Please response to student post below.

I learned a great deal about Bergmann’s rule and climate change, after viewing Dr. Cox’s video. Bergmann’s rule is a rule that relates to temperature and body weight. Bergmann’s rule was first described by Carl Bergmann. Bergmann’s rule is only relevant when looking at closely related animals. It correlates body size and latitude. For some species that live in different latitudes, the average body size is bigger for populations that live live in greater latitudes. It’s generally colder at high latitudes. Most of the explanations of Bergmann’s rule talk about conserving body heat. If you live north, it’s better to have a large body because with a large body you have more cells, and with more cells you generate more heat. You lose heat on the surface. You generate heat from internal volume. Larger objects have less surface area per unit of volume. Decreased body size correlates with warming. Decline in body weight could stem from adaptation, it could be adaptation through genetic evolution or phenotypic plasticity, or on the other hand, the decline may not have anything to do with adaptation, it could be a result of environmental stress, lack of diet, overall lifespan decreasing, or simply, the size of the colony shrinking.