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Climatic correlates of body size in European tenebrionid beetles (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)

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Abstract

Tenebrionidae are one of the largest families of beetles and are known for their adaptations to hot and dry climates. An increase in body size also increases the volume/surface area ratio, which reduces transpiration, and hence water loss. If an increase in body size is an important adaptation in tenebrionids to cope with increasing aridity, we expect a correlation between body size and climatic gradients in the major tenebrionid clades. Alternatively, we can postulate that arid climates do not drive body size evolution, but rather select, from a wider fauna containing species of any size, those that have larger bodies. In this case we expect that drier regions will host faunas that contain, on average, larger species. To test the first hypothesis, we correlated inter-specific body size variation in the main tenebrionid clades with climatic gradients in Europe. We found only weak trends. To test the second hypothesis, we regressed mean body size of European country faunas against climatic characteristics. We found a strong increase in body size in southern faunas experiencing hot and dry climates. Therefore, increase in body size is not a major adaptation in tenebrionid evolution, but climate is an important filtering factor that determines a prevalence of larger species in southern Europe.

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Acknowledgments

We are particularly grateful to M. Lillig for his invaluable help in finding many references reporting body length measures. We thank the following people for providing unpublished faunal data and/or for checking regional faunal lists used in this study: O. R. Alexandrovitch (Belarus), B. Gustafsson (Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden), P. Leo (France, Italy, Greece, Spain, overall distribution of many species and comments about completeness of inventories), and F. Soldati (France, Italy, Romania, Greece), who also provided some body length measures. We are very grateful to two anonymous referees for their constructive comments. H. Pearson kindly improved our English.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Azorean Biodiversity Group (CITA-A) and Platform for Enhancing Ecological Research & Sustainability (PEERS), University of the Azores, Angra do Heroísmo, Terceira, Açores, Portugal

    Simone Fattorini

  2. Department of Biotechnology and Biosciences, University of Milano Bicocca, Piazza della Scienza 2, 20126, Milan, Italy

    Simone Fattorini

  3. Department of Sciences, University of Roma Tre, Viale G. Marconi 446, 00146, Rome, Italy

    Roberto Lo Monaco & Andrea Di Giulio

  4. Ecology and Biogeography, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Lwowska 1, 87-100, Toruń, Poland

    Werner Ulrich

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  1. Simone Fattorini
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Correspondence to Simone Fattorini.

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Fattorini, S., Lo Monaco, R., Di Giulio, A. et al. Climatic correlates of body size in European tenebrionid beetles (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae). Org Divers Evol 14, 215–224 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13127-013-0164-0

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