Data from: Decreases in beetle body size linked to climate change and warming temperatures

We found that 95% of lab-reared beetles decreased in size with increased rearing temperature, with larger-bodied species shrinking disproportionately more than smaller-bodied beetles. In addition, the museum data sets revealed that larger-bodied beetle species have decreased in size over time, that mean beetle body size explains much of the interspecific variation in beetle responses to temperature, and that long-term beetle size changes are explained by increases in autumn temperature and decreases in spring temperature in this region. 4.

Our data demonstrate that the relationship between body size and temperature of wild-caught beetles matches relatively well with results from laboratory studies, and that variation in this relationship is largely explained by interspecific variation in mean beetle body size. 5. This long-term beetle dataset is one of the most comprehensive arthropod body size datasets compiled to date, it improves predictions regarding the shrinking of organisms with global climate change, and together with the meta-analysis data, call for new hypotheses to explain why larger-bodied organisms may be more sensitive to temperature.

Usage notes

Tseng-et-al-JAE-Museum-Data-dryad This file contains the data used to generate the main results for the museum beetles portion of the paper. The data for the meta-analysis portion of the paper is available as supplementary materials on the Journal of Animal Ecology website.