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Wiley InterScience | ||||||||||||
  Journal of BiogeographySee Also: Volume 33 Issue 9, Pages 1578 - 1584 Published Online: 29 Jun 2006 © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Abstract | References | Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 572K) | Related Articles | Citation Tracking  ORIGINAL ARTICLE The island rule and the evolution of body size in the deep sea Copyright 2006 The Authors Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd KEYWORDS Bathymetric • depth • dwarfism • food availability • gastropods • gigantism • macroecology • Malacolog • miniaturization • resource limitation • size constraints ABSTRACTAim Our goal is to test the generality of the island rule – a graded trend from gigantism in small-bodied species to dwarfism in large-bodied species – in the deep sea, a non-insular but potentially analogous system. Location Shallow-water and deep-sea benthic habitats in the western Atlantic Ocean from the North to South Poles. Methods We conducted regression analyses of body size of deep-sea gastropods species relative to their shallow-water congeners using measurements from the Malacolog ver. 3.3.3 database. Results Our results indicate that, consistent with the island rule, gastropod genera with small-bodied, shallow-water species have significantly larger deep-sea representatives, while the opposite is true for genera that are large-bodied in shallow water. Bathymetric body size clines within the deep sea are also consistent with predictions based on the island rule. Main conclusions Like islands, the deep sea is characterized by low absolute food availability, leading us to hypothesize that the island rule is a result of selection on body size in a resource-constrained environment. The body size of deep-sea species tends to converge on an optimal size for their particular ecological strategy and habitat. | 
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