Sara Ryding

Evolutionary ecologist

Shape-shifting


My PhD focused on how birds respond to climate change via changes in their morphology. This stemmed from two biogeographical rules: Allen's rule and Bergmann's rule. The rules state that animals tend to be smaller bodied but with bigger appendages in warmer climates, as a way of optimizing their heat loss and retention. These morphological trends have been found to exist across latitudinal gradients in some mammals and birds, thus leading to the speculation that the same trends would exist through time, in response to climatic warming.

One of my thesis chapters reviewed examples of increases in appendage size relative to body size (and thus changing overall shape, hence the term "shape-shifting"). This paper sparked a fair amount of media attention when it was published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution (see Media appearances tab). We then got the opportunity to respond to comment that was published about our paper, to discuss how allometry gets accounted for when evaluating Allen's rule.

I also had the opportunity to write a News and Views article for Nature Climate Change about a paper published by them in 2022, looking at body size decreases in tree swallows.

To investigate shape-shifting, I made use of a 3D scanner to be able to extract surface area measurements of bills (rather than estimates of bill surface area, generated from linear measurements). My second paper focused on using 3D scanners on museum specimens, to ensure the method was repeatable between observers and to understand how manual measurements differed from the 3D scan-based measurements. It was published in Journal of Avian Biology.

My third thesis chapter investigated changes in bill surface area, tarsus length, and body size in Australian birds over the last century. I used the method outlined in the above paper in Journal of Avian Biology to extract morphological measurements from museum specimens of diverse Australian species. We found increases in bill and tarsus size, but decreases in body size, through time across birds. Conversely, we found that all morphological measures decreased in response to short-term hot weather. The paper was published in Global Change Biology

Publications


Long- and short-term responses to climate change in body and appendage size of diverse Australian birds.


Sara Ryding, Alexandra McQueen, Marcel Klaassen, G. Tattersall, M. Symonds

Global Change Biology, 2024


Measuring avian bill size: comparing and evaluating 3D surface scanning with traditional size estimates in Australian birds


Sara Ryding, Glenn J. Tattersall, Marcel Klaassen, David J. Wilkinson, Matthew R.E. Symonds

Journal of Avian Biology, 2024


Swallows shrink as climate warms


Sara Ryding, Alexandra McQueen

Nature Climate Change, 2022


Response to 'Allometry to evaluate Allen's rule in climate warming' by Santoro and Calzada.


Sara Ryding, M. Klaassen, G. Tattersall, J. Gardner, M. Symonds

Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2022


Shape-shifting: changing animal morphologies as a response to climatic warming.


Sara Ryding, M. Klaassen, G. Tattersall, J. Gardner, M. Symonds

Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2021


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