Climate warming has been linked with changes in the spatiotemporal distribution of species and the body size structure of ecological communities. Body size is a master trait underlying a host of physiological, ecological and evolutionary processes. However, the relative importance of environmental drivers and life history strategies on community body size structure across large spatial and temporal scales is poorly understood. We used detailed data of 83 copepod species, monitored over a 57‐year period across the North Atlantic, to test how sea surface temperature, thermal and day length seasonality relate to observed latitudinal‐size clines of the zooplankton community. The genus Calanus includes dominant taxa in the North Atlantic that overwinter at ocean depth. Thus we compared the copepod community size structure with and without Calanus species, to partition the influence of this life history strategy. The mean community body size of copepods was positively associated with latitude and negatively associated with temperature, suggesting that these communities follow Bergmann's rule. Including Calanus species strengthens these relationships due to their larger than average body sizes and high seasonal abundances, indicating that the latitudinal‐size cline may be adaptive. We suggest that seasonal food availability prevents high abundance of smaller‐sized copepods at higher latitudes, and that active vertical migration of dominant pelagic species can increase their survival rate over the resource‐poor seasons. These findings improve our understanding of the impacts that climate warming has on ecological communities, with potential consequences for trophic interactions and biogeochemical processes that are well known to be size dependent.

中文翻译：

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温度介导的浮游动物体型变化：大规模时空分析

气候变暖与物种时空分布和生态群落体型结构的变化有关。体型是一系列生理、生态和进化过程的主要特征。然而，环境驱动因素和生活史策略在大空间和时间尺度上对群落体型结构的相对重要性知之甚少。我们使用了 83 种桡足类物种的详细数据，在整个北大西洋进行了 57 年的监测，以测试海面温度、热量和昼长季节性与观察到的浮游动物群落的纬度大小变化之间的关系。Calanus 属包括北大西洋的主要分类群，它们在海洋深处越冬。因此，我们比较了有和没有 Calanus 物种的桡足类群落大小结构，以划分这种生活史策略的影响。桡足类群落体平均大小与纬度呈正相关，与温度呈负相关，表明这些群落遵循伯格曼法则。由于 Calanus 物种大于平均体型和高季节性丰度，包括 Calanus 物种加强了这些关系，表明纬度大小的cline 可能是适应性的。我们认为，季节性食物供应阻止了高纬度地区小型桡足类动物的大量出现，优势中上层物种的积极垂直迁移可以提高它们在资源贫乏季节的存活率。