Cities alter body size of animal communities

Introduction: A large and international team of ecologists reports in the renowned journal Nature that urbanization is driving body-size shifts in animal communities.

Three authors of the Global Change Ecology Centre , Erik Matthysen , Lisa Baardsen and Thierry Backeljau (all belonging to the research group Evolutionary Ecology ), contributed to the study.

Thomas Merckx (Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve) -the lead author of the paper- says: “We are the first to show that urbanization is causing bi-directional shifts in body size. What our concerted sampling effort across ten animal groups demonstrates, is that the majority of animal groups shows a pattern of dominance of smaller species with increasing urbanization. ...