Body size evolution in insular vertebrates

Island faunas can be characterized by gigantism in small animals and dwarfism in large animals, but the extent to which this so-called ‘island rule’ provides a general explanation for evolutionary trajectories on islands remains contentious. In this project we assessed patterns and drivers of body size evolution across a global sample of paired island-mainland populations of terrestrial vertebrates, and evaluated the influence of physiographic, climatic and ecological factors on insular size shifts. Hereby we provide the data necessary to run the analyses with the scripts included in the repository: https://github.com/anabenlop/Island_Rule