Niche breadth predicts geographical range size: a general ecological pattern.

By R. Slatyer, Megan J. Hirst, Jason P. Sexton. Ecology Letters, 2013

836 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2b59937f685c111770c3709ff1f0e8c34f487ef8

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Citations in the corpus

Niche differentiation and expansion of plant species are associated with mycorrhizal symbiosis (2018, background): “Despite AM plants are geographically the most widespread and were thus expected to have the widest niches (Slatyer et al., 2013), we found that ErM and EcM plant species exhibited the largest niche expansion.”
Amphibian sensitivity to habitat modification is associated with population trends and species traits (2017, background): “because SHM is a measure of the localized responses of species to habitat modification, the importance of range size probably reflects niche specialization of range-restricted species (Slatyer et al., 2013) rather than the spatial spread of risk from threatening processes [i.”
Comparative analysis of diversity and environmental niches of soil bacterial, archaeal, fungal and protist communities reveal niche divergences along environmental gradients in the Alps (2021, background): “On the other hand, generalist species with broad environmental tolerance are expected to maintain viable populations more easily even in unfavorable environmental conditions (Thuiller et al., 2005; Binzer et al., 2011; Slatyer et al., 2013).”
Evolution of Ecological Niche Breadth (2017, background): “An alternative view is that generalists should have higher rates of diversification because they typically have larger range sizes (Slatyer et al. 2013) and are therefore more likely to have these ranges fragmented by ecological or geographical barriers over evolutionary time, promoting allopatric…”
Seven Shortfalls that Beset Large-Scale Knowledge of Biodiversity (2015, background): “These estimates can be used to improve predictions of the responses of species to changing conditions and, ultimately, to increase understanding of the causes of abundance and occurrence patterns (Brown 1984, Gaston 2003, Slatyer et al. 2013).”
Competition in slow motion: the unusual case of benthic marine communities in the wake of the end‐Permian mass extinction (2015, background): “4A) follows predictions on the long-term effect of interspecific competition on niche breadth and geographical range (Bolknik et al. 2010; Slatyer et al. 2013; Hautmann 2014).”
The Worldwide Spread, Success, and Impact of Ragweed (Ambrosia spp.) (2017, background): “Slatyer et al. (2013) found a positive relationship between niche breadth and range size, suggesting that a wide tolerance to abiotic conditions facilitates occupancy of a larger area, and that habitat breadth is a good predictor of a wide distribution.”