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