Why are species’ body size distributions usually skewed to the right?

Abstract

Summary1. Species’ body size distributions are right‐skewed, symmetric or left‐skewed, but right‐skewness strongly prevails.2. Skewness changes with taxonomic level, with a tendency to high right‐skewness in classes and diverse skewness in orders within a class. Where the number of lower taxa allows for analysis, skewness coefficients have normal distributions, with the majority of taxa being right‐skewed.3. Skewness changes with geographical scale. For a broad range, distributions in a class are usually right‐skewed. For a narrower scale, distributions remain right‐skewed or become symmetric or even close to uniform.4. The prevailing right‐skewness of species’ body size distributions is explained with macroevolutionary models, the fractal character of the environment, or body size optimization.5. Macroevolutionary models assume either size‐biased speciation and extinction, or the existence of a constraint on small size. Macroevolutionary mechanisms seem insufficient to explain the pattern of species’ body size distributions, but they may operate together with other mechanisms.6. Optimization models assume that directional and then stabilizing selection works after speciation events. There are two kinds of optimization approaches to study species’ body size distributions. Under the first approach, it is assumed that a single energetic optimum exists for an entire taxon, and that species are distributed around this optimum. Under the second approach, each species has a separate optimum, and the species’ body size distribution reflects the distribution of optimal values.7. Because not only energetic properties but also mortality are important in determining optimal sizes, only the second approach, that is, seeking the distribution of optimal values, seems appropriate in the context of life‐history evolution. This approach predicts diverse shapes of body size distributions, with right‐skewness prevailing.