Functional morphology meets macroecology: size and shape distributions of New World bats

Questions: What is the distribution of sizes of bats when estimated from multivariate analyses conducted on a number of morphological characteristics? Can shapes generated from such analyses inform our understanding of macroecology, in particular how phenotypic character-istics in general vary in nature? Do species-rich functional groups of bats exhibit similar size and shape distributions? Quantitative methods: Principal components analysis imposed on seven morphometric characteristics. Kolmogorov-Smirnov and bootstrap analyses to determine differences among phenotypic distributions. Organisms: New World bats. Conclusions: All distributions were modal, skewed and deviated significantly from the log-normal. Significant differences regarding central tendency of functional groups existed on all phenotypic axes. Functional groups exhibited similar size distributions based on skew and kurtosis, but significantly differed on the log-mass and shape axes. Although similarities in the unimodal and skewed nature of phenotypic distributions suggest universal properties gov-erning the diversification of organisms through space and time, quantitative differences among distributions highlight unique aspects of the evolution of particular phenotypic attributes