Sizes and environmental variables to peccaries

Aim: Bergmann's rule is an ecogeographical rule that describes a negative relationship between body size and temperature. Here, we used a multivariate measure of skull size (centroid size) as a proxy for body size to test the influence of temperature, precipitation, elevation, human influence and competition on size in Dicotyles tajacu and Tayassu pecari.

Location: American tropics and sub-tropics.

Taxon: Tayassuidae.

Methods: Using geometric morphometric methods, we measured 426 adult skulls of both peccary species from 174 different localities south of the equator and 83 in the north. We explored the effects of temperature, precipitation, elevation and human influence, controlling for spatial autocorrelation, using ordinary least squares models and the Akaike information criterion. Size differences where the species occur allopatrically or sympatrically, where competition could be a factor, were investigated using ANCOVA models.

Results: We found that peccaries were larger...