Figure legends
FIGURE 1 The common shrew (Sorex araneus ). Photo by Leszek Rychlik.
FIGURE 2 X-ray images of S. araneus skulls and linear measurements taken from the images: a skull length (SKL), skull (braincase) height (BCH), and b skull width (BCW). See text for details
FIGURE 3 Skull height throughout the lifetime of S. araneus. Sampling months and corresponding age categories are shown. The first weaned shrews appeared in June (juveniles), which is when skull dimensions were largest; they then shrank towards winter (subadults) and finally regrew in the next spring/summer (adults), when the adults reproduced. Most of the shrews then died before the next winter. Solid circles are the means±standard error when the sample size was ≥5. Horizontal bars represent age categories and months from which skulls were analyzed; skulls of juvenile shrews from July and August were analyzed separately (see text). The presented data were limited to the period between 1955 and 1985, for which we had individuals from all three age categories
FIGURE 4 The relationships between a skull height,b skull length and year in July juveniles (JUV-7; 1953-2004), August juveniles (JUV-8; 1953-1981), subadults (SAD; 1955-1985) and adults (AD; 1953-2004) of S. araneus , compared with changing climate parameters: c the mean annual temperature, dthe annual sum of precipitation, and e the annual sum od soil moisture deficit. The 95% confidence limits of the relationships smoothed with LOESS are shown (for the sake of clarity, confidence limits for JUV-8 and SAD in b are not presented)
FIGURE 5 Relationship between the skull length in adultS. araneus and the annual soil moisture deficit. Each circle represents one year (between 1971 and 2004), and the size of the circle is proportional to the number of skulls measured (one to seven); the period for which the soil moisture deficit was calculated is explained in Table 2
FIGURE 6 Dehnel’s phenomenon in S. araneus from 1953 to 1985; a comparison of skull height in three consecutive time intervals (see Figure 3 for information on the shrews’ life history). Solid lines and shaded areas represent fitted values and standard errors of the GAM model (n=392, P <0.001 for the three time intervals, deviance explained 69.7%); b differences in skull height between July juveniles (JUV-7), August juveniles (JUV-8), winter subadults (SAD) and adults (AD) across years (comparison of regression lines). Arrows indicate the sequence of age classes and seasonal changes in S. araneus