在诸多生态过程中的作用已得到广泛研究。在蜂鸟类群中，体重与觅食性能、代谢速率以及飞行成本等生态特征密切相关。本研究采用演化分析方法，探究体重能否作为蜂鸟两项核心生态特征的良好预测因子：种群丰度与行为优势度。为判定某一蜂鸟物种是否具有较高种群丰度和/或行为优势，本研究整合了249种蜂鸟的文献数据。针对种群丰度，若某物种被文献记载为其地理分布范围内至少部分区域的优势常见种，则将其归类为"种群丰富"；而若某物种被描述为具有好斗性（极具攻击性），则认定其具备"行为优势"。本研究发现，种群丰富的蜂鸟物种多具有中等体重，且彼此间的系统发育亲缘关系相较于（原文内容截断）更为紧密……