Insect temperature-body size trends common to laboratory, latitudinal and seasonal gradients are not found across altitudes

1. Body size affects rates of most biological and ecological processes, from individual performance to ecosystem function, and is fundamentally linked to organism fitness. Within species, size at maturity can vary systematically with environmental temperature in the laboratory and across seasons, as well as over latitudinal gradients. Recent meta-analyses have revealed a close match in the magnitude and direction of these size gradients in various arthropod orders, suggesting that these size responses share common drivers. 2. As with increasing latitude, temperature also decreases with increasing altitude. Although the general direction of body size clines along altitudinal gradients has been examined previously, to our knowledge altitude-body size (A-S) clines have never been synthesised quantitatively, nor compared with temperature-size (T-S) responses measured under controlled laboratory conditions. 3. Here we quantitatively examine variation in intraspecific A-S clines among 121 i...1. 体型可影响绝大多数生物与生态过程的速率，范畴覆盖个体性能直至生态系统功能，且与生物体适合度存在根本性关联。在物种内部，实验室环境、季节波动下以及沿纬度梯度分布时，生物的成熟体型均会随环境温度呈现系统性变化。近期元分析（meta-analysis）研究表明，各类节肢动物目（arthropod orders）中此类体型梯度的变化幅度与方向均高度契合，提示这类体型响应机制共享共同的驱动因子。 2. 与纬度升高的规律一致，温度也会随海拔升高而降低。尽管此前已有研究探讨了沿海拔梯度分布的体型渐变群（body size clines）的总体趋势，但据我们所知，目前尚未有研究对海拔-体型（A-S）渐变群开展定量综合分析，也未将其与受控实验室条件下测得的温度-体型（T-S）响应进行对比。 3. 本研究针对121个类群的种内海拔-体型（A-S）渐变群变异展开定量分析……