1991

Terekhina & Panteleiev

Variability of body size in rodents and Bergman\'s law. Variation de taille et loi de Bergman chez les rongeurs.

Tertium Internationalis Colloquium \"Rodens & Spatium\", abstracts, 130-131.

EN

The causes of body size varaibility in animals are being discussed in literature for decades. Bergman\'s hypothesis (1847) suggesting that body size parameters grow with the fall of environmental temperaturesis the most popular. However, with the data accumulated in favour of Bergman\'s law, the number of exclusions of it also grows.Further solving of the problem by competition of the cpros and the contras is meaningless. The following exit from the deadlock situation is proposed here. 1. To reveal the specific composure of Palearctic Rodents. 2. To present all the data available for the mean body sizes of geographic populations according to the lste of species. The available sources: collections of zoological storages (museums), author\'s garherings and thedata of colleagues-zoologists, literature. 3. To divide collected data among the brocks within the species. A comparative analysis in each block should be carried out from South to North and upwise according to the altitude from the sea level, in mountains. 1740 populations have been analyzed by the authors relating to 207 species of Palearctic Rodents. Randomysed ata verificate in favour of Bergman\'s law.

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