When it comes to extinction, body size matters

Date:  February 13, 2018

Source:  Santa Fe Institute

Summary:

Models for extinction risk are necessarily simple. Most reduce complex ecological systems to a linear relationship between resource density and population growth -- something that can be broadly applied to infer how much resource loss a species can survive. This week in Nature Communications, an interdisciplinary team of scientists proposes a more nuanced model for extinction that also shows why animal species tend to evolve toward larger body sizes.

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