Investigating the biotic and abiotic drivers of body size disparity in communities of non-volant terrestrial mammals

AimThe species that compose local communities possess unique sets of functional and ecological traits that can be used as indicators of biotic and abiotic variation across space and time. Body size is a particularly relevant trait because species with different body sizes typically have different life history strategies and occupy distinct niches. Here we used the body sizes of non-volant (i.e., non-flying) terrestrial mammals to quantify and compare the body size disparity of mammal communities across the globe.
LocationGlobal
Time periodPresent
Major taxa studiedNon-volant terrestrial mammals
MethodsWe used IUCN range maps of 3,982 terrestrial mammals to identify 1,876 communities. We then combined diet data with data on climate, elevation, and anthropogenic pressures to evaluate these variables’ relative importance on the observed body size dispersion of these communities and its deviation from a null model.
ResultsDispersion is significantly greater than expected in 54% of communiti..., , , # Investigating the biotic and abiotic drivers of body size disparity in communities of non-volant terrestrial mammals

This repository contains the R code and (some) data files required to produce all of the analyses and plots in:
‘Investigating the biotic and abiotic drivers of body size disparity in communities of non-volant terrestrial mammals’
William Gearty, Lawrence H. Uricchio, and S. Kathleen Lyons

## Before running the code

Before running this R script, we suggest that you download this folder and set it as your R working directory. Most data must be downloaded from external repositories and unzipped to specific folders before the analyses can be performed ([see specifics below](#data)). Required data files should then load when called in each script, and plot files will save within the same folder.

## Running the code

Run `mammal_variance.R` to perform all analyses and produce all plots from the manuscript. Note that the analyses can take a few days to run completely.

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