Miniaturization in body size and element size has evolved multiple times in vertebrates, contributing to morphological variation and often driving lineage diversification. A major abiotic factor that plays an important role in the evolution of animal sizes is climate. Body size miniaturization is a widespread response to increases in temperature, and many species may shrink or continue to shrink in response to persistent and accelerating global warming.

I will investigate the role of miniaturization on the dynamics of biological diversity at the macroevolutionary, populational, and temporal levels. I will digitize about 100 whole eulipotyphlan specimens to capture skull and postcranial morphology. I will use state-of-the-art comparative methods and analytical models to unravel the evolution and diversity in miniaturized body sizes, assessing (1) whether body shrinkage played a role in structuring the outstanding morphological variation and lineage diversification in Soricidae (interspecific macroevolutionary scale), and (2) how climate change has impacted seasonal morphological variation in external and internal bone anatomy in one common shrew species from western North America (intraspecific local scale). Shrews are abundant in North American zoological collections, making them an ideal understudied model system to address the inter and intraspecific questions here proposed.