Abstract
One of the most general expectations of species range dynamics is that widespread species tend to have broader niches. However, it remains unclear how this relationship is expressed at different levels of biological organisation, which involve potentially distinctive processes operating at different spatial and temporal scales. Here, we show that range sizes of terrestrial non-volant mammals at the individual and species level show contrasting relationships with two ecological niche dimensions: diet and habitat breadth. While average individual home range size appears to be mainly shaped by the interplay of diet niche breadth and body mass, species geographical range size is primarily related to habitat niche breadth but not to diet niche breadth. Our findings suggest that individual home range size is shaped by the trade-off between energetic requirements, movement capacity and trophic specialisation, whereas species geographical range size is related to the ability to persist under various environmental conditions.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1408-1419 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Ecology Letters |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| Early online date | 7 May 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank the sELDiG working group, supported by sDiv, the Synthesis Centre of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig (DFG FZT 118) for initial discussion, and particularly L. Pellissier and F. Hartig for further feedback on the project. We also thank S. Edie and T. Price for discussion during the project as well as S. Fritz and T. Müller for comments on the manuscript. S.H. was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (postdoctoral fellowship) and the German Science Foundation (DFG, HU 2748/1-1). M.A.T. was supported by a Radboud Excellence Initiative Fellowship. A.G.H. was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant No 793077) and from the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (I-1465-413.13/2018). A.E. was supported by DFG grants FR 3246/2-2 and GO1221/25-2. We thank the editor and two anonymous referees for their constructive feedback. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Ecology Letters published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Keywords
- diet breadth
- geographical range size
- habitat breadth
- home range
- movement
- niche breadth
- resource availability
- scale-dependent processes
- terrestrial mammals
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics