Journal ArticleDOI
Niche breadth predicts geographical range size: a general ecological pattern.
TLDR
Despite significant variability in the strength of the relationship among studies, the general positive relationship suggests that specialist species might be disproportionately vulnerable to habitat loss and climate change due to synergistic effects of a narrow niche and small range size.Abstract:
The range of resources that a species uses (i.e. its niche breadth) might determine the geographical area it can occupy, but consensus on whether a niche breadth–range size relationship generally exists among species has been slow to emerge. The validity of this hypothesis is a key question in ecology in that it proposes a mechanism for commonness and rarity, and if true, may help predict species' vulnerability to extinction. We identified 64 studies that measured niche breadth and range size, and we used a meta-analytic approach to test for the presence of a niche breadth–range size relationship. We found a significant positive relationship between range size and environmental tolerance breadth (z = 0.49), habitat breadth (z = 0.45), and diet breadth (z = 0.28). The overall positive effect persisted even when incorporating sampling effects. Despite significant variability in the strength of the relationship among studies, the general positive relationship suggests that specialist species might be disproportionately vulnerable to habitat loss and climate change due to synergistic effects of a narrow niche and small range size. An understanding of the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that drive and cause deviations from this niche breadth–range size pattern is an important future research goal.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Recent range shifts of moths, butterflies, and birds are driven by the breadth of their climatic niche
Maria Hällfors,Risto K. Heikkinen,Mikko Kuussaari,Aleksi Lehikoinen,Miska Luoto,Juha Pöyry,Raimo Virkkala,Marjo Saastamoinen,Heini Kujala +8 more
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors provide a first-filter test of the effect of climatic niche dimensions on shifts in the leading range edges in three relatively well dispersing species groups, based on the realized changes in the northern range edges of 383 moth, butterfly, and bird species across a boreal 1,100 km latitudinal gradient.
Journal ArticleDOI
A metric to quantify analogous conditions and rank environmental layers
TL;DR: It is expected that heterogeneous layers would generate better correlational geographic distributional predictions than analogous variables, even though this hypothesis remains untested.
Journal ArticleDOI
Microbial community structure and denitrification responses to cascade low-head dams and their contribution to eutrophication in urban rivers.
TL;DR: In this article , the authors conducted a field survey on microbial community structure and ecosystem function, in combination with hydrological, environmental and ecological factors, and found that microbial communities showed significant differences among the cascade impoundments, which may be due to the environment heterogeneity resulting from the cascade low head dams.
Posted ContentDOI
Can we predict which species win when new habitat becomes available
TL;DR: This study investigates the relative roles of geographic features, species climatic niche characteristics and species traits in determining the ability of open-habitat plant species to take advantage of recently opened habitats to find differences between species in their ability to colonise newly opened habitat.
Journal ArticleDOI
Independent variation of avian sensitivity to climate change and trait‐based adaptive capacity along a tropical elevational gradient
TL;DR: In this article , the authors test how species' sensitivity to climate change and trait-based measures of their ecological adaptive capacity (i) vary along a broad elevational gradient and (ii) covary across a large number of bird species.
References
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