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The NWFSC Scientific Publications Database serves as an archival repository of NWFSC-published products including scientific findings, journal articles, technical memorandums, reports, or other information authored or co-authored by NWFSC or funded partners. As a repository, the SPD retains documents in their original published format to ensure public access to scientific information.

NOAA Fisheries Northwest Science Center Publication Details

CitationSean Anderson,Krista Oke,Kelly Kearney,Darren Pilcher,Wei Cheng,Esther Goldstein,Beth Matta,Kirstin Holsman,Lauren Rogers,James Thorson,Jennifer Bigman,Lewis Barnett 2026. Changes in body size with age do not follow the temperature-size rule..
TitleChanges in body size with age do not follow the temperature-size rule
Publication Year2026
Keywordsgrowth, size, spatiotemporal modeling, sdmTMB, life-history theory, tinyvast
AbstractThe temperature size-rule is often described as a reduction in ectothermic body size with warming. This coincides with the expectation that faster growth under warming would lead to larger sizes early in life but smaller sizes later in life. Here, we ask whether changes in weight-at-age of four eastern Bering Sea groundfish species are explained by temperature. We also examine whether oxygen, a key part of a proposed mechanism behind the temperature size-rule, better explains patterns of weight-at-age than temperature. For all species, changes in weight-at-age over time were more related to temperature than oxygen but the effect of temperature on weight was small and did not vary by age, counter to the temperature size-rule. Importantly, these results were sensitive to how the relationship between weight-at-age and temperature was modeled. While the functional form (linear or polynomial) mattered little, assuming that spatial and spatiotemporal fields — the random effects that account