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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Seven Shortfalls that Beset Large-Scale Knowledge of Biodiversity
Joaquín Hortal,Francesco de Bello,José Alexandre Felizola Diniz-Filho,Thomas M. Lewinsohn,Jorge M. Lobo,Richard J. Ladle +5 more
TL;DR: The concept of knowledge shortfalls is updated and the tradeoffs between generality and uncertainty are reviewed and a general framework for the combined impacts and consequences of shortfalls of large-scale biodiversity knowledge is concluded.
Journal ArticleDOI
On the relative abundance of autopolyploids and allopolyploids.
Journal ArticleDOI
Museum specimens reveal loss of pollen host plants as key factor driving wild bee decline in The Netherlands.
Jeroen Scheper,Menno Reemer,Ruud van Kats,Wim A. Ozinga,Wim A. Ozinga,Giel T. J. van der Linden,Joop H.J. Schaminée,Joop H.J. Schaminée,Henk Siepel,Henk Siepel,David Kleijn +10 more
TL;DR: It is shown that decline of preferred host plant species was one of two main factors associated with bee decline, and that mitigation strategies for loss of wild bees will only be effective if they target the specific host plants of declining bee species.
Journal ArticleDOI
Evolution of Ecological Niche Breadth
TL;DR: Whether niche breadth determines diversification and distribution breadth and how niche breadth is partitioned among individuals and populations within a species are important but particularly understudied topics.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Some Comments on the Measurement of Niche Metrics
TL;DR: Information gathered in a study of the community of dung-inhabiting beetles is used in an evalu- ation of the "summation" and "product" approaches to the estimation of multidimensional niche metrics from unidimensional data.
Journal ArticleDOI
No relationship between range size and germination niche width in the UK herbaceous flora
Ken Thompson,R. M. Ceriani +1 more
TL;DR: No evidence of any relationship between niche width and range is found, possible reasons are: (i) mature plant traits are more important than seedling emergence in determining plant ranges; and (ii) ranges of most plants are strongly dispersal-limited.
Journal ArticleDOI
The habitat volumes of scarce and ubiquitous plants: a test of the model of environmental control
TL;DR: This study tests Brown's environmental-control model by examining the expected relationship between the ubiquity of species in samples and the realized edaphic habitat volumes of these species, confirming the predictions of the model and suggesting that scarce plants do not have restricted environmental tolerances but, rather, fill their habitat space more sparsely.
Journal ArticleDOI
Interspecific differences in population trends of Spanish birds are related to habitat and climatic preferences
Javier Seoane,Luis M. Carrascal +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the relationship between the interspecific variation in population trends and species traits, such as habitat preferences, niche breadth or distribution patterns, has received little attention, in spite of its usefulness in the construction of ecological generalizations.
Journal ArticleDOI
PAPER Towards a more mechanistic understanding of traits and range sizes
Irina Laube,Heiko Korntheuer,Monika Schwager,Sven Trautmann,Carsten Rahbek,Katrin Böhning-Gaese +5 more
TL;DR: It is shown that it is necessary to disentangle the direct and indirect influence of multiple traits on range size to better elucidate the mechanisms that generate macroecological relationships.