Niche Breadth: Causes and Consequences for Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation

2020/09/01 by Kelly A. Carscadden, Nancy C. Emery, Carlos Alberto Arnillas +6 · 347 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Environmental Science · #Biology #Diversification (marketing strategy) #Ecological niche #Ecology #Environmental DNA in Biodiversity Studies #Environmental niche modelling #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Evolutionary ecology #Habitat #Niche #Niche construction #Niche segregation #Species Distribution and Climate Change

paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/710388

published in The Quarterly Review of Biology 95(3), 179-214 (University of Chicago Press)

openalex publication_date 2020/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

Niche breadth is a unifying concept spanning diverse aspects of ecology, evolution, and conservation biology. Niche breadth usually refers to the diversity of resources used or environments tolerated by an individual, population, species, or clade. Here we review key research in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology in light of niche breadth. Namely, we explore the role of niche breadth in shaping geographic distributions and species richness from local to landscape scales, how niche breadth evolves and influences lineage diversification, and its use for understanding species invasions, responses to climate change, vulnerability to extinction, and ecosystem functioning. This diverse literature informs a research agenda that identifies focused needs for further progress: testing the hierarchical nature of niche breadth (e.g., of individuals, populations, and species); quantifying correlations in niche breadth among different niche axes and the role of environmental drivers and organismal constraints in generating these correlations; and evaluating the factors that decouple fundamental and realized niches. We describe how this research agenda could help unify disparate subdisciplines and shed light on key questions in ecology, evolution, and conservation.

Citations

• Are Species’ Range Limits Simply Niche Limits Writ Large? A Review of Transplant Experiments beyond the Range
• The Latitudinal Gradient in Geographical Range: How so Many Species Coexist in the Tropics
• Why Mountain Passes are Higher in the Tropics
• Resource Partitioning in Ecological Communities
• A Global Pattern of Thermal Adaptation in Marine Phytoplankton
• Morphological Variation and Width of Ecological Niche
• Elton Revisited: A Review of Evidence Linking Diversity and Invasibility
• On the Measurement of Niche Breadth and Overlap
• Predicting the Geography of Species’ Invasions via Ecological Niche Modeling
• Assembly Rules, Null Models, and Trait Dispersion: New Questions from Old Patterns
• LATITUDINAL VARIATIONS IN ORGANIC DIVERSITY

Cited by

• Variations of Environmental Niche Breadth, Range Sizes and Geographic Exclusion With Bat Species Richness
• MUTUALISMS ALTER LEGUME NICHES AT A GLOBAL SCALE
• Age‐related trends in niche position and specialization in Neotropical vertebrates
• Deconstructing niche shifts: Using native and non-native records to assess the invasion potential of geographically constrained species
• Mismatch in reindeer resilience to past and future warming signals ongoing declines
• What it is like to be an optimist: temporal stability of cognitive bias in rats and its link to other individual traits
• General laws of biodiversity: Climatic niches predict plant range size and ecological dominance globally
• Contributions of source populations, habitat suitability and trait overlap to benthic invertebrate community assembly in restored urban streams
• Fluctuation-Dependent Coexistence of Stage-Structured Species
• Biome Specialisation in Squirrels: Phylogenetic and Geographic Patterns
• Recoupling terrestrial, benthic and pelagic habitats by constructing littoral zones diversifies carbon flows to aquatic macroinvertebrates
• Early Developmental Decline in HSP Expression Affects Subsequent Response to Transient Heat Exposure
• Ecological Specialisation of Reef Fishes Peaks in Global Biodiversity Hotspots
• Trait matching without traits: using correspondence analysis to investigate the latent structure of interaction networks
• Overlooked considerations in prescribing green and blue infrastructure solutions for urban environments
• Some new grand questions in soil biology and biochemistry
• Habitat and Trophic Specialization Among Greenland Cod (Gadus ogac) Morphotypes in the Context of Climate Change Resilience
• Climate change is an important predictor of extinction risk on macroevolutionary timescales
• The realized environmental niche varies by biological level in a broadly distributed migratory waterbird, Pelecanus erythrorhynchos (American White Pelican)
• Large-scale surveys of woodrats ( Neotoma spp.) reveal constraints on diet breadth in herbivorous mammals
• Temperature, productivity, and habitat characteristics collectively drive lake food web structure
• Recent range shifts of moths, butterflies, and birds are driven by the breadth of their climatic niche
• Fossil leaves reveal drivers of herbivore functional diversity during the Cenozoic
• Functional biogeography of parasite traits: hypotheses and evidence. [europepmc]
• The evolution of the traplining pollinator role in hummingbirds: specialization is not an evolutionary dead end. [europepmc]
• On the macroecological significance of eco-evolutionary dynamics: the range shift-niche breadth hypothesis. [europepmc]
• Origin and expansion of the world's most widespread pinniped: Range-wide population genomics of the harbour seal (Phoca vitulina). [europepmc]
• Disentangling the Ecological Processes Shaping the Latitudinal Pattern of Phytoplankton Communities in the Pacific Ocean. [europepmc]
• Ecoregion and community structure influences on the foliar elemental niche of balsam fir ( Abies balsamea (L.) Mill.) and white birch ( Betula papyrifera Marshall). [europepmc]
• Viral and Bacterial Communities Collaborate through Complementary Assembly Processes in Soil to Survive Organochlorine Contamination. [europepmc]
• A social niche breadth score reveals niche range strategies of generalists and specialists. [europepmc]
• Sedimentary Vibrio Blooms in the Xisha Islands May Associate with the 2020 Coral Bleaching Event. [europepmc]
• Specialization patterns in symbiotic associations: A community perspective over spatial scales. [europepmc]
• Demographic responses of hybridizing cinquefoils to changing climate in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. [europepmc]
• Spatial assortment of soil organisms supports the size-plasticity hypothesis. [europepmc]
• Recent range shifts of moths, butterflies, and birds are driven by the breadth of their climatic niche. [europepmc]
• Energy input, habitat heterogeneity and host specificity drive avian haemosporidian diversity at continental scales. [europepmc]
• Niche breadth explains the range size of European-centred butterflies, but dispersal ability does not. [europepmc]
• The interplay between abiotic and biotic factors in dispersal decisions in metacommunities. [europepmc]
• Pushing the boundaries: actual and potential distribution of thrushes expanding their ranges in South America. [europepmc]
• Competition in the Periphytic Algal Community during the Colonization Process: Evidence from the World's Largest Water Diversion Project. [europepmc]
• The interplay between climatic niche evolution, polyploidy and reproductive traits explains plant speciation in the Mediterranean Basin: a case study in Centaurium (Gentianaceae). [europepmc]
• Transgressive hybrids as hopeful holobionts. [europepmc]
• Plant interaction traits determine the biomass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and bacteria in soil. [europepmc]
• Host specificity of gut microbiota associated with social bees: patterns and processes. [europepmc]
• The global determinants of climate niche breadth in birds. [europepmc]
• Species occupancy is inflated by sink populations in productive environments but not unproductive environments. [europepmc]
• Soil properties in agricultural systems affect microbial genomic traits. [europepmc]

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