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New Clues Found Linking Larger Animals to Colder Climates


February 24, 2010

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A pair of University of Houston researchers found a possible new solution to a 163-year-old puzzle. Ecological factors can now be added to physiology to explain why animals grow bigger in the cold. Their results were published in the February issue of American Naturalist, offering new insight to Bergmann's rule that animals grow larger at high, cold latitudes than their counterparts closer to the equator, hypothesizing that better food makes high-latitude animals bigger.Full Story

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University of Houston

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