Abstract

BackgroundSexual size dimorphism (SSD) is related to ecology, behaviour and life history of organisms. Rensch’s rule states that SSD increases with overall body size in species where males are the larger sex, while decreasing with body size when females are larger. To test this rule, we analysed literature as well as own data on male and female body size in anurans (39 species and 17 genera). We also tested the hypothesis that SSD is largely a function of age difference between the sexes.ResultsOur data set encompassed 36 species with female-biased SSD, and three species with male-biased SSD. All considered species failed to support Rensch’s rule, also when the analyses were phylogenetically corrected. However, SSD was significantly correlated with Sexual Age Difference (SAD) across species. We also found a significant correlation between SSD contrasts and SAD contrasts.ConclusionsOur study suggests that Rensch’s rule does not accurately describe macroevolutionary patterns of SSD in anurans. That SAD can explain most of the variation in SSD among species when controlling for phylogenetic effects suggests that phylogeny is not responsible for the broad relationship between age and size across the sexes.

Highlights

  • Sexual size dimorphism (SSD) is related to the ecology, behaviour and life history of organisms, and widely observed in the animal kingdom [1,2]

  • We provide one of the first interspecific tests of Rensch’s rule in anurans, using data from 39 species markedly differing in body size

  • Thirty-six species were characterised by female-biased SSD, whereas male-biased SSD was found in 3 species

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Summary

Introduction

Sexual size dimorphism (SSD) is related to the ecology, behaviour and life history of organisms, and widely observed in the animal kingdom [1,2]. Rensch [3] proposed that SSD increases with overall body size in species where males are the larger sex, and decreases with body size in species where females are the larger sex. Rensch’s rule states that SSD increases with overall body size in species where males are the larger sex, while decreasing with body size when females are larger. To test this rule, we analysed literature as well as own data on male and female body size in anurans (39 species and 17 genera). We tested the hypothesis that SSD is largely a function of age difference between the sexes

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