10.5061/DRYAD.C3TC6
Prowse, Thomas A. A.
University of Adelaide
Correll, Rachel A.
Flinders University
Johnson, Christopher N.
University of Tasmania
Prideaux, Gavin J.
Flinders University
Brook, Barry W.
University of Adelaide
Data from: Empirical tests of harvest-induced body-size evolution along a
geographic gradient in Australian macropods
Dryad
dataset
2015
Bayesian hierarchical model
human-induced evolution
harvesting
Macropus fuliginosus
Macropus giganteus
Macropus rufogriseus
conditional autoregressive model
Bergmann’s rule
Holocene
2015-07-09T00:00:00Z
2015-07-09T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.12273
527889 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
1. Life-history theory predicts the progressive dwarfing of animal
populations that are subjected to chronic mortality stress but the
evolutionary impact of harvesting terrestrial herbivores has seldom been
tested. In Australia, marsupials of the genus Macropus (kangaroos and
wallabies) are subjected to size-selective commercial harvesting.
Mathematical modelling suggests that harvest quotas (ca. 10–20 % of
population estimates annually) could be driving body-size evolution in
these species. 2. We tested this hypothesis for three harvested macropod
species with continental-scale distributions. To do so, we measured more
than 2 000 macropod skulls sourced from wildlife collections spanning the
last 130 years. We analysed these data using spatial Bayesian models that
controlled for the age and sex of specimens as well as environmental
drivers and island effects. 3. We found no evidence for the hypothesized
decline in body size for any species; rather, models that fit trend terms
supported minor body size increases over time. This apparently
counterintuitive result is consistent with reduced mortality due to a
depauperate predator guild and increased primary productivity of grassland
vegetation following European settlement in Australia. 4. Spatial patterns
in macropod body size supported the heat dissipation limit and
productivity hypotheses proposed to explain geographic body-size variation
(i.e., skull size increased with decreasing summer maximum temperature and
increasing rainfall, respectively). 5. There is no empirical evidence that
size-selective harvesting has driven the evolution of smaller body size in
Australian macropods. Bayesian models are appropriate for investigating
the long-term impact of human harvesting because they can impute missing
data, fit non-linear growth models and account for non-random spatial
sampling inherent in wildlife collections.
Macropod specimen details and extracted spatial covariate valuesThis file
provides the following information for macropod skulls of three Macropus
species sourced from nine wildlife collections: Species, Longitude (as
recorded on the specimen tag), Latitude (as recorded on the specimen tag),
gridLongitude (the central longitude of the grid cell from which
covariates were extracted for the specimen), gridLatitude (the central
latitude of the grid cell from which covariates were extracted for the
specimen), Sex, Island, Year (the year of collection as recorded on the
specimen tag), MI (molar index), CL (condylobasal length), WinterMinTemp
(mean minimum temperature over the winter months), SummerMaxTemp (mean
maximum temperature over the summer months), SummerWetBulbTemp (mean wet
bulb temperature over the summer months), AnnualRain (mean annual
rainfall), AnnualNDVI (mean annual Normalised Difference Vegetation
Index), GrowSeasRain (mean rainfall during the growing season),
GrowSeasNDVI (mean Normalised Difference Vegetation Index during the
growing season), MinSeasRain (mean rainfall of the driest season),
MinSeasNDVI (mean Normalised Difference Vegetation Index for the season
with the lowest mean NDVI).ProwseEtAl_MacropodData.csv
Australia