Niche Conservatism: Integrating Evolution, Ecology, and Conservation Biology

TLDR

Niche conservatism describes species retaining ancestral ecological traits, and recent debate questions whether niches are truly conserved. The study argues that rather than merely testing for niche conservation, researchers should examine the patterns niche conservatism generates, especially how climatic tolerances constrain geographic expansion. The authors propose using ecological niche modeling to assess how niche conservatism in climatic tolerances limits range expansion and influences speciation, biogeography, species richness, community structure, invasions, climate‑change responses, and human history.

Abstract

▪ Abstract Niche conservatism is the tendency of species to retain ancestral ecological characteristics. In the recent literature, a debate has emerged as to whether niches are conserved. We suggest that simply testing whether niches are conserved is not by itself particularly helpful or interesting and that a more useful focus is on the patterns that niche conservatism may (or may not) create. We focus specifically on how niche conservatism in climatic tolerances may limit geographic range expansion and how this one type of niche conservatism may be important in (a) allopatric speciation, (b) historical biogeography, (c) patterns of species richness, (d) community structure, (e) the spread of invasive, human-introduced species, (f) responses of species to global climate change, and (g) human history, from 13,000 years ago to the present. We describe how these effects of niche conservatism can be examined with new tools for ecological niche modeling.